How Meditation Can Manage Chronic Pain and Stress | Daniel Goleman | Big Think

How Meditation Can Manage Chronic Pain and Stress
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Picture this: you're in a doctor's office, and the doctor tells you that he or she is going to give you an injection. By the time they bring the needle out, you've already felt half the pain you're going to feel just by mentally preparing yourself for, arguably, worse pain than you're ever going to get with just that needle. That's because much of pain itself is psychological—and an effective way to mitigate this is by simple mediation. Just a one-day "boot camp" of meditation can make a difference, says Daniel Goleman. His new book is Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
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DANIEL GOLEMAN:

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist, lecturer, and science journalist who has reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books) was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half.

Goleman is also the author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. The book argues that new information technologies will create “radical transparency,” allowing us to know the environmental, health, and social consequences of what we buy. As shoppers use point-of-purchase ecological comparisons to guide their purchases, market share will shift to support steady, incremental upgrades in how products are made – changing every thing for the better.

His latest book is Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, which he has co-authored with Richard Davidson reveals the science of what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Daniel Goleman: One of the stunning findings that showed up in long-term meditators—and these other scientists were quite skeptical about [it], but Richard Davidson my co-author and his group went ahead and tried it—they had people who had done 1,000 to 10,000 lifetime hours of meditation come in and simply do a retreat for one day in the lab. And they did a measure of the genes for inflammation, and they found that there was a down-regulation of inflammatory genes from one day of meditation. 

What this means is that inflammation, which is a cause, it’s a risk factor for a wide range of diseases, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular disease, you name it, inflammation almost always plays a role in disease. 

And what this says is that intensive retreats in meditation, even for a day, help you lower the level of those genes. We don’t yet know if this is clinically important; that’s another study that needs to be done. 

But we do know that it’s so remarkable that people in genomic science were amazed that a simple mental exercise could have such a profound impact on this array of genes. 

Pretty eye-opening. There was a remarkable finding when it comes to how the Olympic level meditators experience pain. Ordinarily if you bring someone into the lab and you tell them “We’re going to give you a burn in ten seconds, it won’t cause blisters on your skin but you’re going to feel it, it’s going to hurt,” the moment you tell them that the emotional circuitry for feeling pain goes ballistic. It’s as though they’re feeling the pain already. 

And then you get them the touch of the hot test tube—whatever it is, and it stays ballistic, and then for ten seconds more it stays ballistic; they don’t recover emotionally. 

The “Olympic-level” meditators had quite a different response. You tell them “You’re going to feel this pain in ten seconds,” their emotional centers don’t do anything. They’re completely equanimous. 

The pain comes and they feel it, you see it register physiologically, but there’s no emotional reaction, and there’s no emotional reaction afterward, so in other words, they’re totally equanimous, they’re unflappable. 

Even though they experience the pain physiologically they don’t have the emotional reaction. 

And what we find is that calming the emotional reaction is one of the most powerful benefits of meditation. And I’m not talking about the Olympic level, I’m talking about beginners.

There’s a wonderful method called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction; it was developed by a friend of ours John Kabat-Zinn years ago. And it’s for people in hospitals, people in clinics—although anyone could benefit—but one of the stronges...

[welderchick]

Emotional relationship with the pain is a recent acceptance for me. Along with Meditation and rest my matra is listen to the body but without emotions, it'll pass soon.

[funcereal]

Yes it can. Helped for 3 years of chronic neck nerve pain. Nothing is a perfect end all solution, you can't expect that. However this practice helped me immensely.

[ptgms]

One of the interpretations I notice is when the feelings follow thought; wherever the thoughts arise from in the conscious mind or other level, the meditation can help calm all the rubbish that slows and confuses a clearer thinking process by stabilizing and helping calm unwanted imaginative processes in the brain functions. Even if temporarily because of participation levels, there is benefit to the mind from this neutral position inwardly that helps manifest outwardly in a more optimistic manner.

[GAJ]

love how all this evidence for the benefits of meditation is becoming mainstream.

[Thundralight]

Since they cut me off pain medication I went from being functional to bedridden and in a wheelchair, started smoking as I don't want to even live anymore.I have tried all this and more and its like telling someone with 2 broken legs to jump rope.

[everyoneswireddifferent]

The people in these comments don't hear "Meditation helps with pain".They hear "Don't take medication."lol

[Bereft]

Literally the only thing that has helped me has been mindfulness.

[Kitslam]

I found this really interesting. More videos on Meditation ;D !

[danriddick]

Makes me wonder what they would see if they compared the meditation group to other groups that have been 'taught' to deal with pain differently than the average person - a group of Navy Seals, perhaps...

[Cyberdemon]

Meditation can do much more than allow for the control of pain and inflamation. It can also be used to expand the one's awareness and perception of sensations throught the body and anable control or those feelings and their related physiological processes. There is truth to the saying 'Mind over Matter'.

[OverDose-kxkx]

I would say that I meditate every day, and I use cannabis as well for back pain and for my glaucoma. I have been do this for a year and it seems to be working great for me.

[irishmigit]

Sounds like Mind over Matter. So we've proven that the Placebo effect works, even if you know it's a Placebo, so with my Crohn's disease, I'll just take some deep breaths if I'm feeling pain, and tell myself that'll help, so it feels like it helps. I don't meditate, but my thoughts are always going.

[importantname]

stress is a mental apparation, not thinking about the problem reduces the mental stress, but it does not take the problem away.

[MasterDisaster]

How praying can manage chronic pain and stress

[thesemenrgannadoit]

"Horrible Addictive Narcotics" You know waht's even more horrible?
*PAIN*

[themanthelegendjmw]

Darn I was hoping to get healed... Maybe I'll still give it a try.

[RandimArray]

"did a measure of the genes", what? Couldn't find any info after a quick search, what was he talking about?

[homewall]

Does it require the rigor of meditation (surprisingly hard to do, to "clear" ones mind or focus on nothing), or do you get similar benefits if you just get stoned? Marijuana definitely calms the mind, but is that calm similar to that created by meditation?

[civilianlink]

Meditation is awesome but when you have Chronic pain you just don't say; oh there is that sensation again. Its a tiny small better but the only thing keeping them alive and kind of mentally sane is the drugs.

[JoshuaBegin]

If someone no longer experienced emotional trauma from experiencing (or the anticipation of) pain, would it still be considered unethical to inflict pain on them? One of the main arguments against animals feeling pain from our treatment is that they don't experience pain in the same way we do (i.e. emotional suffering). By that logic, inflicting pain on an "emotionally removed" person would be equally ethical.