Meditation

Posts Tagged ‘Meditation’

Meditation. Part Two. By Our October Student Pharmacist, Andrea Lee.

October 29th, 2016

In part one of this meditation series, we defined and discussed meditation.

Hopefully, you have acquired a basic way to begin your meditation practice. To encourage you, in this part of the series, we will talk about tips to help you further develop your basic technique and address some common issues that you might run in to. These ideas will help you start meditating with greater ease.

Then, we will discuss the evidence that is available that supports the effectiveness of this activity.

Tips while starting out:

Your mind may wander to other thoughts during meditation and that is okay. Allow your thoughts to wander, but bring your mind back to your breath and think “in” and “out” when appropriate.
Start meditating by being aware of five breaths. You can use your fingers to keep count.
If five breaths are difficult and, you find your mind wandering more than you would like, you can reduce this to three breaths.
Slowly increase the number of breaths to beyond ten and see if you can meditate for one minute or more.
Slowly increase your time from one minute to five minutes with a goal of 10-15 minutes.
You can reflect on your experience and write down what you noticed while you meditated in a journal or log book.
It is important to not feel guilty if your mind wanders a lot, or you feel sleepy. If this happens, allow it to happen and guide the mind back to the breath.

Here are some practical places to meditate so that you can incorporate meditation into your daily activities:

Right before you go to bed
Right after you wake up
In a quiet room
In the restroom behind a closed and locked stall
On public transit or on a bus
In an office behind a closed door where you will not be disturbed for 30 minutes
In your car in a quiet area
At the park
Right after yoga class on your yoga mat
In a comfortable chair or on your couch

In a three day experiment where patients were monitored for their anxiety and mindfulness levels, patients were told to just follow their breath for the first day. On the second day, they extended their focus to follow their breath for longer periods of time. By the third day, participants were encouraged to scan their body and focus on all the sensations they experienced throughout their whole body. As you can see, this experiment gradually progressed each participant to more advanced levels of mindfulness.

You might ask how does meditation do all this? A recent study evaluated the use of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and how it relates to short and long term improvement in pain relief. The degree of back pain, and its impact on functionality, as well as pain bothersomeness were measured. With a commitment of two hours a week, patients in the study participated in relaxation, yoga, and meditation. As a result, “high[er] levels of mindfulness [were] linked to decreased pain perception and overall better functioning.”

Mindfulness can uncouple the body’s sensing of pain and the emotional stress that comes along with chronic pain and thus reduce suffering caused by pain overall. Benefits were seen as soon as three days with pain almost halved on a 0 to 10 pain scale.

How meditation eases pain:

Physically uncouples the sensation of pain and the emotional effect of experiencing pain
Lowers stress levels has an analgesic effect
Produces less depressive symptoms
Causes an acceptance of pain and lowered avoidance
Allows more focus towards goals that are reasonable to achieve

How meditation and mindfulness can directly benefit you and your overall health:

Lower anxiety
Improve symptoms of depression and hopelessness
Foster a greater sense of relaxation
Lower your stress levels
Increase your quality of life
Improve self-regulation

Having a meditation practice will definitely help you. It is additionally optimal to make it part of your regular pain management regimen. Hopefully, you will find yourself reaching less for the pain medication on the countertop, but rather returning to mindfulness found through your own breath.

Resources:

Cherkin DC, Sherman KJ, Balderson BH, et. al. Effect of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction vs Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Usual Care on Back Pain and Functional Limitations in Adults With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2016 Mar 22-29;315(12):1240-9. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.2323. http://jamanetwork.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/journals/jama/fullarticle/2504811. Accessed October 11 2017.

Chiesa A, Serretti A. Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review of the Evidence. THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
Volume 17, Number 1, 2011, pp. 83–93 DOI: 10.1089/acm.2009.0546

Morone NE, Greco CM, Moore CG. A Mind-Body Program for Older Adults With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Mar;176(3):329-37. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.8033. http://jamanetwork.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2495275. Accessed October 12 2017.

Zeidan F, Emerson NM, Farris SR, .Mindfulness Meditation-Based Pain Relief Employs Different Neural Mechanisms Than Placebo and Sham Mindfulness Meditation-Induced Analgesia. J Neurosci. 2015 Nov 18;35(46):15307-25. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2542-15.2015. http://www.jneurosci.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/content/35/46/15307.long. Accessed October 10 2017.

Zeidan F, Gordon NS, Merchant J, Goolkasian P. The effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on experimentally induced pain. J Pain. 2010 Mar;11(3):199-209. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2009.07.015. Epub 2009 Oct 22.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/science/article/pii/S1526590009006919 Accessed October 11 2017

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Meditation for Pain. Part One. By Our October Student Pharmacist, Andrea Lee.

October 28th, 2016

Did you know that meditation can relieve pain in your body?

You may have heard the word “meditation” and confused it for a religious ritual. However, meditation can actually be an every day activity that has health benefits. Meditation can also contain a spiritual component where you build a habit to harness mindfulness and awareness of your physical body.

Meditation is not complicated or supposed to be an esoteric activity restricted to a religion. It can be as simple as becoming aware of your own breath in and breath out.

Mirriam Webster defines meditation as a way “to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing […]) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.”

For health benefits, meditation is the simplest way to develop mindfulness. Developing mindfulness can directly benefit increasing your pain tolerance and emotional and physical acceptance of pain.

Today, we will delve into exactly how meditation may benefit you in relieving pain symptoms you may experience.

I have a family history of arthritis and was diagnosed with an early onset of arthritis in my right knee. Unfortunately, because I was afraid to make things worse when I walk or run, the new way that I walked after my diagnosis resulted in new pain that developed in the joints of my pelvis. Since then, I have practiced meditation as a way to become aware of my body, how I walk in a way that doesn’t worsen my new pain, and to lessen my overall pain in my hip and knee from day to day.

How do you do it?

Here are easy first steps to start a meditation practice to help build mindfulness:

First pick a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for about 30 minutes.
Wear comfortable clothing.
Sit straight up either supported by a chair or Indian style.
You may also lay down or lay at a slight incline.
Close or relax your eyelids.
Take a deep breath in and notice the cool sensation and think “in”.
Then exhale and notice the warm sensation and think “out”.
Breathe normally, but maintain the thoughts “in” when you breathe in and “out” when you breathe out.
Do this for about six breaths. Slowly open your eyes and allow yourself to come out of concentrating on your breath only.

Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques have already been used in hospitals, doctors offices, and clinics as evidence-based treatment for improvement in pain patients with chronic and acute symptoms.

MBSR falls under non-medication-based treatment options that are named “mind-body” approaches to dealing with pain. This approach “focuses on increasing awareness, acceptance of [present] moment experiences including physical discomfort and difficult emotions.” Meditation is a technique that can help you build and further develop mindfulness.

Now that you have a brief introduction on how to start meditating, please check back for a second part to this series where we talk about how MBSR works in the body and tips to address common problems you may run into after the first few tries.