Vidyamala Burch is a mindfulness and compassion teacher, coach, inspirational speaker, award-winning author and co-founder of the leading mindfulness and health charity Breathworks.

Vidyamala developed the world’s first Mindfulness-based Pain & Illness Management (MBPM) program. 

At age 17, she sustained spinal injuries that required multiple surgeries and left her with a complex back condition, chronic pain and partial paraplegia. After experiencing despondency, anger and hopelessness, she discovered mindfulness as a way to ease the mental torment associated with the physical pain. Soon she was meditating every day, with life-changing and transformative results. 
 
Her evidence-based approach has reached over 100,000 people around the world and is recognized by the NHS and health boards globally. Through her work, she hopes to pass on the tools that have helped her to reclaim a full, happy and meaningful life.

Learn more about Vidyamala here: https://www.vidyamala-burch.com/
Visit the Breathworks Mindfulness Charity here: https://www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk/

Mindfulness For Alleviating Chronic Pain

00:12 - Sara-Mai Conway introduces Vidyamala Burch
01:10 - Vidyamala introduces today’s topic and shares her journey
09:50 - How do you communicate these subtle, sophisticated practices in practical ways?
11:00 - Permission to move during this talk
12:01 - Defining mindfulness
13:40 - Pain and aversion to pain (primary and secondary suffering)
18:20 - Practical teaching methods to introduce primary & secondary suffering
20:28 - Two ways in which resistance to pain manifests, and how to practice with each
27:15 - Vidyamala guides a meditation (finding the middle way between denial and overwhelm)
40:50 - A participant shares their personal experience of denial versus overwhelm
46:15 - Reminder: mindfulness is not a substitute for medical help
48:40 - Whole body breathing as a tool for unwinding reactivity
49:54 - The fist exercise
51:17 - Learning to live with gravity
52:03 - The four diaphragms of breathing
54:50 - The 5 B’s of the breath
1:00:31 - Vidyamala guides a meditation (5 B’s of the breath body scan)
1:17:15 - Participants share what they noticed during the practice
1:20:05 - About Breathworks and the resources available for practitioners and teachers
1:23:47 - Vidyamala’s books
1:24:40 - Trauma-sensitivity and how nervous system dysregulation can lead to chronic pain 
1:29:39 - Closing remarks