Meditation and Pain Relief

July 11, 2010

by Mehmet C. Oz, MD, and Michael F. Roizen, MD |

If you're among the tens of millions of North Americans living with chronic pain, we've got news about a drug-free "om remedy" worth trying: easy meditation. Plenty of research shows that your brain's superpowers can help conquer the most stubborn of miseries, including bad backs, cancer pain, arthritis, tension headaches, and inflammatory bowel disease. (Check out how meditation can help knee pain.) The best part?

You don't have to move to a mountaintop, sit on a rock-hard meditation cushion, or shell out big bucks for a meditation instructor to get results. In a new study from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, people who meditated for just 20 minutes a day saw their pain tolerance rise in 4 days. Volunteers learned an ultra-easy technique called mindfulness meditation that teaches you to focus on your breath and stay in the present moment, not worry about what's ahead. Researchers tested the volunteers' pain thresholds with mild electric shocks and found that shocks considered "high pain" before meditating felt mild afterward.

Volunteers who didn't learn the meditation had unchanged responses to the shocks. (No, we can't imagine why anyone volunteered for this, though we're grateful that they did.) Please don't try this at home! But once you've finished reading this column, take a few minutes to test-drive our simple instructions (see below) for mindfulness meditation and two other pain-soothing techniques. You'll feel calm, centered, and Zen-fully refreshed, fast.

But first, let's get something straight: Meditation doesn't work because your pain is "all in your head." Chronic pain is all too real, and too many people live with it every day. When pain won't quit, stress and worry kick in, boosting levels of stress hormones, which tricks your brain into thinking the pain is worse than it is. Destressing with meditation or similar mind-body techniques (progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery) dials back stress hormones, which so diminishes pain. The difference may be enough for you to reduce your pain meds or to get relief when drugs alone fall short.

There's more. In other new research, this time from England's University of Manchester, meditation eased pain by helping your brain stop anticipating it -- another stress trigger. Less stress and less pain can also mean better sleep, more motivation to exercise, and even less depression, all of which make you relax more and hurt less. Ready to get started? Find a quiet place where you can sit or lie down comfortably for 10 to 15 minutes. Tape a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. Then, give these brain-powered pain busters a whirl: Mindfulness meditation: Close your eyes; it will help you stay focused. Breathe in and out, slowly and naturally (no need to hyperventilate), paying attention to how each inhale and exhale feels. Acknowledge your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in your body, but don't get wrapped up in them. Keep gently returning your focus to your rhythmic breathing. After 10 minutes or so, begin to notice your surroundings as you breathe calmly. Then, plan to go about your day with this feeling of calm awareness.

results have been amazing.

Study shows that meditation may help in managing stress

Study shows brief training in meditation may help manage pain

Living with pain is stressful, but a surprisingly short investment of time in mental training can help you cope.

Fear and Meditation

Q: Lately I’ve been dealing with a lot of fear during my meditation practice. It seems to come from nowhere, and it either focuses on a specific attachment or it manifests as a more existential, nameless sort of thing. How can I deal with this?

A: Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction. Our practice is based on expectations—expectations about who we are, why we are practicing, and what our practice should be. As our hope disintegrates, it may be replaced by fear. Our characteristics, personality, all of our beautiful plans and ideas are like snowflakes about to fall on the hot stone of our meditation practice.

Maybe you’ve poked through boredom and have had a first taste of spaciousness. Until your experience has become stable, the fear remains that your dreams, your life, and your base could fall apart. The more you contemplate space, the more you are aware of the dissolution of everything you have assumed to be real, lasting, and reliable—including your motivation and your practice. Now it all feels transitory and unreliable. This crisis, rooted in dissolution, translates as fear.

This is a seminal moment in our practice. Each time it manifests, each time we are aware of fear, we have a choice: we can acknowledge our problem and work with it, or we can run away from it and seek refuge elsewhere: distractions, pharmaceuticals, weekend feel-good-about-yourself workshops, whatever. We are free to refuse the disappointment and the dissolution. We don’t have to put ourselves back into the situation where the foundation of our being is shaken by the experience of impermanence and emptiness.

But if we decide to continue, if we’re convinced of the sanity of the Four Noble Truths and decide to take refuge in the dharma that the Buddha taught, we need to be courageous. We can choose to take refuge in the brilliant sanity of enlightenment, the Buddha; trust the process of the path, the Dharma; and rely on the experience of those who guide us along the path, the Sangha. We can choose to explore our mind, learn about its problem areas and hidden treasures, but it won’t be comfortable. The guidance of a spiritual friend or teacher is crucial at this stage of our practice.

At the same time, we can be nice to ourselves, accept ourselves as we are and let go of what we are pretending to be. Our crisis is a normal phase. We all enter the spiritual path as ego-based beings, and as such we have ego-based hopes and fears. Practice is virtually never what we expect. We feel like we’ve got it all wrong, thinking, “The more I meditate, the worse I become.” My teacher, Gendun Rinpoche, always responded to this by saying, “When you see your own shortcomings, it’s the dawn of qualities. If you only see your qualities, there’s a problem.”

It’s true that if we continue to try to create our personal nirvana through our practice, we’re going to suffer even more. If we use the practice tools that develop intelligence and clarity with a confused, selfish motivation, reality is bound to collide with our fiction. This is where practice is supposed to bring us. This is the proof that the dharma works. It’s the end of our confused, fictive world, and the dawning of truth.

When fear arises within our meditation, we apply an antidote. Recognizing what is happening at each instant as mind, we remain in the present. It is important to remember that patterns don’t have to repeat themselves. Through remaining in the present, we can let go of the past and the future - the headquarters of our fears. We recognize and then we let go, whether coming back to the focal point of our meditation - posture, breath, visualization - or nonconceptual space. Through motivation, honesty, and confidence you can practice with your fears and go beyond in them in a way you never thought possible.

Lama Tsony is head of the monastic community at the Dhagpo Kundreul Ling hermitage in Auvergne, France. He travels throughout the U.S. and Europe, teaching and leading meditation retreats.

Yoga practice helps the body and mind

Here is a piece written by a fitness trainer based in California. I saw it on Facebook and wanted to share it with you.

Although Yoga is practiced by many Buddhists and is part of many Triple Gem retreats, sometimes we forget how powerful it can be in helping us overcome anger, stress and find our way in the present moment. I hope you enjoy this:

Last Saturday I found myself in a very bad way. I've been having some repair work done on my house to fix sketchy construction by the original builder. The problem is, my beautiful home leaked like an old fishing boat. A company repaired this issue 3 years ago, but this past winter, water found it's way back in. Nothing like spending thousands of dollars on something that didn't work. This time around I was going to get the best guy in the city. Turns out the water proofer was a rock star (the place is as tight as a drum) but the construction company hired to put the place back together again was pathetic. Shoddy work, lame sub contractors, overcharging me at every turn, and turning a 3 month job into 8. This project has been the bane of my existence... again!

Last Saturday the frustration cup runneth over. After endless delays and screw-ups I exploded all over the owner of this construction company. I haven't been that angry or yelled that loud in 20 years. In that moment I understood crimes of passion. Luckily my outburst was over the phone, because if this guy had been standing in front of me, I surely would have driven my fist through his brain. Even as I write this I feel my cortisol levels rise. Anger IS one letter short of danger. When I hung up (slammed down) the phone after my verbal combustion, I was shaking. The other thing I couldn't shake was this toxic feeling I had coursing throughout my entire body. In that moment I completely understood how anger can make you sick.

This hate outburst occurred at approximately 3:15 last Saturday afternoon and I was planning to go to my yoga class at 4:00 PM. If my friends Brian and Shawna hadn't joining me I would have certainly blown it off. Yoga was the very last thing I wanted to do after that confrontation. Hitting a heavy bag for an hour seemed like the only logical release for what I was suffering from. The verbal shrapnel was still flying on our way to yoga and prior to class the heat coming off of me was so intense that the girl next to me got up and moved to the back of the room. I'm not kidding. I was about to turn a simple sweet Hatha Yoga class into Kill And Destroy Yoga.

For the first 45 minutes of class every pose, every asana was executed like a Vulcan Robot. Perfect emotionless linear intensity. I didn't even break a sweat for the first 45 minutes. Between minute 45 and 50 everything changed. The anger was gone and the sweat started pouring out of me in buckets. The first thing I did after class was call the guy (I screamed at) and apologize. Even with the wrong intentions the physical movements of yoga helped me find balance again. I was transformed. A miraculous thing, really. It's possible that any physical movement could have helped me, but it was Vulcan Robot Yoga that made everything right again. Namaste.

What I did when I fell out of practice

For a while I found myself devoting very little time to practice. I don't know why, perhaps I was trying to do too many things in a day while balancing work, family and running a house. In other words, I made it a low priority.

Eventually I asked myself, why is meditation so low on the priority list? Since the benefits of calmness, insight and a clear mind are so important why am I not starting my day this way and treating it as the number one priority that it is.

I knew I was feeling a tad uninspired. The ritual of sitting became just that- a ritual. It was ordinary and had lost it's sense of freshness and adventure. I then realized that making some slight changes in my routine could make a world of difference.

First I tried walking meditation, and that helped but it didn't excite me enough to get me in a daily routine again. Then I tried getting up earlier in the morning but my kids would hear me and then they'd get up. No good.

Finally, I found some incense sticks given to me and I tried that. It worked!

It put me in the mood, gave me a good vibe and the burning scent held my concentration for an entire 30 minute sit. It seemed like the scent was cleaning the air and setting the stage for a positive frame of mind.

Plus the scent lingers in the house all day which is a pleasant reminder that I meditated today and to remember to stay in the present moment.

If others would like to post their own "best practices" on how they stay on the cushion please feel free to click on the "comment" tab below.

Be happy and well