Customer Reviews

Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief: Guided Practices for Reclaiming Your Body and Your Life

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

*****
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

Might Have Worked Better for Me as a Booklet/CD Combination

In general, I use meditation cds to help me stay on track or to teach me something that cannot be easily taught through a book. So, I was surprised when the first cd in this two-cd set was devoted to the history and philosophy of Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief, a subject that could have been addressed in print. I found myself restless, bored, and frustrated listening to this for an hour. Part of the problem for me was the speaker. While his rhythmic monotone is perfect for meditation, for an hour lecture, it's painfully dry. Things picked up, however, with the second cd in the set.

Cd two contains a series of meditations that help listeners learn from their pain without suffering. Meditation begins with small steps correlating with in- and out-breaths and gets even smaller if required. Longer meditations follow the first three-minute one. For these, the author is the perfect reader - gentle, soft, rhythmic.

So will I use this cd set (acquired from the Amazon Vine program) again? Who knows? But if I suffered intractable pain, I'd certainly try these meditations for 4-8 weeks to see whether they'd offer me relief or, at the very least, teach me to live with pain without suffering.


Four stars.

"Guided Practices for Reclaiming Your Body and Your Life", this is a 1 ¾ 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.

I am not a doctor or professional in any subject that would let me comment on this in any way other then as a new mindfulness meditation user. I have no idea why it works but i am amazed at how well it works. After mediatating my back is pain free for different amounts of time but the fact that it's always pain free after meditating is incredible.
Mostly wanted to post that if you are out of work and don't have alot of money a free torrent downloader program will get you free torrents on mindfulness meditation...look at Jon's, i use the intro series of guided meditations from Gil Fronsdal.
As an old school guy i thought this would be "fruits and nuts" from the california crowd, it's not. Try it for yourself.

I should note that I'm working on my masters in Social Work, and I am taking a class on Mindfulness, so when I saw this CD, I had to pick it up. Although this CD is specifically for pain management, you can take the principles and the meditations that you learn and apply them to feelings of depression, anxiety, or addictive cravings. Vipassana meditation has been particularly useful in dealing with substance abuse. Mindfulness is particularly useful when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy.

Now, more specifically about this audio book. It comes with two CDs, the first is an introduction to the topic, and the second are the actual meditations. I found the author's voice to be soothing, and the meditations to be relaxing and helpful. The basic premise behind Mindfulness is that usually when we have a disturbing feeling (like pain), we try to avoid it. We want to distract ourselves, or ignore it, or in any way distance ourselves from it. With mindfulness, we embrace is, we focus in on it and just explore the feeling. By facing it down, taking no action, and just acknowledging it for all that it is, we realize how little power it has, and amazingly, the feeling goes away.

I would recommend this CD for anyone dealing with chronic pain. I would also recommend it for anyone interested in exploring mindfulness meditation for other reasons.

Jon Kabat-Zinn's voice is like listening to a real person rather than an oily-slick guru, a friend to whom you are turning for help. His tone is casual, suggestive, eminently reasonable. Because of this, you are inclined to do what he says, which is very good news for you.

These two CDs are full of help for those who hurt. The music enhances the experience of the words you hear. All the meditational, practical and problematical bases are covered. He knows why you want to run and where to. He patiently brings you slowly to yourself. Therefore, you are brought always to the present, to mindfulness, and that alone is worth the cost of the CDs.

Pain can be transformed by being mindful.
For over thirty years, Jon Kabat-Zinn has clinically proven it.

"Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief" presents on audio CD Kabat-Zinn's practices for using conscious awareness to free us from physical and emotional suffering. The two disc program begins with an overview of how mindfulness changes the way our bodies process pain and stress. Kabat-Zinn gives tips and techniques for working with the mind and shows us how to encompass whatever distraction from peace that occurs in our lives ,then we're led in a guided meditation drawn from his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) methodology to help us find relief from chronic pain, stress, and emotional challenges. After the meditation you'll feel relaxed and refreshed. My debilitating chronic migrain headache literally drifted away.

"Mindfulness can reveal what is deepest and best in ourselves and bring it to life in very practical and imaginative ways--just when we need it the most," explains Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief can provide you with an excellent tool for overcoming extraordinary emotional problems and physical distress.

Kabat-Zinn is a veteran mindfulness teacher and author, and in this CD set he focuses on helping people use mindful awareness to face pain in a healing, transformational manner. Jon's voice is calm and soothing, he gives an extensive introduction to the exercises which may seem tedious to some listeners who are eager to just practice the exercises. Anyone who wants to skip some of the introduction can do so, and most listeners will find the exercises in awareness to be valuable not just for living with pain but for facing any distress that may arise in life. I felt that this set may have too much introductory materials for some people and could have been condensed into one disc for those who aren't that concerned about the background information and the philosophical explanation of mindfulness practice. For those who are professionals using this in a clinical practice the full materials are quite valuable to have. Jon Kabat-Zinn displays his expertise as a mindfulness teacher on this recording and this is a valuable option for pain management.

This two-CD set is oriented for those in chronic pain. The first CD is a
lecture by Jon Kabat-Zinn that gives a context for the meditation. The
second CD has the meditations.

Although the first CD is a lecture, his speaking style takes the
listener into a meditative state. He makes the distinction between pain
and suffering. Pain is physical; suffering is emotional. There's not a
lot you can do about pain, but changing your attitude can help with the
suffering. A lot of this lecture was familiar from lectures on
mindfulness by others. He recommends listening to the lecture
repeatedly because the concepts that are presented are hard to
take in on the first listening. I also found that listening to the
first one set me up for a better experience in the meditation CD.

The meditation CD has a little intro lecture before going into the
guided meditations. One of the best things about his technique is that
you don't have to get into a specific posture. You can sit comfortably
or lie down. You can lie on your back or curled up in the fetal
position, whatever it takes to be as comfortable as possible. This is
for people in pain, not for Zen students.

Soon after receiving this CD set, I woke up with a migraine. As
soon as I could move around, I listened to the CDs. I felt much better
after the meditations.

I am recommending this set to a friend with chronic back problems.
If you have chronic pain, this is worth the investment of money and
time.
EDIT:
The friend with back problems found great relief by listening to these CDs.