Meditation for Pain and Anxiety – The Ultimate Remedy

Meditation as we know is the art of delving deep into one’s own self and seeking answers to the queries of a disturbed and uncertain mind. Meditation is not new. People in India are believed to have been practicing meditation for more than 5000 years. For a long time, the use of meditation for healing was limited to India and a few neighboring countries. However, with the passage of time and awareness about meditation spreading, people have started to practice it regularly. The percentage of Americans practicing meditation in 2017 tripled from the number who were practicing meditation in 2012. Meditation for pain and anxiety healing has been in use since long and today many people are turning to it.

How to Meditate?

Around 6 types of meditation exist that have been further categorized into 18 type as below:

1. Buddhist Meditation

2. Yoga Meditations

3. Chinese Meditation

4. Guided Meditation

5. Christian Meditation

6. Hindu Meditation

Whatever be the types of the meditation the following four are required to meditate:

• A quiet location with nobody to disturb you around

• Sitting, standing, or lying down in a specific posture

• Focusing your attention to the inner self while chanting some mantra

• Not caring about any distractions

Even the Bhagwat Gita (The Holy Book of the highest order in Hinduism) mentions in Chapter 6 the way one must meditate.

Benefits of Meditation

You might have heard elders often telling you to meditate because it has many benefits. It is true that practicing meditation can make one happier, healthier, and even intelligent. Some of the benefits that occur from meditation are:

• Reducing Anxiety

• Getting rid of Depression

• Boosting the Immunity of a person

• Make better judgements

• Reduce lasting pains

• Lose Weight

• Preserve the Brain

Meditation for Pain

Meditation requires no medicines to get rid of the pain you might be experiencing for a long. When a person meditates, the meditation process uses various pathways to deal with the pain. Ultimately, the brain is able to restructure itself to make you deal with the pain. Suppose you are suffering from some chronic pain (a pain you have been experiencing for more than 3 months), it can be taken care of with meditation. Following are a few type of meditations that you can undergo to get relief from pain:

1. Body Scan Meditation: This meditation aims at getting rid of or mitigating chronic pain. The meditator should not resist whatever he experiences – comfort or pain. Though not so easy, as one tends to reject the painful parts of the body, this can be achieved with daily practice.

2. Mindfulness Meditation: This program teaches one to practice mindfulness while sitting, standing, or even walking. It teaches body awareness and yoga to get relief of any pain you might be suffering from.

3. The Cleansing Pool: This kind of meditation is done in a peaceful garden with a healing pool of water. The guide in such a case keeps telling you what to do next. However, in between you also get moments of silence when you meditate on your own.

4. Pain Relief and Pain Management through Guided Meditation: This meditation begins at the top i.e. the head. You start by scanning the head and finish at the toes. The scanning goes through all the muscles that hold the tension. The guide instructs you to relax those muscles and then search for the pain. This 32 minute meditation is of great help in relieving the pain.

5. Meditation for easing aches, pains, and headaches: We are told to believe in this meditation about the power of our mind. Just like we do not know of the cloth we wear, the same way we must try to mute the sensation of pain. It can be easily achieved simply by not thinking of it as we do not think of the cloth. It is actually a great technique for pain relief.

Meditation for Anxiety

At the heart of all things we do is anxiety. Whether you are going to an interview, a hospital, or flying in an airplane you tend to feel anxious, as you do not know the result. You can try the following meditation attitudes to get rid of anxiety:

1. Intention: Your will to look into yourself transforms anxiety to freedom and peace. By bringing in intention to work you develop a tenacity to see yourself as one whole self who is capable of doing anything.

2. A Beginner’s Mind: A beginner’s mind is much akin to that of a child – fresh and clean, ready to start anew. A beginner can see things from a fresh and new perspective. You overcome anxiety by seeing it from some different view. This way you can challenge anxiety and similar feelings.

3. Patience: Nothing better than patience to overcome anxiety. Just hold on. Do not jump to conclusions. You will observe that anxiety automatically vanishes from your thoughts.

4. Allowing: Come what may, you accept things while meditating even if they are some anxious moments. With time, you will learn to bypass those moments as an elephant walks away carelessly without noticing the hyenas around.

5. Self-Reliance: Practice self-reliance to be confident. This will help you to trust yourself and turn to feelings of anxiety. Remember while you turn to those feelings do keep other aspects of the meditation along with you.

Summarizing

Pain and Anxiety are a part of our life. There is hardly a day when we do not experience these two in our life. However, it is hard to always let them be there. To get rid of anxiety and pain one can turn to the age-old method called meditation. Meditation for pain and anxiety will not only help relieve pain and stress, it will also fill us with confidence, self-belief, and the power to think better.

Girish Jha, MA, BS, has been teaching, mentoring, and promoting wellness for patients seeking proven results without the reliance (and costs) associated with pharmaceuticals.