Mindfulness for Chronic Pain Care

This was a guest talk given September 13, 2026.

Not everyone here has chronic pain… Perhaps you can apply some of the things you hear today for your other kinds of life’s discomfort.

Experience of pain is complex. No matter where it originates in the body, it travels to the brain, and interacts with thinking brain, emotional brain, memories and automatic brain stem that controls elements like breathing. And, the science says the state of the brain affects how much of the pain stimulus gets into the brain as well. Such as the state of fatigue or irritability opens the gate more to receive the pain sensation, while the state of calm will narrow the gate. So the brain acts like an amplifyer, a volume control of the pain sensation.

That is where the mindfulness practice comes into.

When we have chronic pain, which they define the pain more than 6 months, we think about it, on how to solve it, and a variety of emotions arise as well. Such as where does it come from, what did I do to intensify it, when was the last time this happened, what worked, what did not work, what if the pain gets worse, what my life is going to be then? Also, fear, anger, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, ….

We, of course, don’t want to feel it, we might try to numb it, to distract it, which in long run might not work so well, but such attempts exhaust us.

Here are some of the ways to cultivate mindfulness in dealing with the pain.

1. Pain is a sensation of discomfort. Any sensation we experience is actually changing sensations coming into being and passing away, moment by moment and we only experience this flow of sensations, one moment at a time. It is fluid. Not as solid as we might think.
2. Uncoupling the pain experience: Sensation, thoughts, emotions. Thoughts are thoughts, not facts. Emotion is emotion, not the accurate reflection of self or the world.
3. Doing mode vs Being mode. How can I be with this experience in a way gentle and kind to myself. Perhaps with less reactivity. One tool is to become aware of the pain threshold. If I sit 30 minutes I have pain, but not when I sit 20 minutes. How can I dance with that, navigating through our daily activities?
4. Turning towards the discomfort rather than resisting it.
5. We tend to be drown into the pain experience and might miss other pleasant elements in life at that moment. Cultivate our muscle to notice treasure of pleasure. One homework in my group for participants was to find 10 pleasant things happened on that day, at the end of the day and to write it down.
6. Broadening perspectives. If we react to each wave of pain or pleasure in knee jerk aversion or grasping, our awareness is like a small rowboat bobbing about at the mercy of each wave. But if we cultivate a broad, stable, nonreactive awareness that includes all of our experience with a sense of wholeness and balance, our awareness becomes like a yacht carving its way through the waves and the sea. 
7. Loving-kindness to self and connection with others and nature. Barbara Fredrickson’s research (U of North Carolina) shows the reduction in pain experience. Moving from Isolation to Connectedness.