Guided mindfulness for pain
Guided Mindfulness for Pain
Need assistance calming your pain? We’re here to help!
Pain is complex (especially chronic pain that is persistent), but getting help doesn’t need to be complicated. Chronic pain can be distressing, worrying and frightening – especially when:
- It’s really intense
- You don’t have much control over pain
- It’s unpredictable
- You don’t know what’s causing it
- The things that make it worse or better are inconsistent or just don’t make sense
At first, many people are skeptical about what mindfulness or meditation can offer for their pain. Often pushing it aside, turning away from it, or questioning its usefulness. This is a totally reasonable response if you believe (or have been told) that your pain is from ‘something being wrong with your structure’ (it’s ‘broken’, ‘damaged’, ‘torn’, ‘worn out’, ‘injured’ etc.), or if you’ve tried mindfulness or meditation before and found it boring, didn’t find any benefit from it, or questioned whether you were even doing it right?
That’s why we’ve put together this page, to help guide you through some meditations designed specifically for pain by PainHEALTH (a WA Government-funded website sharing up-to-date knowledge about pain). These guided meditations were also spoken by prominent pain researchers Professor Helen Slater (PhD and Specialist Physiotherapist as awarded by the FACP in 2007), and Dr Rob Schütze (PhD and Clinical Psychologist with a special interest in chronic pain).
Mindfulness or meditation is nothing new, and it can have a significant impact on your parasympathetic nervous system (the branch of your autonomic/automatic nervous system responsible for rest, digest, relaxation and repair). The parasympathetic nervous system is the sister system of the sympathetic nervous system (our fight, flight or freeze system) which is associated with a stress-state (feeling of tension, worry, anxiety, pounding heart). Often, once people give them a go with an open mind, they’re pleasantly surprised and sometimes astounded with how helpful these guided meditations are. There are many scientific studies supporting the use of the breath, mindfulness and meditation, both for stress and for pain. It’s no wonder people (like the worlds top performers, executives, Navy SEALS) have been using these techniques for thousands of years!
“the 1% of your day that uplifts the other 99%”
5 minute guided mindfulness for pain – Breathing space meditation
Great for a when you only have 5 minutes. Spoken by Dr Rob Schütze, PhD.
15 minute guided mindfulness for pain – Approaching pain meditation
A slightly longer meditation that may reframe how you approach musculoskeletal pain.
20 minute guided mindfulness for pain – Relaxation meditation
A longer guided relaxation exercise for joint and muscle pain. Spoken by Professor Helen Slater.
20 minute guided mindfulness for pain – Body Scan meditation
A longer guided meditation using a specific technique called a Body Scan meditation. Spoken by Dr Rob Schütze, PhD.
Just because pain is complex, does not mean it has to be complicated.
Would you like to know more about what you can do to regain control of your life?
Feel free to browse our conditions page, it’s full of helpful tips. Listen to our podcast featuring patient stories, conversations with pain researchers and much more. Or watch these videos describing the 10 scientific facts every person needs to know about back pain based on a research article Body Logic Physiotherapists Professor Peter O’Sullivan, Dr JP Caneiro, and Kevin Wernli wrote with international colleagues in the prestigious British Journal of Sports Medicine.
