Mindfulness Changes Brain Centers Linked With Chronic Pain
Article titled: “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness: How Mindfulness Alters the Brain and Facilitates Emotion Regulation” Some of the same areas of the brain that become weak (prefrontal cortex, etc) or overactive (amygdala) with chronic pain and chronic health issues are the same ones that change for the better with mindfulness.
Mindfulness is defined as: ‘A mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.’ This is not only a way to change your brain to change your pain, but a great way to live moment to moment, which can bring a happiness and peace that many people are looking for. So it’s not something you do for lets say 10 minutes a day etc, its a way of operating and living throughout the day to keep your brain in its best state.
Here’s what the science and the article abstract linked below state about the research on the brain and mindfulness:
‘People high in dispositional mindfulness display greater activity in the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and insular cortex and lesser activity in the amygdala than those low in dispositional mindfulness when engaging in various emotionally salient tasks.’
