{"id":226,"date":"2008-04-18T00:56:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-18T07:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/226\/mindfulness-for-back-pain\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:28:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:28:59","slug":"mindfulness-for-back-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/226\/mindfulness-for-back-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindfulness Helps Back Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent study showed that <strong><em>mindfulness exercises can significantly help low back pain<\/em><\/strong> in older adults.<\/p>\n<p>8 sessions of training in mindfulness, which is awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment by moment, were given to older adults with chronic low back pain. Participants in the study meditated an average of 4.3 days a week and 31.6 minutes per day.<\/p>\n<p>3 techniques of mindfulness meditation were taught. These techniques take regular activities such as sitting, walking and lying down, and transform them into a meditation through directed breathing and mindful awareness of thoughts and sensations. Several attitudes that support mindfulness meditation were emphasized throughout the 8 classes, including patience, non-judging, beginner&#8217;s mind\u009d, acceptance, letting go, non-striving and trust. Letting go of struggle and accepting one&#8217;s condition without judgment are critical concepts in mindfulness-based programs.<\/p>\n<p>Significant improvements were seen in 1) acceptance of pain, and 2) physical functioning. The majority of participants continued to meditate at the 3-month follow-up, suggesting they found enough benefit in meditation to continue it on their own. Nearly 1\/2 of the participants reported reduction in pain and sleep medications 3 months after completing the study.<\/p>\n<p>The original article is: Morone NE, Greco CM and Weiner DK. Mindfulness meditation for the treatment of chronic low back pain in older adults: A randomized controlled pilot study. <em>Pain<\/em>. 2008 ; 134 : 310-9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent study showed that mindfulness exercises can significantly help low back pain in older adults. 8 sessions of training in mindfulness, which is awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment by moment, were given to older adults with chronic low back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8052,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/8052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}