Chronic Pain Meditation | Self Compassion

This meditation begins with a simple mindful scanning of the parts of the body that feel inflamed, followed by an exploration of the part of the body that feel more neutral. We then finish with a simple self-compassion practice that simply acknowledges all you have been through and survived.

Transcript

Okay,

Welcome.

My name is Aaron Braugh and I'm a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.

One of the things that I do each week is I see patients with various chronic pain disorders.

One of the primary tools that we use at our chronic pain center is mindfulness.

So I figured I would leverage this experience and just create a simple mindfulness meditation for those of you struggling with chronic pain.

So to begin,

I want you to make yourself 10 or 20 percent more comfortable than you already are.

Maybe you want to relax back into your seat a little more.

Maybe you want to lay down.

Take a moment to do whatever you need to do to get 10 to 20 percent more comfortable.

And then let's arrive all at once.

We'll begin by becoming curious about the sensation of breathing.

You might notice your breathing in the rising and the falling of your chest.

You might also notice your breathing at the tip of your nostrils.

Notice the sensations associated with breathing.

Allowing yourself this space today to have just a little bit of time to yourself.

A little bit of time to relax into your body even though the body can cause distress.

As you focus on your breathing and continue to relax into the present moment,

I'd like to highlight a concept in chronic pain psychology called central sensitization.

It sounds pretty fancy.

Central sensitization basically occurs when your central nervous system,

So your brain and your spinal cord,

They become hypersensitive over time.

They begin to amplify pain signals up and down your spinal cord even in the absence of tissue damage or physical injury.

Now essentially this means that your nervous system begins to almost remember pain.

It develops a sort of pain memory.

The nervous system can respond more strongly to either normal pain inputs or sensory inputs that aren't,

Shouldn't be painful at all.

But this increased sensitivity of the central nervous system is part of what contributes to chronic pain conditions.

It's why it can be so maddening.

Why people can search for a cure or search for an explanation why they feel pain and discomfort in certain areas of their body.

Maybe they get a CAT scan or an MRI and it comes up,

The doctors come back and they say there's nothing wrong.

Well it certainly feels wrong sometimes.

So the practice today,

While you continue to breathe,

Has to do with trying to regulate that nervous system that's sending these pain signals.

That's what we're doing today.

Maybe we can start with a simple affirmation while you continue to breathe.

You might say something along the lines of,

I acknowledge the sensitivity of my nervous system.

I acknowledge how inflamed it is and I'm gonna guide it toward calm,

Toward balance,

And toward healing with each gentle breath that I take.

And continuing to pay attention to the rising and the falling of your chest.

Continuing to acknowledge the sensitivity,

The injury that the nervous system has experienced over the years,

And bringing a sense of compassion toward yourself and toward your nervous system.

It's not your fault.

It's never been your fault.

Now,

As you continue to breathe,

I want you to mindfully bring your attention to whatever areas of the body feel uncomfortable or inflamed.

We'll bring a non-judgmental awareness to whatever isn't feeling so good right now.

You don't need to push it away or try to make it stop.

We're just bringing a sense of open curiosity.

It could be your legs or your pelvic floor,

Your shoulders,

Your arms,

Your chest.

Whatever it is that's historically given you problems,

Just bringing a sense of curious,

Open,

Compassionate attention towards that sensory perception.

Breathing into those parts of the body,

Accepting those parts of the body.

Maybe even a sense of welcome to those parts of the body.

We spend so much time trying to push it away and make it stop.

The quality of our attention towards the area of the body that feels inflamed can modulate the sensation of pain.

And an open,

Curious attention to those areas of the body can feel just a little bit better than an alarmed and confused and scared sense of attention.

It's a subtle distinction.

To be clear,

I'm not expecting the inflammation or the pain to go away.

Just inviting you to notice it.

Now,

I want you to shift your attention to a part of the body that doesn't that doesn't currently feel painful or inflamed.

This could be any part of the body.

Locating anywhere in the body that feels okay,

Or at least neutral.

Where is that?

What does that feel like?

When you locate a part of the body that feels either okay or neutral,

I'll invite you to place your hand on your heart and just breathe into the sensation of neutrality or okayness or even comfort you might feel in these other parts of the body.

Hand on the heart,

Breathing into those other parts of the body.

Perhaps bringing a sense of gratitude for those parts of the body that aren't giving us so many problems today.

It's a small victory,

But it might help.

Now,

With your hand on your heart,

As you continue to breathe,

Focusing on the sensation of the breath,

Let's turn the attention towards our heart.

Toward the attention on ourselves.

My experience working with patients with chronic pain is that,

Not all of them,

But many of them have been through incredibly difficult experiences in their life.

Oftentimes,

Incredibly difficult experiences that have little to do with chronic pain.

We can carry these wounding experiences with us everywhere we go without realizing it.

Sometimes we can be harsh on ourselves,

Judging ourselves,

Frustrated with ourselves,

Frustrated with our body,

With our anxiety,

With our nervous system.

So I invite you to make space for a sense of compassion for the person that you are and for the things that you've been through.

I invite you to send to yourself a feeling of love or compassion or forgiveness that you might give to a friend or a loved one,

And allow that sense of warmth to wash over all the parts of your body,

Inflamed,

Neutral,

Comfortable,

Uncomfortable.

Let this sense of warmth,

Forgiveness,

And compassion wash over everything from head to toe.

Breathing into that for another moment before we wrap up here.

Okay,

I hope you found it useful to carve out a little bit of space for yourself to bring a non-judgmental awareness to the good and the bad,

And to bring a sense of compassion to yourself for the things that you've gone through and the difficulties that you have managed to get through so far.

I hope that helped.

I'll continue to fine-tune this practice as I go along,

So let me know if there's any feedback or anything that you'd like to see differently next time.

But thanks for stopping by my channel.

I hope you have a good day.

See you next time.