Unpacking Pain And Stress With Mindfulness

Is it possible that instead of grappling with pain and stress, depleting your energy even more, you can learn to work with these challenges and not against them?

Over 10 short sessions we’ll unpack this thing called pain into less daunting, more manageable pieces. From breaking the cycle of reactivity to restoring the mind-body connection and cultivating attitudes that nurture mindfulness and self-compassion.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a powerful framework for harnessing your inner resources and transforming your relationship with chronic pain and stress.

I look forward to going on this journey with you!

Lección 1: Spiraling Back Up

In this lesson I share my decade-long journey with chronic pain. From spiraling downward into despair and depression whilst navigating the labyrinth of specialists and treatments, to discovering the transformative power of mindfulness and ultimately spiraling back up on the road to recovery and healing.

Lección 2: Mindfulness: The Master Key

In this lesson we look at the origins and benefits of mindfulness, and how it helps us recognise the conditions for happiness that are already present in our lives. Discover how this innate faculty can be trained, cultivated and applied to great effect in your journey with chronic pain. The lesson ends with a short guided practice called the three step breathing space that brings to life many of the concepts covered in class.

Lección 3: Stop. Don’t Shoot!

In this lesson we explore the second arrow of suffering, the one we shoot ourselves whenever faced with difficulty or discomfort, the arrow that compounds our primary suffering with fear, self-criticism, guilt and shame. Learn how mindfulness offers us a powerful alternative way of knowing and training the mind so we can stop before shooting the arrow of reactivity and make conscious choices about the best way to respond.

Lección 4: Restoring The Mind-Body Connection

Chronic pain disconnects us from our body, causing us to lose trust and confidence in its natural ability to heal and carry us through life. In this lesson we learn the importance of restoring the mind body connection, and how mindfulness helps us become embodied and whole once more.

Lección 5: Building Mental Strength And Resilience

In this lesson we explore the realization that mindfulness helps us build mental strength and resilience, both of which are integral to managing and living well with chronic pain and stress. We also look at modes of mind, and learn how cultivating awareness of “being” and “doing” modes, as well as the ability to traverse between them, has a profound impact on our health and wellbeing.

Lección 6: Breaking The Cycle I: The Automatic Stress Reaction

This is the first of two lessons on the realization that mindfulness helps us break the stress reaction cycle. Stress plays a fundamental role in life, and our awareness of how it shapes our health and wellbeing is vital if we are to take back control from our hardwired reactions and live better in the face of pain and all the other sources of stress in our lives.

Lección 7: Breaking the Cycle II: The Mindful Stress Response

In this second lesson on stress reactivity you’ll learn how mindfulness stops the cycle dead in its tracks. The mindful stress response still works with many of the same brain regions and systems in the body as the automatic stress reaction, but with profoundly different results. And it all hinges on bringing awareness to stress reactivity moment by moment. This lesson includes a short grounding meditation to practice initiating the mindful stress response.

Lección 8: Mind Your Attitude I: Restoring Trust

This lesson is the first on the realization that our attitudes toward pain, difficulty, well being, and life in general, matter more than we can imagine. We explore four of the nine “attitudinal foundations” that create fertile soil for the cultivation of mindfulness: Beginner's Mind; Non Judging; Trust and Patience.

Lección 9: Mind Your Attitude II: Active Recognition

In this lesson you’ll learn about the remaining five core attitudes for cultivating mindfulness: Non Striving; Acceptance; Letting Go; Gratitude and Generosity. The beauty of the nine attitudes is that you don't need to remember them all. They are so deeply interconnected that each is contained within the other, so by embodying one, you are able to harness the power of all nine..

Lección 10: Moving Forward: A Stable Base for Change

In this final lesson we recap on the realizations covered so far, and see how they all add up to create a stable base for change. The end of course is really just the end of the beginning. What matters now is where you go from here, how you carry forward and implement what you’ve learned on the path to greater wellbeing.

Reviews

Exceptional, I think it has saved me! From giving up the daily habits of drinking to knowing meditation every morning is right for me and the stretches are helping my body move with less pain...I have transformed over these sessions. Im sleeping better, stress less and get just as much done, but happier! I seem to have more time... I'm aiming to listen again in a month as there was so much valuable information and it was delivered quite quickly. Thanks so much for all your help.

Life changing experience for me. He gave me actual tools to practice with my Mind. The Mind Gym is brilliant. I needed to realize that its another part of my body that needs training. I have chronic pain and several health challenges in my life today. He gave me The Montra for my mental well being that I use in meditation, breath work and setting an intention is:
Pain is inevitable
Suffering is optional
Excellent Course

Thank you, Karim. Much of what you say on the course resonates with my experiences living with chronic pain and severe ME. I have incorporated many changes over the years, and it is reassuring to listen to someone who obviously understands the challenges and also offers practical advice. It is a welcome safety net for when I fall off my path or lose my way. Thank you again.

Listened to this course twice so far, just to absorb all of the information offered. Stress has created pain in my body, so I am working on unraveling it in my life. Thank you for your support and guidance.🙏🏻

My biggest take away is that pain or misfortune is a part of life that comes and goes but it’s our reaction to it that enhances the suffering or looks for a solution. Thank you for this enlightening course.

This course is taught with compassion and a belief in what he is saying. It’s not new ideas. But he has a way of saying the things that need to be said. I think it will be an every three months course for me. The reminders are given in a clear and kind way. I’m grateful to have found it.

Fantastic course. I loved the content and uplifting delivery. And practical suggestions. None of these concepts were new to me, but somehow this course made it click a bit more and sink in a little deeper. Thank you!🙏

I enjoyed taking this course as I have suffered from chronic pain for 18 years & have had four failed surgeries. I’m done with the knife. Thank you for sharing this with us all.

Thank you. You are an excellent teacher, but more than that you come across as being a genuinely caring and compassionate person. May you be well.

This has opened my mind to many new levels of acceptance with my pain. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the let us to hear your experience and your knowledge yet enjoy your course Karim

Excellent course, very well constructed and presented with a clear pathway to managing chronic pain without fear and misery. Karim is a gifted presenter.

This course is a superb reminder of ... how ... what ... where and when to be present in the "now". The answer I got ... ALWAYS.
For as much as my "monkey parrot" brain runs every day of my life ... I am learing how to CONTROL my response to chronic pain. Severe Pain, Depression, Despair, Panic and Stress I have been living in since I was 17 ... soon to be 63 ... yes ... it took me that long! But it is never too late to learn. I'm going through the course one more time just to make sure my "monkey brain" gets what's about to happen ... "get ready my little pile of smushy goo, your getting an upgrade!!"😇🥰🧘

Great course (am i judging:-)?. Great reminder of how to find inner peace

This course has really helped me in my journey with chronic pain and negative thinking. It has given me a new prospective to living with pain and being able to move forward in a healthier way. I will revisit this course often. Thank you for providing me with many important insights.

Thank you for sharing your strategies for dealing with chronic pain and stress. They are very helpful.

Excellent course - thanks so much.

I will repeat this for sure!

Thoughtfully designed progressions and daily discussions about the steps towards implementing mindfulness and how it can transform our experience with chronic pain. Might listen again to remember some important nuggets.

Thank you very much Karim for sharing the lesson you have learned on your way to live a fulfilling life despite what it has been thrown on you. I feel like if you are able to do it so I will. Your course is a life changer for people suffering from physical and emotional pain. All me blessings go your way.
Marina

Such an excellent course! I learned how to accept what is, not react to negative stimuli and care for myself with gentleness and compassion.
I also learn to approach the world in a non-judgmental open hearted frame of mind.