How Meditation Can Help You Manage Your Chronic Pain
Meditation has been used in dozens of cultures for thousands of years to help heal the body and the mind. If you are one of the millions of Americans that are dealing with chronic pain, your journey may be filled with physical and emotional exhaustion. Renewing a mind-body connection can help you to find relief and better management of your pain.
According to Seattle Pain Relief, chronic pain caused from injury, cancer treatments or illness can be tough to deal with and can rob you of the quality of life that you deserve. While every patient is different, adding certain meditative practices to your recovery can be helpful to anyone.
Among the innovative technologies and the prescription of opioid medications to help relieve intense pain, there is the practice of self-healing and body maintenance. Through deep breathing and mindfulness meditation, many chronic pain patients have been able to harness their power to take control of their pain management. Let’s take a look at how meditation can help you take charge of your chronic pain.
Body Connection
Dealing with pain on a regular basis can form a certain level of body detachment. Patients strive to rid their bodies of pain at any cost rather than acknowledging the discomfort and learning to deal with it.
Meditation can help you focus on where the source of your pain is and release other tensions in the body to make yourself more comfortable. Accepting the pain and learning to quiet the body through mindful meditation can help you to get more relief as you heal.
Calm Mind
Living with higher levels of anxiety and stress is the daily reality of anyone living with chronic pain. More attention goes toward your pain than to any other aspect of your life, robbing you of the positive things around you.
During meditation, you can learn to quiet your mind through focused breathing and start to control your feelings of stress and anxiety. Positive thoughts will soon start to outweigh the negative, giving you some peace.
Breathing
When your body is under a lot of stress from enduring constant pain, it can affect many of your body’s other systems. Through focused meditative breathing, you can help lower your heart rate, regulate your circulatory system and boost your immune system.
Tension Relief
The natural body reaction to pain is often to tense the surrounding muscles and tissues as an automatic defense. The additional tension in these areas can actually work against you and cause more discomfort.
For example, if you have a bad headache, you might recognize that your neck and shoulder muscles have become tense. Focused relaxation techniques can help relieve the tension in these supporting muscle groups and give you some relief.
Mood Support
Devoting just 20 minutes a day to quiet reflection and meditative breathing has been proven to elevate mood and help relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression. As your body begins to relax, it naturally releases healthy endorphins through the body that can drastically improve your mood and general peace of mind.
Meditation may not be able to cure what pains you. The good news is that it can help you to better understand your body, the source of your pain, vital relaxation techniques and give you some relief from the worst of your pain.