The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management [Paperback]

Jackie Gardner-Nix (Author), Jon Kabat-Zinn (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2009

Your mood, thoughts, and emotions can affect your perception of pain and even your ability to heal. In fact, your past life experiences influence your current physical challenges: “your biography influences your biology.” While treatments like medication and physical therapy can be enormously beneficial to the body, to maximize pain relief, it’s necessary to take advantage of the mind’s healing abilities. This book offers a revolutionary new treatment approach, mindfulness-based chronic pain management, that helps you harness your mind’s power to quiet your pain and put you in control.

Mindfulness practice, which includes stationary meditations, movement meditations, mindful art, and other strategies, will help you:

• Understand how emotions and thoughts affect physical symptoms
• Reverse the debilitating effects of some chronic pain conditions
• Prevent pain from becoming chronic or long-term
• Lift the anxiety and depression that may accompany chronic pain

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dr. Jackie's book provides a holistic approach to help people manage and cope with their daily pain. The Mindfulness Solution to Pain provides hope to anyone who is suffering and losing function as a result of constant pain.”
—Sol Stern, MD, chairman of Palliative Care at Halton Healthcare Services in Oakville, ON, Canada

From the Publisher

In The Mindfulness Solution to Pain, pain specialist and mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) teacher Jackie Gardner-Nix offers techniques proven to reduce chronic pain and suffering using mindfulness meditation exercises based on the pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (February 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572245816
• ISBN-13: 978-1572245815
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Chronic Pain

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope for an MS/Fibro patient, October 26, 2010

By 

A. Rich "kittenpajamas" (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management (Paperback)

I am writing this review after only completing half of this book, and will update when finished. This book has opened my eyes to a new type of pain medication - meditation. Unlike the rest of the books I have read broaching the subject of pain management (more specifically for me multiple sclerosis/fibromyalgia management), this one has not lost my attention yet, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning something new to try in my never ending cycle which for me personally entails stress from illnesses/life -> Pain from fibromyalgia due to stress -> MS exacerbated by fibromyalgia pain and stress -> pain meds -> more pain meds because the last stopped working, and so on. For the first time in a long time I have new hope of changing things, and truly believe stress is a huge factor to pain, based if nothing else, on pure experience.

I will update my review upon finishing this book, but please take a look if you are in a situation like I am, mindfulness is a solid technique for relief, or if you want mindfulness from another perspective, try reading about dialectical behavioral therapy, it is the same techniques but used for psychologically error-ed thinking (distortions in perception).

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pain, Pain Go Away . . ., May 18, 2010

By 

J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management (Paperback)

In this brief book Jackie Gardner-Nix presents us with the idea that we relate to pain as though it is alien to us, and something to be conquered, never realizing that pain is a sign of imbalance in our lives.

Short meditation and mindfulness exercises help us to hone in on the language our bodies are speaking to us through pain, and how to respond constructively in order to bring ourselves back into balance.

RECOMMENDED.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mindfulness and Chronic Pain book, December 1, 2011

By 

Lisa M. Choiniere (Kalamazoo, MI United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Management (Paperback)

I am familiar with mindfulness techniques ad I thought this was going to be a good fit for reducing my chronic pain, however; the book uses metaphors that were personally offensive. To the general public, they might never be noticed, but since I was a technical writer for a long time, I know the power of a metaphor and I could not get past these silly phrases and how they irritated me.

I am going to resell this book before I even completed reading it. If I cannot concentrate on it because they cannot write as if I was an adult that understands a book written plainly, I will not give them my patronage by keeping said book.

If metaphors with blanket statements such as all women like to shop (and I surely do not) and by shopping the serotonin release could lead to a reduction in pain, would not bother you, please try it, but I find the book a complete waste of paper.