Mindfulness helps us avoid distraction, and ignore pain

Mindfulness helps us avoid distraction, and ignore pain A Study Shows, Meditation, Stress

Apr 272011

A zen garden - mindfulness relieves pain and research shows why Mindfulness meditation may help us with pain and working memory through control of our alpha brain waves, says new research from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Because alpha rhythms help us ignore distractions, the real value of mindfulness may be helping us deal with too much stimulation.

The researchers found that mindful meditators could regulate the flow of sensory input between the regions of the brain. Alpha waves work in the parts of the brain that process sight, sound and touch, turning up the attention to some sensations and turning the rest down.

Mindfulness focuses the individual’s attention on their own state, without judgment. It’s been proven to help with attention based tasks. Now researchers have shown that skilled mindful meditators enhanced their alpha waves.

The study used 12 naïve subjects. Half finished an 8 week Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Program. The others were asked not to do any meditation for the experiment. The participants brain patterns were studied with MEG (magnetoencephalography) scans before during and after the program. The subjects were asked to direct their attention to their left hand or left foot, while the area associated with their left hand was monitored.

At the end of the 8 weeks the mindfulness trained people made faster and more pronounced changes of attention than the non meditators. “This result may explain reports that mindfulness meditation decreases pain perception,” says researcher Catherine Kerr. “Enhanced ability to turn the alpha rhythm up or down could give practitioners greater ability to regulate pain sensation.”

The ability to regulate electrical currents in specific cells, which meditators can do, may help solve other problems where brain regulation is an issue, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the researchers say.

The News You Can Use: Mindfulness meditation may b an inexpensive useful technique to help you avoid distraction and ignore pain. There are many meditation classes around. If you want to find people teaching this style of mindfulness click here.