How Meditation Changes Pain, Relieves Depression

[David Baxter PhD]

How Meditation Changes Pain, Relieves Depression
by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., Psychology Today
September 25, 2011

The more you focus on pain, the higher your pain tolerance.

It's not too often that my first response to pain is, "Fantastic!"

But when I collapsed to the ground after banging my ankle on a hardwood meditation bench, I knew this was an opportunity for a scientific experiment. I had spent the last few days preparing a talk on the neuroscience of meditation. More specifically, how meditators process pain differently than non-meditators.

The biggest difference? Meditators pay more attention to the direct sensation of pain. In laboratory studies that deliver painful stimulation, meditators' brains show more activity in areas associated with sensory processing (think: ankle throbbing!).
Non-meditators, on the other hand, showing more activity in areas associated with evaluation and language. It's the inner dialogue of "Holy $!%@ that hurts! I'm such a klutz! This stinks! When is it going to stop?"

Interestingly, the more a meditator's brain focuses on the pain experience, and the less activity in the evaluation system, the higher their pain tolerance. It's what we hear all the time from our wisest meditation teachers: Focus on the sensations, drop the story. It's the story that turns pain into suffering.

So as I felt my ankle swelling, I decided to try both techniques out. Let my inner "evaluator" go crazy with judgments about the pain -- then mindfully turn my attention to the breath and what I was feeling. I probably don't need to show you any fancy brain imaging pictures or data plots to convince you that indeed, mindfulness made the pain much more tolerable.

But if you do want to see fancy brain pictures and even fancier graphs, check out the video of my 20-min talk. It covers both physical pain and emotional pain, and the fascinating finding that what the brains of new meditators do to reduce suffering is the complete opposite of what experienced meditators do.

Talk title: What Science Can Teach Us About Practice
Presented at the Buddhist Geeks conference in Los Angeles, CA

 

[Daniel E.]

Source: Mindfulness for Physical Pain -- University of Minnesota

 

[Daniel E.]

“These findings suggest that meditation is beneficial for brain preservation, with a slower rate of brain aging throughout life.”

~ Christian Gaser, quoted in How Meditation Can Slow Alzheimer's

 

[GaryQ]

The idea behind all this is great in theory and practice.

There's a simplistic tendency to assume that all these things can can be applied by and work for everyone if wanted regarding all forms of positive thinking, meditation, mindfulness, stop smoking methods and the list goes on and on . AA isn't the only way to stop drinking and cold turkey also isn't either. What works for one person doesn't mean it'll work for everyone. Most methods tend to actually work well for those that actually don't even really need them. Someone who has a calm slow reactionary simplistic approach to life and it's obstacles gets by whether he/she gets on the new fad wagon or not. He/she usually has the basic neurological and psychological ability to overcome obstacles according to their metal functioning. extra tips and tricks are simply a bonus tool to their toolbox.

To bring up a diffferent scnario to question the applicability based on a common obstacle:
- Walking is great for you -sure if I could walk says the paraplegic, I'd agree. But that's just not a possibility no matter what positive thinking principle you bring to the table It isn't possible.

Correlating that same logic to the ADHD brain and other forms of neuroloigical inability to focus for more than 5 seconds without getting distracted or bored. How can meditation just like mindfulness be applied, in a cohesive and especially in a constantly applicable form for someone with ADHD etc.

Personally I can't do that with even basic daily chores in a structured and consistent way. My wind will go to "(Censored) that hurts like hell" It definitely gets my full focus but there's no way to make it not trigger a long logical analytic chain reaction of thought. The brain will go into hyperdrive after I stop swearing. If I bang my toe my first reaction is a bad word even in a crowd of people that would be appalled by the word. Then my brain starts thinking reactionally and analytically. What's it's condition? Does it requre immediate assistance other than simpy holding it tight and trying not to cry? And the cycle will go on and on that's how my brain is wired.

Changing thought patterns is one thing (requires a lot of really hard work though) but changing brain wiring without messing with the brain physically is another thing.

 

[Daniel E.]

How can meditation just like mindfulness be applied, in a cohesive and especially in a constantly applicable form for someone with ADHD etc.

Regarding ADHD:

Mindfulness training has been shown to improve attentional capacity (Lutz et al., 2009; Tang et al., 2007), impairment typical in individuals with ADHD. Individuals with ADHD have decreased conflict attention (Loo et al., 2007), which is important to self-regulation (Posner & Rothbart, 1998), and mindfulness training has been shown to improve this cognitive process (Tang et al., 2007). Furthermore, brain imaging studies of conflict attention show involvement of the prefrontal cortex (Posner & Rothbart, 1998), and imaging studies of brain activity in individuals with ADHD and brain activity following mindfulness training both show involvement of the same prefrontal areas (Davidson et al., 2003; Giedd, Blumenthal, Molloy, & Castellanos, 2001; Hölzel et al., 2011; Lazar et al., 2005). Mindfulness training has also been shown to decrease impulsivity (Kozasa et al., 2012), another impairment typically found in individuals with ADHD. Furthermore, individuals with ADHD score lower on measures of trait mindfulness than individuals who have not been diagnosed with ADHD (Smalley et al., 2009), and in a study conducted on adults with ADHD, the participants noted the topic of mindfulness as important for their improved functioning (Philipsen et al., 2007). Functional and structural imaging studies suggest that patterns of hypoactivity in frontal regions of the brain were detected in individuals with ADHD (Dickstein, Bannon, Castellanos, & Milham, 2006), and activation of many of these regions can be enhanced in expert mindful meditators (Manna et al., 2010), suggesting a means by which MBTs may successfully improve symptoms of ADHD (Grant et al., 2013).

Thus, recent research does suggest that MBTs may improve core symptoms of ADHD, with improvements in both attention and aspects of executive control, particularly for adults (Zylowska et al., 2008). The aforementioned research suggests that mindfulness training may be effectively used to improve functioning and reduce symptomology in individuals with ADHD. However, some of this earlier work has been criticized due to small sample sizes and exploratory analyses.

The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Therapies for ADHD: A Meta-Analytic Review (2016)

As far as how to implement it, for my OCD/anxiety/depression, I like Marsha Linehan's simple approaches to mindfulness that work well for self-regulation in Borderline Personality Disorder, etc:

[Video] Marsha Linehan on DBT

Personally, it's hard for me to ignore mindfulness since it seems every therapist in Northern Arizona is big on it, including my psychiatrist. And so is the author of Brain Lock.

 

[GaryQ]

Thanks Daniel, much appreciated.