Mindfulness meditation appears to disrupt communication between certain brain areas involved in the sensation of pain and creating the sense of self. Pain signals still get to the brain, but it doesn’t make the person feel as “owner” of the pain; in this way the self is kept away from the pain, as it were.
A research team from the University of California observed this by measuring the effects of mindfulness on pain perception and brain activity. Pain sensitivity to a heat stimulus on the feet was tested and compared to what people felt after participating in four 20-minute mindfulness meditation training sessions. Instead, participants in a control group had listened to an audio book in the four sessions.
By meditating during the painful heat stimulus, participants in the mindfulness group reduced the intensity of pain they felt by 32 percent. In addition, there were changes in brain activity in areas involved in self-perception and the processing of experiences. The more these areas were decoupled or deactivated, the lower the pain sensation.
Prof. Dr. Fadel Zeidan explained: “One of the central tenets of mindfulness is to experience thoughts and sensations without attaching the ego or sense of self to them. Now we are finally seeing how this plays out in the brain during the experience of acute pain.”
The good thing is that you don’t need to have a lot of experience with meditation for this, just a few sessions are enough to achieve this effect. Zeidan sees this as an important finding for millions of people looking for fast-acting, non-drug pain management.
Which: DOI 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002731