Meditation, even at a beginner’s level, can help to significantly reduce pain and discomfort. In fact, researchers believe that meditation is even more effective than morphine and other painkillers, according to the Journal of Neuroscience.
Eighteen participants, who had never meditated before, underwent four 20-minute training sessions that taught a meditation technique known as focused attention, which involved attention to breathing and letting go of distracting thoughts.
“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said researcher Fadel Zeidan, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
While the MRIs were being performed, a device heated to a painful 120-degrees was placed directly on the skin of each participant for 12 seconds, and then taken off the skin for the same amount of time over a total of 5 minutes.
Even though the MRI machine was very loud, most participants were able to block out the noise and the pain from the heat source and focus on their breathing. Pain intensity ratings were reduced after meditation by an average of 40 percent, and pain unpleasantness rating were reduced by 57 percent.
The study showed that even though the instruction sessions were brief, the MRIs clearly showed that meditation reduced activity in key pain-processing regions of the brain.