No doubt, you would have tried everything you know to get rid of your chronic pain. It significantly disrupts your everyday life, leading to stress.
Don’t fret; you are not alone. People are searching for complementary approaches to allopathy, surgery, and alternative medicine. A heavy dosage of painkillers, heat and cold therapies, supports, and exercise all help. Here’s one option that you probably never guessed: meditation.
A large number of people attest to the benefits of meditation for chronic pain relief. After all, there is no harm in helping yourself with a dose of positivity!
Meditation for chronic pain relief
Are you wondering how meditation and chronic pain are related? Well, the first time you feel pain, your reaction is mostly physical. When it recurs, you anticipate a certain level of pain. So your pain is both physical and mental. Chances are your mind has worked you up into a frenzy and multiplied the pain beyond its actual level. So, naturally, working on the mind makes sense. That is why the answer to chronic pain lies in meditation.
Research shows that some techniques of meditation help reduce chronic pain. This is based on the brain’s reactivity to pain.
So, how can meditation help with chronic pain?
1. Meditation teaches you to let go
In meditation, you observe various parts of your body as if you are a silent spectator. As you see yourself and your suffering from outside, you learn to dissociate from it. This helps you let go of it. So, meditation helps you harness the power of your mind to help reduce your pain.
2. Meditation helps you stay in the present
Once you have felt pain, you don’t forget it quickly. What meditation does for you is that it makes sure you don’t re-live every past suffering. With mindfulness meditation for chronic pain, you stay in the present moment. It ensures that disturbing memories and anxieties about the future do not haunt your present.
3. Meditation increases your energy levels
When you suffer from chronic pain, your energy levels drastically fall. At times, you are too weak to handle the next bout of pain and this snowballs into stress and depression. While painkillers make your pain duller, they seem to take your mood and activity along as well!
Meditation works on energizing your mind. And meditation makes you think anything is possible. The bright and positive thoughts that it evokes help uplift you.
4. Meditation relieves stress and anxiety
Chronic pain brings along its favorite buddies – stress and anxiety. As if the physical pain was not enough, you have to deal with emotional wear and tear as well. This is when meditation is the most effective outlet. It helps you release tensions and burdens that have been weighing you down. While pain might give you a morbid view of life, meditation simplifies your thought process. You learn to tune in to your hitherto-forgotten inner positivity.
If you are new to meditation, guided meditation for chronic pain would be a great way to start. Begin with this guided meditation. With regular practice, you will see the results for yourself. As Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says: pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Beat that pain!
The Art of Living’s Sahaj Samadhi Meditation program that helps you release pent-up stress and increase your energy levels. This can help you effectively deal with your chronic pain.
