Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om'

Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer, the head of Children's pediatric pain program, didn't need to be convinced of meditation's benefits; she knew from her own experience as a meditator. Zeltzer organized the recent training day with Salzberg and Trudy Goodman, a psychotherapist and founder of the InsightLA meditation community, paying them out of her own pocket and hosting it at her Encino home so her staff would be introduced to a tool she is passionate about.

"As a meditator, I learned the value of being present and how that allows clarity in processing our daily lives," Zeltzer said. "The clinical team sees children with chronic pain who are very difficult to treat and have been to many other specialists and feel discouraged by the time they come to us. I felt that learning to meditate would help the team feel a sense of balance and equanimity in the face of the anxiety and distress brought to them by these patients and their families."

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Subject of study

Scientists have studied the effects of meditation on pain for nearly three decades, ever since 1979, when MIT-trained microbiologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus and founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, used mindfulness meditation in a 10-week program to teach chronic pain patients how to cope. Kabat-Zinn's 1990 bestseller, "Full Catastrophe Living," described the technique he used -- mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR.

Since then, research has suggested that meditation reduces the brain's reaction to pain and increases pain tolerance. It has an effect on chronic back pain and can be an effective palliative for pain associated with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, studies have shown.

Kabat-Zinn's original study was done at the university's Medical Center's Stress Reduction Clinic, which has since been folded into the Center for Mindfulness. The 51 patients in the study, which was published in General Hospital Psychiatry in 1982, suffered from lower back, neck, shoulder, facial, coronary and GI pain, as well as headaches. At the end of the study, about two-thirds of the patients showed a pain reduction of at least 33% and half showed a reduction of at least 50%. The number of medical symptoms also decreased.

"MBSR's contribution has been to bring the heart of Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism into the mainstream of Western medicine," Kabat-Zinn said. "A referral to the Stress Reduction Clinic would now be part of the natural progression for anyone who sees patients with a long-standing pain condition."