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Young woman having knee pain

Study: Brain Scans Show That Mindfulness Reduces Acute Pain

The volunteers who meditated during a controlled pain experiment reported a 32% reduction in severity

Recently, neuroscientists at the University of California – San Diego studied whether mindfulness meditation can reduce the perception of pain. That, of course, meant actually causing the volunteers to experience pain. What’s at stake is a central claim of mindfulness meditation: “One of the central tenets of mindfulness is the principle that you are not your experiences,” said senior author Fadel Zeidan, PhD, associate professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “You train yourself to experience thoughts and sensations without attaching your ego or sense of self to them, and we’re now finally seeing how this plays out in the brain during the experience of acute pain.” University of California – San Diego, “Mindfulness meditation reduces pain Read More ›