Study after study has shown that meditation can lower our perception of pain. Some dentists now even offer meditation training for pain reduction instead of using anesthesia!

The fact is, our mindset not only affects how much we feel pain; it also often creates the pain by holding tension in the body. Tension in the body is one of the leading causes of chronic pain. It leads to tight muscles which more easily tear. It leads to stiffness, pain that can move around the body, injuries, and even gastric and skin issues — not to mention cardiovascular disease and cancer in some cases.

We know that stress is related to 90% of doctors’ visits. What we often fail to realize is that stress and tension in the body are single-handedly what cause so many of these visits. Our mind changes our body. The placebo effect proves this every single day.

Meditate for Pain

Please get comfortable in whatever position that is for you, whether it’s sitting on cushions or on a chair or couch, or propped up in bed. Whatever is most comfortable.

Gently close your eyes, if that’s available to you, and just allow your breath to slow and deepen.

We’re going to just set aside any worries, fears, and stress we may have about our pain. We’re going to feel it without worry, without panic. We’re just going to sit with it without resistance, without looking away, and without negativity toward it.

While we can’t directly make the pain stop just by thinking, when we stop feeling stress and internalizing that stress as tension in our body, healing becomes easier. 

And when we are fully at peace and activate our parasympathetic nervous system to allow for healing and recovery, we can stop most pain, strengthen our immune system, heal from anxiety and depression, lower blood pressure, and improve our heart health.

We can heal faster and speed up the recovery of any injury.

Now, turn your attention from wherever there’s pain to your breath, and put all of your attention there so that it is the only thing you’re perceiving and feeling.

Visualize black smoke coming out when you exhale, and pristine white steam coming in with each inhale.

Visualize in your mind’s eye that the black smoke is taking all pain, any illness, any blockages in the body, any place that tension is held, and it’s coming out with each breath as we blow out that black smoke.

We breathe in that clean, healing white steam reaching every cell of our body, nourishing and healing. Breathing out black smoke. Taking a nice, deep, clean inhale of steam, filling our lungs, reaching our bloodstream, and completely healing us all over our body.

As we breathe out that black smoke, all our stress, our anger, our resentments, all our worries and fears release with it.

Breathing in that white steam rich in oxygen, having it go right to our pain. Breathing out all of our pain. Connecting our breath to our pain with our awareness.

Now breathe out that last plume of black smoke, carrying all the traces of pain away.

Expanding Love & Light

Now visualize a white, shining ball of energy in front of you, radiating love right at your heart, filling your heart with a glowing light. That glowing light from your heart expands farther and farther, filling your whole body with healing light.

Your light expands beyond your body, shining and filling up the room… beyond your house… across the city, shining love on all beings, people and critters, birds and bugs, across the state, beyond the country, engulfing the whole world, and radiating into space in every direction. This energy of love.

Slowly open your eyes as you take this love and peace into your day, and carry it into how you view your pain, so we don’t create more pain by worrying, stressing, or being afraid.