Product Description

The newest treatment for pain is one of the oldest, most effective strategies for pain-free living: meditation. With Break Through Pain, meditation expert Shinzen Young teaches you how to retrain your relationship to pain through traditional meditation practices. Drawing from thirty years of results in the field, this respected teacher offers the essential techniques that have proven successful at painmanagement centers around the country. Break Through Pain adapts the core principles of mindfulness training to a practical process that can treat even extreme, chronic pain effectively, possibly reducing the need for drugs or surgery. Step-by-step techniques taught in plain language show how to overcome internal resistance-the key to transforming physical pain into a flow of pure energy. Includes Shinzen's five most effective meditations for pain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12745 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03
• Released on: 2005-04-12
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 69 pages

Customer Reviews

A "must-read" for anyone in distress or suffering
Enhanced by an accompanying integrated learning CD, Break Through Pain by Shinzen Young (a very experienced meditation teacher and founder of the Vipassana Support Institute and several North American meditation retreat centers) distills more than 30 years of experience in presented mediation as one of the oldest strategies for effecive pain-free living. Readers will learn how to apply the Buddhist Vipassana traditions that have delved into how to relieve pain for 2,000 years. Techniques to "melt" sensations of pain, break up pain through focused awareness, release the emotions of anger, fear, and resentment that amplify pain, and use pain as a gateway to emotional and spiritual freedom described as thoroughly as possible, for the lay practitioner to use for himself or herself. The practices of controlled breathing, guided meditation and mindful meditation especially are discussed in depth. An accompanying audio CD with easy-to-follow instructions walks the reader through basic techniques for pain relief. Written in plain terms accessible to the lay reader unfamiliar with the ancient practices, Break Through Pain is a "must-read" for anyone in distress or suffering, especially in situations where drugs and other conventional remedies just aren't working.

disappointed
The 1997 Sounds True cassette tape version is so much better than this watered-down, tired-sounding CD and book. After using the taped version, which has four longish guided meditations and is so inspiring and helpful, the very brief guidance for the meditations on the CD version gives the impression that the author became bored or burnt out with teaching. I will continue to use the the cassette tapes and will throw out the more recent CD and book.

Good material for those in pain....
Shinzen Young is a meditation teacher who has been around for a long time. Much of his work is in the area of transforming emotions and pain. This combination book and CD is useful for those who want to get more of a feeling of control around pain.

Specifically, this book teaches you the relationship between attention and pain, softening around pain and having a different experience of it through training the mind to hold it differently. While it won't take the place of morphine, it will certainly help people in pain to live with it more easily. It will also help them to reduce their anxiety around pain, which aggravates the subjective experience of pain.

I am no stranger to pain having gone through a back, neck and wrist surgery. I teach meditation myself and I have graduate education in biology, biochemistry and psychology. I feel I am in a good position to judge the merits of the book and the book certainly has many merits as does the CDs. If you are interested in an introduction to several types of meditation, you might also like The Beginner's Guide to Meditation. If you are quite serious about meditation, you can look at a variety of references on my listmania lists which appear on my profile.