Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief: Guided Practices for Reclaiming Your Body and Your Life [Audio CD]

*****
I am not an accomplished meditator or a person who enjoys sitting still. However, this two CD set was manna from heaven for me. I suffer with chronic pain of various types and often resort to painkillers and NSAIDS. Much of the time I also am tense and worried because of the pain and from trying to deal with life while in pain. I have other Jon Kabat-Zinn meditation CDs, and they are fine, but this one was exactly what I needed. It is for people who are in pain, including intense pain, and who are open to dealing with this pain via a daily practice of meditating by listening to one of the short meditation exercises on these CDs.

The exercises are of varying lengths, and most are found on the second CD. They range from about 4 minutes to up to 18 minutes. You can listen to one or more at any time. In addition, the first CD is one the author suggests you listen to repeatedly, as it describes an approach to mindfulness, to awareness, to a gentler way of dealing with pain than stringent resistance and fear (my usual approach). He addresses all kinds of problems a listener might have. For example, you might be in so much pain that you cannot even focus on your breath at all; he has a way of dealing with this. In addition, he provides alternatives to basic normal meditation practice, so say, if you're interrupted by unbearable pain in one area of your body, you can breathe into it, you can focus on the pain and then move back to your breath, etc. This felt like a meditation tape made especially for me.

His voice is so calm and soothing that even just listening to it calmed me down. Often my pain levels make me feel agitated and I hyperfocus on such thoughts as "I can't stand this!" or "My life is terrible because of this!" or "When will I be able to just do what I want to do". He addresses these defeating thoughts too, in a calm and accepting way.

If you do not struggle with chronic pain, get another of Jon Kabat-Zinn's CDs. They are all good. But if you are ill, if you are in pain, and even if you struggle with emotional pain and anxiety, I would so highly recommend this CD set. I will listen to this one over and over again and am quite excited about it too. I wish I could give it 6 stars.

Highly recommended.
*****

I have had four spinal surgeries which have left me with daily back pain. I also have fibromyalgia and advanced arthritis in my knees. I have read many, many books, listened to CD's, watched DVD's and studied holistic pain management for several years now. This is quite simply the best method for managing pain that I know of today! Jon Kabat-Zinn knows of which he speaks!!! It takes discipline and practice, which Jon mentions on the first disc, but the effort is well worth the time spent! I highly recommend this CD set! Ann J. Georgetown, TX

"Guided Practices for Reclaiming Your Body and Your Life", this is a 1  hour, 2 CD package from Sounds True. Although there are some brief meditations (see Disc Two below), this is not so much a "meditation" CD. It is more of psychological background thinking and how to do the meditations. Once you learn HOW and WHY, you can meditate to specific sound CDs designed for the act of meditating and creating stillness and vibration (including Reiki CDs). There are quite a few of these "vibrational" CDs in my other reviews, if you want to flip around them.

The cover states that Jon Kanat-Zinn and his colleagues have helped thousands of people with chronic medical conditions learn to use the power of mindfulness to transform their relationship to pain and suffering and to discover new degrees of freedom for living with greater ease and quality of life. Jon is the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and professor of medicine emeritus. This material is based on 30 years of work done in this area. Jon's voice is relaxing and his words are clear, simple, and easy to understand.

Disc One (40:43) -- Seven fundamental attitudes to use.
1) Introduction (0:49)
2) Diving right in (5:36) - Jon begins with an awareness of your body and everything around you.
3) Learning to live with pain (6:50) - Living with pain is a workable process if you are willing to do daily work. Pain may be unavoidable, but suffering is optional. You have nothing to lose in walking this path.
4) Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) (7:04) - based on scientific documentation of the patients at the Clinic, this program will focus on developing awareness, which is beyond thinking, and working on the mind-body connection.
5) Seven principles for working with pain (12:40) - Mindfulness is pure awareness.
a) There is more right with you than wrong.
b) The Power of Now (vs living in the past or future--worrying about the future)
c) the "Now" is not always exactly what we want. We usually want something different.
d) If not what we want, we try to escape from them or get caught up in them and feel victimized, at times followed by addictive substances, or getting angry out of our frustration, or distancing ourselves from others.
e) mindfulness-turning toward what we most fear to feel and open gradually to its experiences (turning away doesn't help or make anything better). Learn from what the pain has to teach us-resilience.
f) open to experience moment-to-moment with kindness toward oneself without judging the experience (try not to judge or react automatically)
Working with mindfulness helps it to become our automatic setting.
g) we are not "fixing" anything, we are just dealing with it in the present moment. Sometimes being angry (etc) seems to actually be feeding the pain energies.
6) Cultivating mindfulness (7:40) - Jon suggests we listen to this CD until it becomes second nature to us, along with using the 2nd CD to practice with. Learn to practice by yourself. Shut off your phone and other electronic devices and step fully into the exercises, uninterrupted. The meditations are tuning us into the proper practices, which call all be done lying down or sitting, whichever works best for you (especially if you are in pain).

Disc Two (75:06) - Six guided meditations plus instruction
1) Introduction (0:26)
2) The power of disciplined practice (5:05) - Don't get caught up in perceived boredom or impatience. Just actively participate in the meditation process, even if you don't feel like it. The value will come with the repetitive practice.
3) Mindfulness of breathing (13:13) MEDITATION and instruction - showing you how to focus on your breath as he talks you through the process - and learning to avoid the distractions when your mind travels. This track may be particularly useful to those learning to meditate. He also uses the Tibetan Bells to bring you out of the meditation. These are brief meditations.
4) What to do about pain (16:43) MEDITATION and instruction - showing you how to work with your pain through meditation. These are brief meditations in between instructions. Practice is important. There is also a 4 minute meditation in this track, ending with the bells. I also like the fact that Jon gives you about another minute after the bells before he starts talking again--so you can slowly return to awakened consciousness.
5) Working with thoughts and emotions having to do with pain (10:53) - MEDITATION and instruction.
6) Resting in awareness: a three-minute mindful pause (4:50) - MEDITATION and instruction -- a 3-minute meditation
7) A short scan of the body (19:22) - MEDITATION and instruction - Directing our attention to various parts of the body, beginning with the feet and moving upward. (This is a good way to teach you to direct and focus energy and healing within your body.) This meditation was particularly nice since it was a little longer and went through the entire body, leaving it feeling relaxed and "clean".
8) Mindfulness in everyday life (4:28) - working with mindfulness pointers.

This is a great product and I believe it can help those who are willing to work with the CDs and the concepts as presented. It will probably not work immediately, unless you are already experienced in focused meditation and believe that you can affect or obliterate pain. BUT, if you are willing to believe FIRST (having faith), practice, and really focus on these concepts, I believe you CAN help yourself with this product.

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