...and this means ? I ask you this as someone with considerable personal experience in management of chronic pain. I'm glad you are not in such terrible circumstances that you might be compelled to try this, but I don't get where you suppose I've claimed any "false mechanism" for anything. And your point about some slippery slope on the woo scale where everyone slides off the edge into grift and quackery ? Yeah, I don't get that either. I would say it's maybe a wee tad close minded, but hey, look where we are on the internet. That would be belaboring the obvious.

Clearly, there are a whole boatload of visual imageries that are used for pain management. Just as clearly, much of the research done in this area credits them with some statistical benefit. The most rational explanation I've read seems to focus on the idea that chronic pain (not pain associated with a self limiting issue) is experienced as a mental phenomenon (regardless of initial causation.).. So it's not unreasonable to suppose that some degree of mental control over the sensation of pain might have lasting benefit.


Are you really so expert in this area that you are willing to call all of this research hogwash ? (What am I saying ? This is teh Beikforooms. Everyone with a keyboard and a connection to the internet is expert on every topic that comes up for discussion. ) I can tell you that waving your arms around, pretending to do Tai Chi, and mentally disciplining yourself to enter a meditative state while doing those same movements "feels" very different. Pain is, at it's most basic, a "feeling". Some people seem to have better luck learning to control it than others. We're not talking Benny Hinn's jacket sweeps here, just a method of reducing chronic pain that has some research that seems positive, and quite a few practitioners who report success with it.