When I woke up with throbbing in my mouth, I knew that I had to visit my dentist. By the end of the day, not only had I visited my dentist, I'd had over 7 injections into my mouth and gum to take care of the pain and I'd had a root canal surgery! And, when the pain medication wore off, it was time to practice meditation.
How comfortable are you with pain? Does it depend on whether it’s your own pain or someone else’s? Would you like to find comfort in pain…or at least in pain management? For many of us, pain is something to be avoided, whether it’s our own pain or the pain of another. When confronted with this most daunting physical experience, we’d rather turn and run…or at least walk quickly, in the other direction.
Meditation can change the way a person experiences pain, according to a new study by UW–Madison neuroscientists. The researchers found that during a pain experiment, expert meditators felt the discomfort as intensely as novice meditators, but the experience wasn't as unpleasant for them. Images of brain regions linked to pain and anxiety may explain why. Compared to novice meditators, experts had less activity in the anxiety regions. Not only did the experts feel less anxiety immediately before pain stimulation, they also became accustomed to the pain more quickly after being exposed repeatedly to it.
Meditation can be used for many things. Today, I'm using it to prepare for surgery.
How we experience our world, including our perceptions of the internal world, can be dramatically changed, and mediated, through meditation.