Using Meditation For Health - Controlling Pain

There are many benefits from meditation, and some of those are related to health. Regular meditation helps your overall feeling of good health and well being, but it can also be used for specific purposes. My son, for example, has used it successfully for controlling blood sugar levels, and have have used to reduce blood pressure.

Another area of health for which you can use meditation positively is for pain relief. With perscription drugs being so fraught with side effects and long term dangers, developing an ability to use meditation to help relieve your own pain, whatever its cause may be, will bring you great advantages throughout your life.

Hopefully, of course, you will not suffer any pain very often. However, there are sure to be times when pain takes its toll on you, whether minor or major. Even for minor events the meditation techniques can prove both practical and useful.

For example, as I write this, I have been having a skin problem on the bottom of my foot. A reckless foot spa therapist made it inflamed two months ago, and it has never fully recovered. A few days ago some of the skin opened up, and two spots became irritated and then painful. Not serious pain, but because of its situation, walking became very different. the last two evenings, before sleeping, I have used meditation to relieve the problem, and today I can almost walk without feeling anything. That may have happened anyway, but that does not matter. You have nothing to lose by focusing on a pain source in meditation and trying to relieve it.

My own current situation is trivial compared to the chronic pain I suffered in my twenties when my spine was fusing and my hip joints degenerating. I knew nothing of meditation then, but it is not just trivial pain that can benefit; severe pain too can obtain some relief from effective meditation and breathing. It has been used by yogis and other healers for thousands of years, and they are available to anybody today.

Many people are now using mind/body techniques to assist in their health maintenance, and at the center of this is the practice of meditation. The popularity of these methods, among thinking people who care for their health, is understandable. Meditation is free and, above all, drug free; it is also very effective in killing or reducing pain for good scientifc reasons.

You are probably aware of the substances called endorphins, which are natural stimulants produced by the human body. They have many effects on your health and feelings at any moment, and can, and do, reduce pain as well as produce pleasurable feelings.

So why is meditation capable of reducing pain? Scientific research has shown that while a person is meditating, they can produce extra endorphins on a large scale. This flood of endorphins, without any interference from pharmaceutical companies, comes naturally during meditation, and can reduce pain or even eliminate it. In effect, the positive effects of meditation overwhelm the negatives of pain and injury.

Deep breathing, too, during meditation is thought to stimulate the brain's release of endorphins into the body; in fact, scientific monitoring has taken place to show just that. So, all in all, it is well to remember, next time you have any pain, to go into a meditation session before reaching for those drugs the doctor or pharmacy may want you to buy.

Breathing exercises in particular have been shown to have a remarkable effect on pain, and a remarkable ability to help the body control pain through the release of endorphins. Studies of those in meditation have revealed that their brains are pumping out these natural painkillers at a much higher rate than at other times. These scientific studies have backed up the anecdotal evidence already gathered through years of direct experience. Many of those who have begun to practice meditation have reported being able to reduce their pain medication and increase their level of activity.