1. Mindfulness
Sydney
Broome
Fremantle

2. Pain
‘An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’
Tissue defence
Threat management
Fear, anxiety & panic (limbic)
Fight-or-flight
Acute stress response

3. Pain is a conditioning stimulus
Punisher (peine = punishment)
Conditioning stimulus
Teaches us to avoid tissue damage
Attention (focus)
Hypervigilance
Rumination
Catastrophizing

4. Mindfulness-Based Stress
re-focusing
Mindfulness-Based Stress
Ruminating
Catastrophizing
Living for the moment so we don’t worry about the past or future
Focuses attention in the here-and-now & away from pain
Reduces hypervigilance, ruminating, catastrophizing
More than ‘distraction’
Active coping strategy (re-conditioning)
Stress reduction .

6. Mindfulness techniques
Re-focus, de-catastrophize, de-ruminate
Re-condition (adaptive learning)
Mantra (focus)
Breathing
Body scan
Mindful walking, eating, listening
Thought-blocking (bat it away)
Going with the flow (the river)
Yoga/Tai Chi/Pilates (physical re-activation & now focus)

7. Mindfulness in pain clinics
Effective part of multidisciplinary pain management
Simple, cheap, active self-management
Easier patient engagement than CBT
Integrates well with movement techniques (Yoga)
Good evidence for chronic low back pain, headache, anxiety, panic
Yoga & Tai Chi-good evidence for musculoskeletal pain
Educates us about body-mind & (w)holism

8. Pain staff stress & burnout

9. Stress & burnout
Fight
Fade

10. Pain transference

11. Limbic system
again!

12. From blocks to Buddhism