Psychology Today: Breathe away pain
October 1, 2008 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Most of us know someone who who tells us that pain or unpleasant things can be managed by using biofeedback, positive thinking, or some sort of mind over matter techniques. While this may be true, for many of us, it seems as if they are asking the impossible.
However, research has found that it is possible to minimize pain by using good mind over matter techniques. Meditation is one of those techniques. Unfortunately, if you’re like me and you tried what you thought was meditation and it didn’t work, then you’re not inclined to give it another try.
The magazine Psychology Today has an article about meditation and how to make it work for you: Breathe Away Pain
~~~~
Tags: pain blog, chronic pain blog, biofeedback, meditation for pain, mind over matter
Excellent article! Meditation while focusing on breathing increases oxygen (helpful), induces relaxation (helpful), shifts attention from pain (helpful) and allows quieting of mind chatter (helpful). To train myself on this technique, I used a countdown timer and started at five minutes. After practice, breathing meditation became easier and effective.
Thanks Glenn! The timer is a great idea too.
A different sort of “breathe away pain” technique was written up long enough ago that I can’t remember where, but it reported on perceived pain levels among children who were getting “stuck” a lot (mostly inpatient cancer victims). The study found that if the child was verbally coached to “blow out candles” starting a second or two before the needle stick resulted in lower reported pain levels. I started using this with my own children and found that they too were definitely helped by the technique. I kept an eye on the person doing the “stick” and when it was nearly time, I put my face right down to their face and told them to blow hard enough to make my hair move. This should be used for very short periods of time, and it REALLY helps to tell the medical personnel what you are going to do. But the technique worked so well on my kids that many of the techs said they were going to try it with their own children, or with children having a particularly difficult time of it. I just wish I’d kept the info about the study but I can’t save everything!