Treating Chronic Pain as a Disease and Not a Symptom

Viewing chronic pain as a disease and not a symptom of some underlying condition is a notion that is gaining traction in the medical field.  Melanie Thernstrom, a chronic pain sufferer and journalist has written a wonderful book: The Pain Chronicles, which highlights the experience and complexity of living with chronic pain.  Read more about chronic pain as a disease and not a symptom in this recent New York Times article: Giving Chronic Pain a Medical Platform of Its Own by Tara Parker-Pope

More Good News About Meditation

The news about meditation just keeps getting better!  In a recent study by UCLA neuroimaging researchers suggest that people who meditate have stronger connections between brain regions and show less age-related brain atrophy. The benefit of having stronger brain connections is the rapid relay of the electrical signals in the brain which typically decreases with age.

Eileen Luders, a visiting assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, led a team of investigators in the study using a new type of brain imaging (DTI) which provides insight into the structural connectivity of the brain. The study found that the differences between the meditators and the control group were not only in one area of the brain but involved networks that include most regions of the brain, and structures such as the limbic system and brain stem.
"Our results suggest that long-term meditators have white-matter fibers that are either more numerous, more dense or more insulated throughout the brain," Luders said. "We also found that the normal age-related decline of white-matter tissue is considerably reduced in active meditation practitioners."

To read more about this study, click here for the UCLA press release

Mindfulness in the Form of Peas

Mindfulness comes in many forms and for me, today, it came in the form of peas. Let me explain. This is the first year that my family and I have been involved in a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, thanks to our friends Cindy and Jim. I am not and have never been a vegetable gardener; the produce aisle at my local grocery and an occasional farmer's market have always been fine with me. So, I was a bit concerned that our foray into weekly vegetable pickups from the CSA would be just another thing to add to an already very full to-do list; but I was mistaken.

My weekly pickups have instilled more mindfulness in my Thursdays. I don't know what types of veggies we will be having for dinner until I actually pick them up. Without the pre-planning and future thinking of making lists of specific ingredients for an intended recipe, I have become accustomed to the surprise of picking up whatever has been harvested that day and enjoying the adventure of the present moment by combining often disparate ingredients into something simple but often delicious.

I have become mindful of the complex flavors of the multiple varieties of greens, have experienced the curiously intense flavor of freshly harvested fennel, and gained a new appreciation for the labor involved in picking and shelling enough peas to feed a family. Today as I ventured out to pick some fresh peas off the vines at First Root Farm, I recognized this new form of summer mindfulness meditation in my life; stopping in the middle of a busy day with many pressing deadlines and simply choosing and picking ripe, plump peas for the dinner table; no way to hurry up the process, just simply going with the rhythm of nature with a curious and open mind. I am not sure what next week's bounty will be, but these peas look incredible in this moment.