A creative research project

What if you could explore your deepening sense of mindfulness by taking a photograph that illustrates the insights?  This is the methodology used by new Australian research exploring how people with persistent pain experienced MBSR and integrated mindfulness into their daily lives by Dr Anita Amorim. She is the lead author and Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. Anita did MBSR for her own personal exploration a few years ago, and then became interested professionally in the power of this way of paying attention for people suffering persistent pain.

What we resist, persists.

Human beings have a natural tendency to move away from pain - whether emotional, mental or physical.  We do this in lots of different ways: denial, distraction, numbing through devices and substances, minimising and self-criticism.  This is so natural and can be adaptive in the short term. 

Carl Jung was said to coin the phrase: what we resist, persists. That is - resisting sensations, thoughts, emotions, or situations can give them more power, causing them to persist or even grow over time, and end up defining our lives. Psychologically, this can keep unresolved feelings—like anger, fear, or sadness—active, influencing behaviour, relationships, and perception.

MBSR invites clear attention to all of our experience; it invites self-reflection, and conscious acknowledgment of reality – inside and out. Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity. It allows us to observe thoughts and feelings without judgment, creating space for transformation and growth when it goes well.

Pain no longer controls my life, I do.

So how did these participants go in this reflective, qualitative study?

Anita asked participants to take a photo that reflected any understandings or insights they were having, once every three days throughout their eight-week course. After the course, the research team conducted interviews with each MBSR participant to track their evolving understanding of mindfulness using the photographs as a starting point. 

“We asked questions such as, ‘Can you describe how you felt when you took this photo?’ or ‘How does this photo relate to the content you learned in the MBSR course’,” she said.

“Most participants reported how mindfulness helped them to perceive pain differently, which often led them to re-signify it or accept its presence.

“Such a shift seemed to give participants an enhanced sense of control … reclaiming control over their lives.” 

Letting go the struggle

One participant, Clara, reported that as her perception of the pain changed, the suffering eased.  “Your immediate reaction to pain is usually trying to make it stop, trying to change it, trying to dull it, getting distressed by it,” she said.  She was able to take up the invitation to lean into her pain and explore it while quieting her reaction to it. 

Another participant, David spoke about how his pain made it hard for him to meditate at first and he could only meditate lying on his side.  “It was just like a gradually accepting that I’m in pain … because if I don’t accept it, then I’m always frustrated,” he said. 

The exploration of his pain led him into constructive action to find a physiotherapist to work more actively with it. He submitted this photo of three stems sitting in a jar of water symbolising his experience of personal growth and resilience he discovered through the MBSR practice and teachings.

Opening to the whole body

For Louise, it was an image of her bare feet standing on grass after a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney that captured her mindfulness moment. 

“They had this display with different types of grass which was really interesting because you just think ‘grass’,” she said. The feel of the grass on the soles of her feet took her out of her head and into the moment. This is a powerful aspect of the mindfulness training process: vividly occupying the actual sensory experience we are having in our lives, rather than staying stuck in the cognitive realm of rumination and worry.

 Release from concerns about others

For John, his photo of a mural with the moon rising above it connected him to the present moment and illuminated his concerns about other people’s thoughts.  “For me, it was like ‘Yeah, I’m looking at the moon, I’m aware of the moon, and the faces in the mural are attending to something else, and I don’t know what that is,” he said. “But that’s life. I look at you but I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

The study showed how the combination of using photos and interviews offered nuanced insight into how participants experienced mindfulness in daily life.

And while the program did not reduce pain experience for all the participants, practising this approach to life’s difficulties including pain influenced their perceptions of pain, improved their emotional well-being and created connection. 

Read the full report here.

Pain to Peace: An 8-week mindfulness program combining pain neuroscience education with meditation practices - specifically designed for people with persistent pain.

—Timothea Goddard