Meditation For Pain Relief
Meditation is recommended by mainstream as well as complementary therapy practitioners. Learn how to meditate and keep up the practice each day and you will reap rewards in health and serenity.
Meditation is healing and can help you to overcome pain. Several kinds of mind-body practices can relieve stress, pain, anxiety and depression and promote healing. They use different approaches but are closely related and have been described as "different doors that lead to the same room." Meditation is one of these doors.
When brain waves are recorded during meditation by experienced meditators they are in alpha rhythm. Alpha is the rhythm of relaxation, whereas when we are alert and busy our brainwaves are in beta rhythm. The aim is to relax into alpha for at least 15 minutes twice a day.
In his best selling
books on how to meditate "The Relaxation Response "and "Beyond The
Relaxation Response" published in the 1980's, Herbert Benson MD discusses
the conditions that responded to daily meditation. They included:
- Insomnia
- Backache
- Panic attacks
- Hyperventilation
- Symptoms of anxiety
- Stress relief
- Headache relief
- Angina
- High blood pressure
If you could get all those benefits from your doctor you wouldn't mind the cost would you? By learning how to meditate and practicing meditation every day you will gain these and many more benefits free!
You do not even need to pay the hefty fee charged by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization. Anyone can meditate without the mumbo jumbo.
How to Meditate
Before beginning your meditation make sure you can be undisturbed for at least 20 minutes. Put the cat out, turn off the phones etc. Sit comfortably, but not lying down.
Decide on a simple word or phrase that feels relaxing to you, e.g. "calming", or "peaceful".
Close your eyes and repeat the word you have chosen over and over again in your mind, while rejecting any other thoughts that arise. Don't reject thoughts aggressively, thoughts and distractions will come, that is quite normal, but simply return to the word and refuse to be distracted. Say the word over and over again in a rhythmic way for about 15 minutes.
The hard part is not allowing other thoughts into your mind and remaining relaxed rather than anxious about this. Simply return peacefully time and again to your chosen word. The thoughts will come back all the time but just accept that.
Get Some Help With Meditation
Although this sounds easy enough, for some reason it isn't. We just find it incredibly hard to stop our thoughts and be still. Because of this people often do not achieve the rewards promised by meditation, even after years of practice.
Brainwave Entrainment
One way to achieve results faster is to listen to a brainwave entrainment audio. This type of audio coaxes your brainwaves into alpha rhythm. You simply listen to the sounds and you sink into a meditative alpha brain wave state automatically. If you would like to learn more about how brainwave entrainment works click here:
