Meditation can help block pain

Even very brief instruction in meditation appears to help people cope with pain. After just four, 20-minute instructional sessions in mindfulness meditation, most participants in a Journal of Neuroscience study experienced big reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness when subjected to painful stimuli. Prior to learning the meditation technique, brain imaging showed significant activity in a key area of the brain when the participants were subjected to intense heat, but this activity was reduced when they were meditating.

Before and after mindfulness meditation training, brain activity was measured using a special type of magnetic resonance imaging that captures longer-duration brain processes, such as meditation, better than standard MRI. While the MRIs were being performed, a device was placed on each participant’s right calf that delivered 120 degrees of heat -- a temperature that most people find painful. The heat was kept on the skin for 12 seconds and then taken off the skin for the same amount of time over a total of 5 minutes. Even though the MRI was very loud, most of the participants were able to successfully block out the noise and the pain from the heat source and focus on their breathing. Pain intensity ratings were reduced after meditation by an average of 40%, and pain unpleasantness rating were reduced by 57%. Meditation was shown to reduce activity in key pain-processing regions of the brain.

Steve - we have posted often on the power of the mind. Meditation is one of the most useful daily lifestyle tools for reducing stress and rewiring the brains' circuitry.