Meditation decreases the Perception of PAIN?

Comment

Comment by Nadine Romain on April 12, 2011 at 8:19pm

Thanks for your suggestion, John! The mindful meditation is when you focus your conscious mind and become the "observer" of the flow of your thoughts. Much more effective than trying to stop them (if you have tried that, you know what I mean). So you shift the focus of your mind to quiet your "chatter" mind! I guess some people could call that mindless, but to me it is intentional work, does that make sense?

The type of meditation used in Newberg's study is called "Kirtan Kryia". It involves breathing, repetition of a mantra and motion of the fingers which exercises the coordination and focus in the practitioner. What was most amazing in getting such substantial results after only 8 weeks of practice is that the practice is only 12 min a day and was used with beginners (who never used meditation)

Richard, I would love to read your book! I too believe that meditation and hypnosis produce very similar effect on the brain (and the rest of the body). The thing is that again according to Newberg, this particular meditation gave even better results than hypnosis (Now, I know what you would say: what kind of hypnosis session/script is he talking about? We don't know!). I think that is the problem with the small number of hypnosis research, we would need to agree on which particular protocol to test?

Personally, I don't think I do it twice the same way, even with a script... I would always sneak something here and there that personalizes it, so how do we test that???

Just FYI that book I was talking about is full of references. Check it out!

Comment by Kelley Woods on April 12, 2011 at 6:16am

More evidence of physiological benefits of meditation/hypnosis, being mainstreamed. I love it!

I also love your book, Richard.

Kelley

Comment by Richard Nongard - NLPBoard.com on April 12, 2011 at 4:39am

While many people want to find a difference between meditation and hypnosis, I find none.  The mental process is the same, using similar but different methods to arrive at the same outcome.   I wrote a book on this, "Medical Meditation:  How to Decrease Pain, reduce complications and heal faster".   It has been very well recieved.

Thanx for the citations.   I will add it to the hundreds of other citations I have on the effectiveness of meditation.

Comment by John Cleesattel on April 11, 2011 at 9:43pm

Meditation...Mindful? Focused breathing, is indeed a trance state. Chronic pain management is very possible using this as a vehicle.

Try this while meditating...

Using your inner voice...say to yourself..."in a moment I will say the word go...when I do...my entire body (or just specific body parts or sections if you will) will relax totally and completely. Each time I say the word "go", it will cause my body to relax even more and it will feel even better.....then just use that inner voice to say... "Go".   ....and see what happens ;)

 

John