Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief
by Jon Kabat-Zinn

If you're reading this, chances are that your life, or the life of someone you know, is shaped by pain—and by the physical and emotional suffering that usually accompany it.

• Mindfulness of breathing—how to “put out the welcome mat” for whatever arises in one's experience
• What to do about pain—how to work with intense and unwanted sensations
• Working with thoughts and emotions—how to avoid identifying with your experience of pain and instead see sensations and thoughts as sensations and thoughts
• Resting in awareness—a three-minute mindful pause to restore balance, resilience, and self-compassion
• Mindfulness in everyday life—allowing the nitty-gritty of one's daily life to be both the ultimate meditation teacher and the real meditation practice

The good news: Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues have helped thousands of people 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. Now, with Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief, the man who brought mindfulness into mainstream medicine presents these approaches for working gently and effectively with even the most trying of circumstances.

Session one gives us an overview of seven fundamental attitudes we can develop and deploy to cultivate mindfulness in relationship to chronic pain and its incessant challenges. On session two, Jon Kabat-Zinn leads us in guided meditations drawn from his pioneering Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) methodology: “Through the systematic cultivation of mindfulness, we can reclaim the entire spectrum of our experience and the joys inherent in living,” explains Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief offers us a precious and tested vehicle for embracing the “full catastrophe” of the human condition and thriving in the face of it.

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Author Profile: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
on Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D is the founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and associate professor of medicine in the Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine. His clinic was featured in 1993 in the public television series Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers. Jon Kabat-Zinn is the author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and Full-Catastrophe Living: Using Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness.