Hey you! Want to significantly reduce the negative impact chronic pain has on your life? Want to ease discomfort, while growing as a person? Want to walk through walls and leap buildings in a single bound?

Well, I can help you with three of those.

Enter compassion meditation. I’ve written about meditation before this. I told you about some important lessons from Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction. And I went over my 10 things that ease my back pain (with no drugs).

But last October (2014), I ran across this cool study in the Journal of Compassionate Health Care: Pilot study of compassion meditation intervention in chronic pain.

This study looked at people in chronic pain and used their significant others as a barometer for emotional and behavioral changes that occurred after the pain-patient participated in compassion meditations. The study found patients self-reported significantly reduced pain severity and anger, as well as increased pain acceptance after the meditations. The significant others corroborated these self-reports. Read the study for the details.

How awesome is that? You can make your life better AND the lives around you through simple compassion meditation techniques. You reduce discomfort, negative impacts, and grow in compassion for yourself.

Yeah–walking through walls and leaping buildings is still off the table. But you can still hike some amazing mountains with your dog (see picture below to complete this non-sequitur).

How has meditation worked for you? Is there a particular form you’re drawn to? How do you incorporate it into your day-to-day life?