How meditation relieves the subjective experience of pain

Meditation can relieve pain, and it does so by activating multiple brain areas, according to an April study in the Journal of Neuroscience. Fadel Zeidan of Wake Forest University and his colleagues scanned people’s brains as they received uncomfortably hot touches to the leg. When subjects practiced a mindful meditation technique that encourages detachment from experience while focusing on breathing, they reported less pain than when they simply paid attention to their breathing.

The Ways We Talk About Pain

The experience forced me to think about our relationship to pain—not chronic pain, but acute

experiences: how much of it we think we’re allowed to feel, how much of it that we express, and how we’re supposed to respond when we’re hurt. None of us are immune to physical pain. At the very least, we’ve all likely stubbed a toe or scraped a knee at some point. Some of us have broken bones. And we’ve probably had some degree of headache. However, for each of these scenarios there is a particular response. If you stub your toe, for example, and behave as though you’ve broken your leg, you’ll likely be met with skepticism about the magnitude of pain you claim to feel. And if you persistently do this, your reputation may lead toward dramatic or hyperbole.

Addiction, chronic pain in the workplace:

Chronic pain is one of the most common causes of disability, and it can have serious implications for both employees and employers. For example, following are the results of a few American studies published in JAMA and the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin.