Chronic Pain Management and the Role of Meditation
For decades the chemical dependency research literature has established the effectiveness of teaching meditation and relaxation techniques to patients with addictive disorders. The pain literature also indicates the importance of using relaxation to help reduce the level of pain that patients experience. For example in her book Managing Pain Before it Manages You, Dr. Margaret Caudill (2001) explains how to evoke what she calls the Relaxation Response in order to reduce stress and pain.
There are many books and audiocassettes that teach patients how to use meditation and relaxation exercises to reduce stress and anxiety. There is also a strong stress-pain connection that is crucial to understand for more effective chronic pain management. But remember, in most cases if patients can learn to lower their stress level, they will also experience a decrease in their level of pain.
Meditation is a fairly new phenomenon in our Western culture, but research shows that the origins of meditation go back at least five-thousand years. One type that I’ve found particularly helpful for my own chronic pain management and that I teach my patients is the Buddhist discipline of “mindfulness meditation.” This is a moment-to-moment awareness of what our bodies are doing. The goals of meditation are to understand one’s mental processes, develop the power to control these processes and gain freedom from one’s mind-set.
To learn more about effective chronic pain management check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.
To learn more about effective chronic pain management check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Articles page.
You can learn about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.
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