Mindfulness for Pain Relief
When you are in pain, the last thing you want to do is concentrate on it. But when you sit with your pain, acknowledge it, and ask what there is to learn from it, you can discover how to live with it and improve your quality of life. Mindfulness can reduce the level of pain experienced, and I can personally attest to that. Instead of fighting against and suppressing the pain, mindfulness changes our relationship with it and gives it less control over your life.
If you are having a hard time wrapping your head around this, I don’t blame you. To understand mindfulness for pain relief, let’s look at how it helps with emotional pain, which is just as real as physical pain. When emotional pain is not processed and expressed in a healthy way, it can lead to many of problems. Bursts of anger damage relationships, instability leads to poor productivity at work, self-esteem is affected, and mental health suffers. It can even cause physical pain. Mindfulness helps process emotional pain by creating space between an event and your reaction to that event. Feeling angry, hurt, sad, or scared is perfectly acceptable and beautifully human. These emotions bring richness and color to our experience of this world. However, many people are taught to suppress these emotions from an early age as they are deemed “bad”. Practicing mindfulness allows us to feel our emotions in a safe space while we learn how to process them.
This is very similar to how mindfulness can help with physical pain. It creates a space where you can safely acknowledge and accept where your body at any time. If you are having a particularly “bad” pain day, it would serve your body well to listen to it and ask for what it needs without judgement. Do you need rest? Do you need a healthy meal? Do you need gentle movement? Do you need a hug? These questions will help guide your intuition as to what you need to feel as good as possible throughout the day.
Mindfulness for pain relief will also help on those days where you can’t do anything at all. You know the days… guilty, depressed, exhausted, anxious. There are a million things to do and no ability to do them. The stigma of society weighs down on you and the word “lazy” eventually pops into your head. Trust me, I’ve been there.
What has been a crutch for me on those days has been breathwork, meditation, and gentle yoga (depending on what my body is able to do). I have learned to accept those days and not fight against my own body. I ask my body what it needs, process what comes up, and show gratitude for the blessings in my life. This isn’t to say that everything is sunshine and rainbows. Many times I’ve just sat on my yoga mat and cried (and cried some more). But when the tears finally stop, I take a few breaths, get centered, and ask what my body needs.
Here are a few things that have come up for me when I ask what my body needs:
Journaling. This has been a big help on the days that I can do absolutely nothing physical
Grounding. When I can’t take a walk, just putting my feet on the earth and breathing fresh air feels so soothing
Breathwork. If my nervous system is highly activated, simple 5 minute techniques bring me back to a calm state
Reading. Sometimes it’s to learn something new, others to just get lost in a novel
Gentle Yoga. I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t think I could face the day, but some gentle movement gave me the courage and strength
Support. As a recovering perfectionist and hyper-independent, this one is hard for me. You are allowed to ask for help and support.
Tea. A nice cup of herbal tea can do wonders.
Netflix. Seriously, there are some days when this is EXACTLY what my body needs.
When you start listening to your body and nurturing it, you are no longer fighting yourself. It’s exhausting enough living with chronic pain, brain fog, chronic fatigue, and other symptoms you may experience. The last thing you also need to be fighting is yourself.
At this point you might be thinking, “how am I supposed to have the time to listen to my body and do these things while I have kids to raise, a job to go to, and all of my other responsibilities?” Well, I’d like to ask -
Why choose to not listen to your body when others are counting on you?
How many times have you crashed for days at a time?
What are you achieving by pushing yourself beyond your limits?
What kind of life do you want to create for yourself?
Listening to our body and doing what it needs is simple, but it is most certainly not easy. It takes effort, consistency, self-compassion, and support. To help, there are many resources available for you to learn how to practice mindfulness for pain relief. Insight is a free app that has over 10,000 guided meditations for beginners to advanced. YouTube has many great tutorials on breathwork, so you can watch it being practiced before trying it yourself. If you’ve tried free resources and feel you need additional support to stay accountable and work through barriers, a Chronic Pain Coach can help you put together a pain management plan that will allow you to break free from the control pain has over your life.
If you’d like to learn more about working with me, schedule a free consultation to see if we are a good fit for each other.
