Breath Work for Pain Management

NOTE: I am not a medical professional. If you have undiagnosed pain, chronic pain, or other health issues, please see a medical professional for proper treatment.

These are two breathing techniques I use for pain management. They may or may not work for you as they’re written. Feel free to adapt them so that they work in the best way possible for you.

Many years ago, I started with Thich Nhat Hanh‘s breathing meditation as part of my morning practice:
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
As my in-breath grows deep,
my out-breath grows slow.
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I feel ease.
Breathing in, I smile.
Breathing out, I release.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.

During the day, if I felt stressed and a full meditation wasn’t doable, I would shorten it to:
Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I am at ease.

Both are quite helpful for day-to-day mindfulness work. I also adapted it for dealing with insomnia, which is a post for another day.

I have been dealing with some serious pain this year—I had major surgery in January that meant I wasn’t doing much of anything except trying to heal. The past few months, I have been dealing with joint pain, as both knees and one ankle all decided to develop different issues at the same time. (I want to go back to my 14-year-old self and have a discussion about high heels.)

After surgery, I adapted the technique:

Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I am at ease.
I breathe in healing.
I breathe out pain.

This helped me deal with the pain pretty well during the day, and somewhat at night.

I was using this same technique on a night when I could not get comfortable—if one knee was happy, the other was not, and nothing was making the ankle happy, no matter how I arranged the cushions and ice packs and heating pads. I acknowledged that, and decided to focus on my breathing, and began the exercise. But I was finding it difficult to fall asleep, and not just because of the pain—I realized that breathing in the healing was creating active energy movement, and that was not going to help me fall asleep. Since I couldn’t get comfortable, I decided to try this variation:

Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I am at ease.
I breathe in comfort.
I breathe out pain.

As I did this breathing meditation, I started to feel more comfortable. Around 10 minutes later, I was asleep.

I do this every night at bedtime now, to coax my achy joints into relaxing, and to let go of the pain so I can fall asleep. Some nights it takes longer than others, but it has not failed me this past month.

May you be healed, healthy, and whole!