katy steger:
How much further should DhO and University of Kansas Hospital be in understanding that placing attention on the pain can reduce the pain perception (unless someone is deliberately applying pain to another-- I think studies show that deliberate pain infliction (cruelty) increases pain perception -- an intuive result).
...
So what is further? U. Kansas hospital offering free mindfulness training to people with pain seems to me both caring and practical. I'm glad they cared to share the results, even if it was self-advertising (compassion for hospital staffs in a competition to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive over-populated, lean market now...).
The original motivation for citing that news item, that got forgotten and/or side-tracked by my cynicism as to the institutional issues (and the mindfulness-bandwagon effect) – apologies for that noise -- was:
What concrete evidence and/or explanations do we really have that the quality or manner of mental attention (mindfulness) substantially affects the effects of pain? That we can practice pragmatically? (How many here experience pain, acute or chronic, occasionally or often?) Many here have participated in threads discussing pain, often starting with posters' complaints of their own pain. I, for one, noticed little in the way of practical conclusions in those discussions – though I may have missed something.
It has been demonstrated (and I, for one, have experienced) that:
a) concentrative absorption (e.g.classical 4th
jhana) can suppress (temporarily inhibit the experience of) pain;
b) momentary /
khanika concentration can repress pain – push it into the background with the intensity of elsewhere directed attention. – e.g. the concentration of a musician, a brain surgeon, of someone dealing with dire emergency, perhaps advanced hardcore
vipassana practices.
Further evidence for case (a): Than-Geof (whose anecdotal information is probably reliable) relates that some monk with advanced attainments once underwent major surgery using, instead of anesthesia, his own ability to enter deep absorption for an exactly determined period of time (that's the 3rd of the classical/
Visudhimagga 'masteries' of concentration). The surgery took longer than expected; the monk came to conscousness, inquired how much longer it would take, and promptly re-absorbed for the duration.
But advanced concentration skills are beyond what introductory mindfulness / meditation training is going to afford medical patients.
Then there are more grey (gray?) areas:
Can intensely cultivated
piti (concentrative rapture) experiences – which are known to physcially invigorate, generate healing energy – be systematically used medically?
Can meditative / mindfulness feedback mechanisms effecting the modulation of endorphins or other sorts of endogenous chemical neurotransmitters (the body's own pharmaceuticals) be invoked reliably?
Can cultivated mental / emotional lls, likewise systematically and reliably, modulate attention and perception to substantially alter the effects of pain?
There've been umptine studies, trials "suggesting" various such possibilities.
Where's the beef?*
(If anything significant has been found that truly works, wouldn't it have already been put into applied practice, big time?)
* For those not old enough to have seen it, there was, decades ago, a famous TV ad (maybe it was for Wendy's hamburger chain) featuring a feisty little old lady, poking around in her BigMac or whatever, protesting "Where's the beef?"
