Deborah Lipp

Roberta blogged recently about living with pain, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about how meditative techniques can be used to manage pain.

First, start with breathing.

No matter what you’re feeling, whether intense and agonizing, or dull and throbbing, as soon as you can, focus on your breath. If you are overwhelmed, it will be hard, and probably impossible at first, but as soon as you can, find your breath, and turn your thoughts to breath.

If I am helping someone who is in pain, I force eye contact and we breathe together. If you look inward when in pain, you’ll tend to look at the pain. So if there isn’t a partner to help you with eye contact, find an outside focal point; a window, an object, anything. And look at it, hold it in your field of vision, and breathe.

Breathe.

Once you’re breathing, do a muscle sweep. You will probably find that you are clenching a lot of secondary muscles—muscles no where near the hurt part. Your jaw is tight, your hands are balled into fists, your feet are curled up. You are in the posture of resistance.

What happens, though, is that tight muscles hold more pain than loose muscles, so loosening these muscles will help. Plus, your muscles work in groups, and as you relax your hands and feet, the muscles near the pain will also start to loosen. Even though you haven’t been thinking about that painful area.

Breathe.

Unclench your feet. Open your hands. Let your fingers be soft. Relax your jaw and let your mouth fall open a little.

Once you feel as relaxed as you can, start breathing that relaxation into the pain. The breath runs over the pain like the soothing and gentle stroke of a hand. Stay with this image. If the pain starts to increase, look away from the pain and go back to your focal object and your secondary muscles. If you’re not able to breath into the pain at all, that’s okay, just do the breathing, the muscles, and the focal object.

Practice this technique when you’re not in pain so it’s available to you when you need it.