Slow Breathing May Soothe Pain
Monday , February 08, 2010
The simple practice of slow breathing may help people deal with the physical and emotional reactions to moderate pain, a small study suggests.
Researchers say the findings, published in the journal Pain, offer support for the idea that yoga-style breathing exercises and meditation can help ease chronic pain.
The study gauged pain responses among 27 women with the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia and 25 healthy women the same age.
Researchers found that when they had the women perform slow breathing, it dampened their reactions to a moderately painful stimulus — brief pulses of heat from a probe placed on the palm. Overall, the women rated the pain intensity as lower and reported less emotional discomfort when they slowed their normal breathing rate down by half.
The benefit was greater and more consistent among the healthy study participants than those with fibromyalgia.
However, the findings suggest that breathing techniques could offer an additional way to deal with fibromyalgia or other types of chronic pain, according to lead researcher Dr. Alex J. Zautra, a psychology professor at Arizona State University in Tempe.
"What's really valuable is that we were able to put this yoga-like, meditation approach under the microscope," he told Reuters Health in an interview.
The study did not assess any formal yoga or meditation technique, but did look at the effects of becoming more aware of your breathing, which is at the foundation of those practices. The findings, according to Zautra, appear to be the first to show that "how we breathe" does alter perceptions of and responses to pain.
He and his colleagues are currently studying the effects of mindfulness meditation as part of fibromyalgia treatment.
Fibromyalgia is a syndrome marked by widespread aches and pains — on both sides of the body and above and below the waist — along with other symptoms such as fatigue, sleep problems and depression. Its cause is unclear — there are no physical signs, such as inflammation — but researchers believe that fibromyalgia involves problems in how the brain processes pain signals.
"It is not 'all in your head,'" Zautra noted, "but it may be in your brain."
Slow breathing, he explained, may help by bringing a better balance to the activities of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system activates what is often dubbed the "fight-or-flight" response during times of stress — increasing heart rate, blood pressure and perspiration, for example. If the sympathetic nervous system is seen as an accelerator, then the parasympathetic nervous system is akin to a brake.
Learning breathing techniques might be particularly useful for painful conditions like fibromyalgia, but Zautra said there is also potential for helping people deal with other types of chronic pain, like osteoarthritis and lower back pain.
People are "remarkably resilient" in their capacity to recover from pain, Zautra explained. "Sometimes they just need a little help."
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Welcoming the Psychology Field to the "Mindfulness Movement"
Richard Fields, Ph.D.
April 9, 2009
Buddism and mindfulness is capturing the interest, heart, and imagination of the counseling field. Over the last fifteen years the psychology field has seen a resurgence in the use of mindfulness for a variety of conditiion and mindfulness ons. Meditatpractices are being used effectively for the treatment of stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and personality disorders.
John Kabat-Zinn used mindfulness training and meditation to help clients with stress, pain, and anxiety disorders (Kabat-Zinn, 1992). Marsha Linehan (1993) integrated mindfulness practice in her Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for the treatment of personality disorders. Steven Hayes (1999) developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of depression and anxiety. Zindel Siegal et. al. (2002) developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) as a relapse prevention tool for depression, and Alan Marlatt, Ph.D. (2007) developed Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) for alcohol/drug recovery.
The teachings of Buddha (dharma) have been described as a “living psychology”, an effective, wholesome and spiritual way to live your life. This “living psychology “(i.e. mindfulness) brings benefits to those already in counseling. It follows that mindfulness is finding its way in to more and more therapy offices.
As a result, we counselors are wanting to find out more about Mindfulness. We are attending Mindfulness conferences in large numbers. Not only are we attending to learn about the application of Buddhism in Psychology, but we are also curious about using mindfulness in our own lives.
There are many reasons for our field to learn more about mindfulness. The first is obvious – “mindfulness works”.
There is also the personal benefit for counselors. We have a high-stress occupation that requires balance, and the ability to be compassionate and caring. Meditation and mindfulness practices help us to achieve that balance.
I attended the UCLA Conference on Mindfulness (October, 2007), and “The Wise Heart and the Mindful Brain” (a two day conference with Jack Kornfield, Ph.D. and Dan Siegal, M.D. in Seattle, WA June, 2008).
The UCLA conference had keynote presenters Jack and Dan, Trudy Goodman, Ph.D., Tara Brach, Ph.D. and the venerable Zen master Thick Nhat Hanh. Over 1,800 counselors came together to not only learn but also to experience mindfulness. A long procession of counselors followed Thich Nhat Hanh and his Plum Valley disciples in a silent walking meditation on the UCLA campus. Slowly the procession walked, repeating over and over to ourselves the mantra “We have arrived. We are home…… We have arrived. We are home……” Indeed, we counselors had arrived and come home. We came together as a community of caregivers, connecting with one another, acknowledging each other, proud of our common mission as healers.
The procession culminated with a silent mindfulness lunch on the UCLA quad that sunny Saturday. Some sat on the steps, or on the grass, under the shade of the trees, or in the warmth of the midday sun. All of us silently and slowly eating our vegetarian wrap, contented in the power of being together and present in the moment.
Jack Kornfield, a trained Buddhist monk, and psychologist, and the founder/director of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, is the force behind this new mindfulness movement. He describes the significance of this gathering at UCLA in the opening of his new book “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, Bantam, 2008.
“As I stood at the podium looking over a crowd of almost two thousand people, I wondered what had drawn so many to this three-day gathering. Was it the need to take a deep breath and find a wiser way to cope with the conflict, stress, fears, and exhaustion so common in modern life? Was it the longing for a psychology that included the spiritual dimension and highest human potential in its vision of healing? Was it a hope to find simple ways to quiet the mind and open the heart?”
At the UCLA conference I felt encouraged, and hopeful. A new mission had arisen for me. A mission to bring together our field to a conference that would “Celebrate Mindfulness”. This would not just be a conference but a retreat, a coming together of counselors in a spirit of hopefulness. We could be strong again as a field, a kind of rebirth of baby boomer therapists, like me, who could revive our roots of love, peace, and desire to change our world in positive ways, much like the “peace” movement of our youth. But this time with a more grounded and purposeful mission. A mission to bring Buddhism and mindfulness to the counseling field.
My hope is that we as counselors will play a major role in bringing mindfulness to our clients lives, our own lives, to our family and to our community. I invite you to participate in this “Mindfulness Movement”. I invite you to join me in this revitalized mission of bringing mindfulness to our field and exploring its many applications. I hope your participation will revitalize your personal and professional lives as well. We counselors can play a primary role in bringing mindfulness to our Western culture. Yes, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us “We have arrived…We are home…We have arrived….We are home.”
www.facesconferences.com
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Salt Lake Tribune
February 5, 2009
Psychologist Looks to Monks for Keys to Happiness
Evolution has given the human brain a vast pre frontal cortex. It allows us to wander a mental landscape filled with emotional mine fields, says Richard Davidson, Ph.D. a professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin. The answer to the disorded brain may lie in mental training perfected by Buddhist monks over the centuries in Tibet. Davidson has been using high tech imaging to document the startling control the monks demonstrate over their emotional states. His resulting ideas about "neuroplasticity" threaten to upend converntional psychotherapy. Teaching reflective (mindful) skills to kids (or adults), says Daniel Siegel, MD, of UCLA, allows them to do better emotionally, socially, and academically.
Read more about this research at www.psyphz.psych.wisc.edu or www.drdansiegel.com
Podcast of lecture at University of Utah Tanner Humantities Center 2/4/09 : http://www.hum.utah.edu/humcntr/?pageId=232
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The Brain Institute Newsletter
May 2008
The Complexities of Pain: Loss, Treatment, and Hope
Pain is the brain’s way of telling us that something isn’t quite right in the body – and it’s something that we all experience. But it isn’t as easy to understand the brain’s role in generating and withstanding pain. For people who suffer from chronic pain – the kind that lasts more than a few months, sometimes with no obvious cause – unlocking the mysteries of these problems is especially important.
There are a few things that we do understand. First, we know that pain does cause harm to the brain. “Functional neuro-imaging studies have recently confirmed that unremitting pain damages the brain—and in some cases, the damage is irreversible,” says Dr. Perry Fine, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Utah’s Pain Research Center, and a Brain Institute member.
We also know that people who have chronic pain can experience losses – including jobs, relationships, and lifestyle options. But they may also endure the greatest damage of all: the loss of self.
As Dr. Susan Connor, a clinical psychologist at the University Neuropsychiatric Institute,describes it, people facing the prospect of a life filled with pain – and the loss of their prior healthy selves – experience a period of bereavement complete with all the classic stages of grief, including denial, anger, bargaining and depression.
The final stage, acceptance, isn’t easily won – and it can be fleeting. “Accepting the new life with chronic pain is cyclical – you might accept it at one time, but then when your pain flares up again, you have a difficult time with acceptance,” says Dr. Connor. “Chronic pain can be very disruptive.”
While there are no easy solutions to the complex problem of chronic pain, researchers at the Brain Institute and the Pain Research Center are collaborating to find new answers.
Read more about current advances in pain research and treatment in
THOUGHT
- Newsletter of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah
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Psychology Today, April 2008
Second Nature
"Your personality isn't necessarily set in stone. With a little experimentation, the ornery and the bleak can reshape their temperaments and inject pluck and passion into their lives."
Read full article by Kathleen McGowan
Psychology Today, April 2008
psychologytoday.com
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FYI - The University of Utah Newsletter for Faculty
March 19, 2008
The Health Benefits of Meditation
"In this fast-paced world, it often feels like you can’t slow down. Your physical and mental health depends on your ability to appropriately manage your stress level."
Read full article by Torrence Wimbish, University of Utah Counseling Center web.utah.edu/fyi
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Finding the Peace Within Us
APA Monitor Jul/Aug 2002
"Once just a ritual of the monastery, today meditation is mainstream, and psychologists are embracing the practice on several levels. Not only do more psychologists study it, use it in interventions, and recommend it to patients, some practice it themselves as a self care technique."
"Meditation is more than a stress-reduction technique. It'a a whole affect management approach," says Scott Bishop, Ph.D., Univeristy of Toronto, " It's a way of developing a different relationship with our experiences of stress and affect and thinking that helps with all aspects of life."
Read full article by Bridget Murray
APA Monitor
apa.org/monitor
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