Pain Management through Meditation Practices
Swami Veda Bharati will host a “Pain Management through Meditation Practices” Conference at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama from 24th February through 28th February 2009. All who wish to attend are invited. Those who have ever had any kind of pain, those who treat or know people who experience pain, those who have already risen above all pains and wish to help their fellow humans – all will be welcome!
The fee for the conference and the daily schedule have not been finalized yet, but it is not too early to set aside this time as a time to come to SRSG to study and explore meditation and pain management.
This conference will deal with the treatment of pain from a meditational point of view. Areas of treatment known to medical practitioners and other therapists will be recognized. The spiritual philosophy of pain will be summarized as it applies to therapy.
What is the current research available on the activation of pleasure centres of the brain and related hormonal and physiological changes produced through meditation and through altruistic personal philosophies and practices? Relevant meditation practices not yet known to researchers and their application to treatment of pain will be explored.
What are the philosophical-spiritual, the psychological, and the neuro-physiological definitions of pain? And what are the pain mechanisms associated with each of these definitions? How are these three levels of pain integrated into a single mixture, and how are their separate facts separated so one can tell where one level ends and another begins?
An antidote to pain can be found in pleasure. Pleasure can serve as a distraction from pain, and with concentration, can replace pain. Pleasure can take the form of the physical, the social and loving, the creative, the philosophical, and the spiritually experiential.
What are the chemical-hormonal paths that pain takes? These waves may be diverted, reducing the strength and frequency of pain by replacing them with the opening of electrical and chemical-hormonal channels of pleasure through love, creativity, philosophical analysis and meditation experience. How meditation activates the pleasure centres of the brain and why this is the best antidote to pain will be addressed as will methods to train patients to replace the intensity and frequency of pain through devices like all-absorbing creativity, philosophical analysis, and meditational experience. 
Points to be considered include:
1. One is having a heart attack. Part of the problem is the actual physical heart attack, and rest is the anxiety one is suffering, causing increased stress and potentially adding to the strength of the attack. How may a meditation practitioner reduce the levels of stress and anxiety, reducing the risks and improving outcomes in cardiovascular disease and events such as heart attacks?
2. Meditators have lived with chronic pain and yet remain creative and happy and continue to serve others. What are their mental and neuro-physiological processes? How do their personal philosophies help them?
3. Some meditators have chosen to undergo surgery without anaesthesia.
Swamiji can speak experientially about his own experiences of pain management through meditation practices and reminds us, “Pain and suffering are two different things. . . There could be an objective measurement for pain, but there cannot be an objective measurement for suffering. For the same amount of pain, one person cries and wails and keeps the whole hospital awake all night. And the next person, who has pain all over his body, is suffering from metastasized cancer and has the quiet mind. Whose suffering is greater? One has learned to suffer less. One has learned to suffer less from the same amount of pain which others suffer more. That is where the spiritual strength comes in.”
Swamiji has given the impetus and direction for the “Pain Management through Meditation Practices” Conference, and Veena Maitra, an AHYMSIN Board member, heads the conference planning committee of volunteers, which would be interested in hearing of any personal experiences of meditation practices having helped someone manage pain. These personal experiences can be sent to hchhch1@gmail.com.