If you are experiencing a chronic pain-related condition and want to improve your quality of life, Breathing Being will design a stress and pain management programme based on your individual goals and needs. Our six-week programme draws from yoga practice and philosophy, breath work, and mindfulness techniques to help build self-regulation and more resilience in the experience of pain, enabling you to gain more agency in your daily life. Yoga and mindfulness have proven in clinical trials time and again to help people take back their lives and learn to moderate and cope with chronic pain.
The four pillars of the programme are:
1. Physical activity. Even if your pain is severe, the aim is to keep you moving. Yoga asanas (postures and movements) can help by gently but effectively releasing areas of tension.
2. Psyco-education that teaches you the physiology of chronic pain, flare-up management, pacing, understanding the role of desensitization, and sleep management.
3. Breath work and guided deep relaxation such as the practice of body scan.
4. Mindfulness meditation and techniques for self-regulation and setting reachable goals that suit your needs.
The practices of mindfulness and breath work can modulate the experience of pain by ‘zooming out of the pain.’ You will discover and explore the possibility that you can be at ease with pain even when the sensory experience pain is inevitable.
We will work with you to develop your own practice to fit your lifestyle, condition, and plans.
If your condition in acute, home visits are possible.
Several research projects have been conducted to show evidence that mindfulness can modulates the experience of pain. The main ones are:
• Schutze, R., et al. (2010). ‘Low mindfulness predicts pain catastrophizing in a fear-avoidance model of chronic pain. Pain, 148(1): 120-7.
• Geschwind, N., et al. (2011). ‘Mindfulness training increases momentary positive emotions and reward experience in adults vulnerable to depression. A randomized controlled trial’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a002459
• Watkins, E., at al. (2000). ‘Decentring and distraction reduce overgeneral autobiographical memory in depression’, Psychologoical Medicine, 30(4): 911-20.
• Carlson, L.E., at al. (2007). ‘One year pre-post intervention follow-up of psychological, immune, endocrine and blood pressure outcomes of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in breast and prostate cancer outpatients’, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 21, 1038–1049.
• Taylor, V.A., at al. (2011) ‘Impact of mindfulness on the neural responses to emotional pictures in experienced and beginner meditators’, NeuroImage. 57: 1524-1533.
• Gard, T., et al. (2011). ‘Pain attenuation through mindfulness is associated with decreased cognitive control and increased sensory processing in the brain’, Cerebral Cortex. 22(11): 2692-2702.
Event Details:
The College of Medicine and the Minded Institute held this event. On November 13th, leading researchers and clinicians around the world joined together to provide a clear view of yoga therapy in chronic pain management.
Some of our key speakers included:
- Matthew Taylor PhD, former President of Board of Directors of the International Association of Yoga Therapy, physiotherapist, and expert in chronic pain
- Amy Wheeler PhD, Current President of Board of Directors of the International Association of Yoga Therapy, yoga researcher, and thought leader in the field of yoga therapy and mental health
- Marlysa Sullivan, MPT, assistant professor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, an Author of “Yoga and Science in Pain Care”
- Raquel Chinchetru, Yoga Therapist and Chronic Pain Clinical Specialist at Pain Management Solutions within the NHS, with an MSc in Health Psychology and an MSc in Health Managementhttps://themindedinstitute.com/events/chronic-pain-a-symposium-on-yoga-therapy-as-an-emerging-treatment/
News Article: https://www.cnhc.org.uk/cnhc-registrant-provides-yoga-therapy-pain-management-nhs
Newsletter: https://www.cnhc.org.uk/sites/default/files/News/Enews-Dec2019-issue122.pdf