Mindfulness for persistent pain
Mindfulness is an extremely valuable skill that can help you to diminish the impact of persistent pain on your daily life.
Mindfulness is the term used to describe the practice of concentrating exclusively on what you are doing, rather than allowing yourself to be distracted by other thoughts. It’s the single-minded focus you need when you’re learning a new skill, like driving, or riding a bike. It’s also the practice of noticing and acknowledging a thought or sensation and then letting it go. When you allow yourself to become totally absorbed in an activity – when you suddenly look up and discover that an hour has passed without you noticing – you are practicing mindfulness.
Mindfulness is practiced widely in relaxation techniques like meditation, and is used in conjunction with a range of psychological treatments, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. In a pain management context it can help you to reduce your awareness of pain and significantly improve your experience of daily life.
Mindfulness becomes easier with practice. Our mindfulness groups are lead by experienced practitioners who will help you to learn and integrate mindfulness techniques into all aspects of your life.
Our program is an eight-week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Program. The program consists of eight 2-hour group sessions, where there will be guided experiential practice and some theoretical teachings. In between sessions there will be home practice to do, and we estimate this takes approximately one hour per day.
MBCT revolves around a straightforward form of mindfulness meditation, which takes just a few minutes a day for the full benefits to be revealed. An extensive review of mindfulness-based practices shows convincing evidence that they are effective in the treatment of pain when used in combination with more conventional therapies.
MBCT is also an effective method of treating relapsing depression. It can help you to become less vulnerable to relapse, by reducing the your reactivity to negative thoughts and feelings.