Pain during meditation

[Moose]

Hi all,

I've been doing some mindfulness meditations when I go to bed at night. This particular one involves focusing on different body parts and the sensations you are feeling in them. I find it quite relaxing, and really interesting how powerful the effect of putting your attention on an area can be.

I've been finding that often, when I focus on a body part, it will start to hurt. I wonder if this is because when I focus on it, I'm paying extra attention to all the neural signals coming from it, which naturally amplifies their importance in my brain. I think I'm conditioned to feel and expect pain (at least from certain body parts) so in the absence of any other information, my brain is interpreting the signals as pain. I was wondering if anyone else had experienced anything similar? I'm going to try and bring in some more self-directed lovingkindness into my meditation, so that when I focus on a body part I tell myself it feels comfortable and good, so that hopefully I can begin to expect positive sensations rather than physical ones, but I wondered if anyone had any tips.

 

[Forest]

Without question there is a connection between how much you think or focus on a symptom and your level of pain. This is one reason why googling your symptoms so often leads to a worsening of them. To put it in an even more simple term, the TMS distracts us from our emotions by getting us to focus on our body. This is something that Alan Gordon brought up in his article on Outcome Independence. This is why the goal to this approach is to reach a point where you no longer care if you have pain or not. Once you reach this point you will have no reason to check in our your symptoms or even think about them. At this point you will have less thoughts getting in the way of you allowing your emotions to be present.

 

[Moose]

Hi Forest, I didn't mean that I experienced or focused on my TMS symptoms when meditating, but that I often feel new pains temporarily in the body part I'm focusing on at that moment. I agree that outcome independence is important though - it's something I'm striving for (although I'm not quite there yet!)

 

[Forest]

I often feel new pains temporarily in the body part I'm focusing on at that moment.

This is as clear of a sign that you will get that your symptoms are not caused by a structural problem. Little things like noticing this help in developing an evidence sheet and building our confidence in this approach.