The Pain Relief Secret: How to Retrain Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, and Overcome Chronic Pain

When you pay attention to your pain mindfully, you’re observing it without fear. Neuroscientists have shown that mindfulness increases feelings of safety by deactivating the brain’s fear circuits. This disrupts the pain-fear cycle and helps your brain interpret signals properly.

Pain is a real feeling, but that feeling does not necessarily reflect real damage in the body. Further, although pain depends on brain activity for its existence, this does not mean you can simply think pain away or that pain is your fault. Unfortunately, the processes which create pain are mostly unconscious and outside your control.

The nervous system is deeply influenced by emotions. In turn, the nervous system is intimately involved in the regulation of immune responses and of inflammation. Neuropeptides, protein molecules secreted by nerve cells, serve to promote inflammation or to inhibit it. Such molecules are found in heavy concentration in the intestines, in the areas m