Meditation: Pain Relief Without Drugs

Meditation can be an effective way to manage pain. While it can't take pain away, it can help us calm down and observe sensations in our body, including pain. This can help us relax and accept discomfort.

Meditation can also trigger the release of endorphins, our body's natural painkillers. It can also lower cortisol, a leading cause of inflammation.

There are many different forms of meditation that can help manage pain, including mindfulness meditation, body scan meditation, guided imagery, transcendental meditation, and breathwork meditation.

To meditate through pain, find a comfortable position where you won't be interrupted. You can meditate seated, lying down, or in any position that feels good to your body. Focus on your breath, and when you notice your thoughts beginning to wander, gently bring your attention back to your breathing.

Meditation can help you relax and accept discomfort

Meditation can be a powerful tool to help manage and cope with pain. While it may not take the pain away, it can help change your relationship with it. By adopting a curious mindset, you can explore and investigate the pain, rather than resisting it. This can help unwind the pain and reduce its intensity.

Meditation helps calm the mind and body, leading to the release of endorphins, your body's natural painkillers and "feel-good" hormones. It also reduces stress, a common factor that lowers our threshold for pain. Additionally, meditation promotes steady and even breathing, which calms the nervous system and shifts awareness away from painful sensations.

Body Scan Meditation

Lie down in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Focus your attention on your breath, observing your belly rising and falling with each inhale and exhale. Then, bring your attention to your left foot and notice any sensations or pain in that area. As you breathe, allow your body to relax and sink into the surface beneath you. If you notice pain, acknowledge it and any accompanying thoughts or emotions. Observe the discomfort without judgment and gently breathe through it. Gradually shift your attention to your left ankle and repeat the process, slowly moving up your body.

Observing Pain in Detail

Get comfortable and focus your attention on the part of your body that hurts. Explore the details of the pain—is it constant or changing? Does it have a temperature, colour, or shape? Observe how the pain changes as you breathe and focus on it.

Tonglen for Pain

Imagine the location of your pain as a cloud of dark smoke. With each inhale, send a loving, white light towards the centre of your pain. As you exhale, visualise the dark smoke leaving your body. With each breath, fill yourself with ease and let go of the pain.

Labelling Sensations

As you do a body scan, notice the sensations (or lack of sensations) in each body part. Label them as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Explore any emotions connected to these labels and observe your reactions. Ask yourself if there is another way to react to these sensations.

Remember, meditation for pain management is a process of exploration and curiosity. It is not about fixing the pain but understanding it and reducing its influence over time. By practising these techniques, you can learn to relax and accept discomfort, improving your overall well-being.

It can reduce stress and lower inflammation

Meditation has been shown to be an effective way to reduce stress and lower inflammation in the body. It can be particularly helpful for people suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and asthma, where psychological stress plays a significant role.

Meditation practices like mindfulness meditation and body scan meditation can help manage pain and reduce stress. While meditation may not take the pain away, it can help change your relationship with it. By adopting a curious mind and exploring the pain through meditation, you can learn to step back and unwind the pain. This can be applied to both chronic and acute pain.

Research has found that meditation can lead to structural changes in the brain, a process known as neuroplasticity. Regular meditation increases cortical thickness, the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory, and gray matter, which is responsible for emotional regulation, planning, and problem-solving. These changes can lead to lower pain sensitivity.

Meditation can also help reduce physiological markers of stress and lower inflammation. A study by University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists found that mindfulness-based stress reduction was more effective at reducing stress-induced inflammation compared to other stress reduction techniques. Additionally, meditation practices like yoga have been found to increase plasma levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factors and anti-inflammatory cytokines, further contributing to reduced inflammation in the body.

Meditation is a powerful tool that can help manage pain, reduce stress, and lower inflammation. It is a beneficial practice for anyone, especially those dealing with chronic inflammatory conditions. By regularly practicing meditation, individuals can expect to develop a healthier relationship with pain and improve their overall well-being.

It can help you step back and unwind the pain

Meditation can help you step back and unwind the pain by teaching you to adopt a curious mind to explore and investigate the pain. The first thing most of us do with pain is push it away, wanting it to end, resisting the feeling. However, it is this resistance that can often exacerbate our pain or discomfort.

Meditation shows us how to step back and perhaps begin to unwind the pain, no matter whether it’s something long-standing and chronic, or something mild that’s niggled you for a short period of time. It can help us to calm down so we can observe sensations in our body, including pain. This might help us relax and accept discomfort. Observing and accepting discomfort may help increase your tolerance for pain.

Meditation can also help us to reduce the pain by working with it. Unlike other methods of pain relief, when you meditate, you focus on the pain, instead of away from it, in order to find relief. In other words, you’re not working to block or ignore it but to reduce the pain by working with it.

Meditation can also help you to manage your pain by changing your perception of it. The purpose of meditation for pain management is to teach you to adopt a curious mind to explore and investigate the pain. You can meditate without any goal in mind other than to better understand the habits and tendencies of the mind where pain is concerned. Over time, with patience and practice, your perception of your pain will change.

It can change how the brain processes pain

Meditation can help you manage pain by changing how your brain processes it. Pain is produced by the brain, and there are ways to trick your brain into making those unpleasant physical feelings go away.

How your brain deals with pain

Johns Hopkins University neuroscience professor David Linden explains that the pain you feel when hurt is controlled and directed by your brain's circuitry. As the brain filters all of the information coming from your sensory nerves, it focuses on certain bits and pieces in particular. Your brain processes pain both physically, where it notes the location and intensity, and emotionally, where it dictates your reaction.

Overload yourself with positivity to lessen the hurt

Positive thoughts and emotions can actually counteract negative feelings. When you're feeling nothing but negativity, like fear and insecurity, you create the perfect breeding ground for pain. The "weaker," or more negative, your mind is, the more you feel the full effects of whatever is ailing you. Conversely, when you feel safe, secure, and comfortable—yet encounter pain—you respond with less physical feeling.

Distract your brain from feeling the pain

Your brain filters determine how, and to what extent, you feel pain. So in order to control what you feel, you need to find a way to manage what it is your brain's sensors pick up. That's what researchers at Brown University studied. They found that attempts to ignore feelings and senses cause low-frequency rhythms—which do the blocking—to increase, not only in the area of the brain that deals with a certain body part in question, but in the area of the brain that ignores distractions.

Practice mindful meditation

Meditation is the art of sitting still and letting the mind run wild. With just a few minutes of quiet, unmoving silence, you can do more than relax and unwind; you can retrain your brain to feel less pain, according to a 2011 study on "mindful" meditation. Researchers examined participants who practiced mindful mediation, for a period of meditation during which they performed body and breath work. When participants focused on their thoughts and tiny, imperceptible feelings during the meditation, they were able to control their bodies' responses to external stimuli. So, when struck with sudden pain, individuals were able to keep their brains calm and non-responsive.

It can be combined with other treatments

Meditation can be combined with other treatments for pain management. For example, some healthcare providers offer programs that incorporate mindfulness-based strategies along with massage, acupuncture, or nutritional services to help people cope with chronic pain.

Meditation can also be combined with aromatherapy, although it is always best to check with a healthcare provider first as some essential oils might aggravate certain medical conditions.

In addition, meditation can be combined with gentle movement and breathwork. Qigong or yoga, for instance, combines gentle movement with breath and mindfulness.

Breathwork meditation involves using a type of breathing exercise to change your breathing pattern and relax your mind. It is sometimes used with mindfulness meditation to help you focus. Many types of breathwork techniques are available. For example, the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA has a free 5-minute guided audio recording to take you through this.

Meditation can also be combined with visualization. Guided imagery or visualization meditation involves visualizing something positive while you meditate. The aim is to focus your thoughts, calm you down, and reduce stress and pain. For instance, the Headspace app can guide you through this.

Frequently asked questions