This article was originally posted at JamieChasesButterflies.com on June 24, 2017.
The last week I have been practicing body scan meditation. In my pain management class we did this meditation and I did it with my counselor too. At my library I found guided meditation CDs by Jon Kabat-Zinn that I have been following. I like his voice. A long time ago I tried the body scan meditation and the voice did not work for me, so I stopped. I am now on a quest to find meditation CDs that will work for me. Jon Kabat-Zinn works for me so far and I am still looking for others. I do not own a Smart phone and my lap top computer doesn’t have a lot of memory so I am not able to download apps. My pain management class gave a list of apps some of them are free some of them cost money. At the end of this post I will share links to where to find these apps.
Body scan meditations help you learn what your body does and doesn’t need in order to thrive. It also helps you understand and have compassion for the stress and anxieties in your life. Sometimes anxiety and stress makes pain worse. It’s a vicious cycle.
Benefits of Body Scan Meditation:
- Body scan meditation helps you work with the physical pain.
- It helps you link your emotions and physical sensations so you can have compassion and reduce the anxiety and the stress.
- It uses physical sensations to help you with the emotional aspects of pain.
- It also allows you to go deep into investigating your own body through moment by moment experiences.
- The moment by moment allows you to feel different things in your body, such as, pain, aches, itches, tingles, firmness, lightness, heaviness, warmth, cold, and neutrality.
My experience thus far has been good. I do my body scan meditation before I go to bed. I recently had to stop taking gabapentin because I had gained 71 pounds of weight. Weight gain is one of the side effects of taking this medication. I wanted to try a non-drug way to help me handle my nerve pain. My nerve pain happens while I am lying down and trying to sleep. The first time I did the body scan meditation I did in a large group along with the teacher of the pain management class. Although, I saw the benefit of the meditation I did not like doing it in a large group. To me, the body scan is a deeply personal experience and I wanted to do this in the privacy of my own home. The second time went better. It was just me, hooked up to the Emwave machine with the counselor talking me through a meditation. I’m was excited when I saw that my library had a whole slew of different types of meditation CDs that I could check out and try out at home before I invest money. I suggest you do this. Go to your libraries website or library itself and see their selection of meditation CDs and pick out the ones that you like the best and then invest.
With my tracheal stenosis and not being able to manage my oxygen and heart rate together this gives me an opportunity to get into that peaceful, relax mode. With my small trachea I am always in survival mode and that is not healthy for me. It makes my pain worse. It also keeps me from sleeping well. My counselor suggested I do the body scan meditation a couple of times a day. I’m still working on doing this. For right now, I am doing it before I go to bed and then I will slowly work up to 3 times a day. I do see the benefit. I do feel results. I am sleeping. My pain levels are manageable.
Here are some apps that you can download:
- Breath 2 relax
- Relax Melodies
- Stress check by Azumio
- Iphysiometer
- Bio breathing
- Paced breathing
- Peaceful breathing
- Breathing zone
- Inner balance
- Mindfulness for Beginners — Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Jamie Holloway lives in the Portland, Oregon area. Since October 2011 she has been sharing her Journey Toward Health and Wellness with Vasculitis through her blog at JamieChasesButterflies.com. As most of her articles will be about Men’s Health, Jamie intends to write her articles as though she was sharing important information with her brother, nephews and friends. We hope you are as inspired as we are with the raw candor Jamie uses in her writing. If you would like to help support Jamie’s writing efforts please Donate now.
