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:

• Backache
• Panic attacks
• Hyperventilation
• Symptoms of anxiety
• Stress relief
• Headache relief
• Angina
• High blood pressure
• Insomnia

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 could gain these and many more benefits free!

You do not even need to pay the hefty fee charged by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization because what they teach is no secret.

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.

Meditation Can Seem Difficult

Although this sounds easy enough, for some reason it isn't. We just find it incredibly hard to stop our thoughts and be still. Although this is normal and should be expected it does tend to put many off practicing their meditation because they feel they are not making progress. .

Help With Meditation

Meditation with Brainwave Entrainment

One way to achieve results from meditation more easily and quickly is to listen to a brainwave entrainment audio while relaxing. 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.

You can listen to a sample of this 'Meditation' audio here: Meditate With Brainwave Entrainment

	Mindfulness Meditation For Pain Relief Mindfulness Meditation For Pain Relief by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This is a pain relief program developed at the Massachusetts Hospital Clinic and used in many hospital clinics in the USA and around the world.