Meditation & Chronic Pain
- Kylee Smith
- Apr 3
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 6
I've been told many times that pain is a gift, and in many ways it is. But some days, it really is a gift that I wish I could return. This is a very vulnerable blog post and one that I wrote back in July of last year after a significant surgery, but it has taken me almost 9 months to publish, for reasons that will become apparent as you read.
When people describe chronic pain as a gift what do they actually mean? From the perspective of a meditator, one of the goals of meditation is living with present moment awareness, and there is nothing quite like pain to make you brutally aware of the present moment. But for me personally, pain has brought so much more into my life. It has given me a strong motivation to get myself to the cushion every.single.day. This is especially true when my time spent in meditation can be the rarest of moments that I experience completely pain free. Meditation takes me deep below the pain surface and allows me to see the pain as something completely separate from myself, rather than something that is a part of me or rather, that is me or mine. It allows me to identify the pain as a form of energy, in the same way that we identify electricity or sound waves as energy. It has a vibration, it has electricity. It can shift, move and change with my breath and awareness. It has taught me to breathe my whole body and energy field and not just the physical breath in my lungs that we might normally maintain in our awareness. It has taught me pure stillness in a way that I have never known before.
Chronic pain brings both radical acceptance and grief, loneliness and closeness, gratitude and resentment, despair and relief, fear and resilience, and after a while, these dualisms start to merge and become one. Then, eventually, I finally ask the most powerful question of all – who is it that is really experiencing this pain? And therein lies the answer wrapped up as a question. Is there an "I" that exists as a separate entity. Is there a separate "self" experiencing pain, or experiencing anything else for that matter? Or is the self and the pain and the experience of pain all one whole integrated unit, one sacred being, one force, one energy. Yes. It is. Pain taught me that. Pain brought me into unity and integration. So, for as much as I have hated the pain and wished so many times for it to be gone. It really has been a gift.
What are your chronic pain struggles?
Musculoskeletal (e.g. back pain, neck pain, knee pain etc.)
Gut (e.g. gut issues, IBD, irritable bowel, etc.)
Head (migraines, headaches, eye pain)
Nerve (neuralgia, nerve pain)
The Science
By definition, pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage (International Association for the Study of Pain, 2021)[1]. Pain is a form of energy just like everything else that we are familiar with, sound waves, light waves, electricity, temperature and the like. It is the electrical and chemical energy that is transmitted and received by a group of sensory neurons called nociceptors with specialised nerve endings distributed throughout the skin, muscles, joints and visceral organs (Bavencoffe et. al., 2014). Nociceptors receive stimulus that may be a perceived or actual threat such as temperature, mechanical or chemical changes and then send nerve signals to the spinal cord and brain, where they are processed by a variety of regions of the brain including (but not limited to) the somatosensory cortex, the thalamus and the brainstem, from which point the brain will respond by attempting to restore homeostasis(balance) to the body.
Science tells us that pain is not perceived by just one specific region of the brain, but many regions "light up" in response. Science also tells us that the brain is neuroplastic, meaning that it has the ability to change. I’ve written previously about neuroplasticity here.
Hebbe (1949) theorised that repeated co-activation of neurons, results in the strengthening of the connections between neurons and allows them to communicate more efficiently. In other words,
Neurons that wire together, fire together[2]
This theorem explains why over time, our pain can become persistent, or chronic. The more we devote our attention and awareness to the pain, and the longer the nociceptors continue to fire, the stronger these neurons wire together. Of course, this is a simplistic explanation as biologically, there is so much more complexity than the scope of an article about meditation, but it gives an idea of the way that neuroplasticity works in the field of persistent pain.
How Can Meditation Assist with Chronic Pain
Through the practice of meditation we are utilising Competitive Neuroplasticity. As described by Hebbe (1949) above, neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that whatever we focus our attention upon regularly, the neuronal connections grow stronger. And, without wishing to diminish the experience of pain, which I know all too well can be at times debilitating, if we replace our focus of attention from our pain, fear, anxieties and worries with present moment awareness, gratitude, joy, fun, laughter and social connection, perhaps we can find hope that we may be able to somewhat alleviate the experience of pain and suffering. Hope that we can in fact, reverse the changes in our brain, the same way in which they were created. Whilst I don't believe that the alleviation of pain is, or should be the goal of meditation, perhaps it may be a happy side-effect over time.
There are many styles of meditation that may assist with bringing your attention into present-moment awareness. Focussed attention style meditation, or body-scan has some of the best evidence for working with pain. See for example, here and here. This style of meditation assists with mapping the different parts of the body to the somatosensory cortex and strengthening those "maps". It works with the Vagus Nerve and increases parasympathetic activity (relaxation) in the body, allowing the nervous system to settle. Strengthening and "toning" the vagus nerve may even help with increasing and/or balancing the dopamine and serotonin that is produced within the gut.
Breathwork, such as alternate nostril breathing (nadi shodhana) assists with increasing nitric oxide, which is a natural anti-inflammatory. Chanting and singing increases the body's natural opioids and endocannabinoids (the main chemical found in marijuana), walking meditation assists the body with gentle, calm movement and builds movement confidence and compassion practices such as Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation assists with radical self-acceptance. I cannot emphasise this practice enough, it is one that I have practiced intensively throughout my own journey.
Sacred Stillness
If you are struggling with persistent pain and you think that meditation might be a supportive piece of your journey. Know that I have walked (and continue to walk) this path. Reach out, perhaps we can walk this path together and perhaps you will allow me to support you part of the way.
Here is a Focussed Attention style meditation that you may find useful.
[2]Â https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/psychology/social-context-of-behaviour/hebbs-theory/
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