Four Walls No Limits

If your illness or life circumstances prevent you from attending meditation classes it can be very helpful to have a good book or CD course that can guide your practice. If you can’t afford to buy new books or CD’s you might be able to find them second-hand on sites like E-Bay, or at your local library.

Below are some resources that might be useful. They’re divided into two groups – the first is specifically aimed at illness/pain, and the second is a list of general resources.

Resources specifically for people with chronic illness or pain

Although the fundamentals of meditation are fairly simple – plonk yourself on a cushion and concentrate on your breath – there are many types of meditations that can help people work with different issues in their lives. If you’ve got an illness there will probably be certain issues that come up for you in meditation. These often revolve around dealing with pain and fatigue, and with the strong feelings that can surround the experience of illness. These feelings can include grief, sadness, anger and bitterness, and can be very challenging to deal with.

I’ve listed below some teachers, books, and websites that are aimed primarily at people living with illness or pain.

Darlene Cohen – a Zen teacher, who has rheumatoid arthritis. One of her books is Turning Suffering Inside Out (A Zen approach to living with physical and emotional pain). She has a website with podcasts, written talks, and more books.

Jon Kabat-Zinn – One of his books is the well-known, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. His website sells CD’s of his books and meditations.

Miriam Greenspan – Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, Shambhala Publications.

Pema Chodren – When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Shambhala Publications

Shinzen Young – books, CD’s and a website specialising in meditation for pain management. His Book/CD set Break Through Pain contains a series of guided meditations with step-by-step techniques to help with pain management.

Steven Levine – a renowned writer and meditation teacher whose work focuses on death, dying, illness and the spiritual journey. He has written many books and has a personal website which sells CD’s of his guided meditations. This is a sample of one of his pain meditations.

Vidyamal Burch – a UK teacher who lives with a spinal cord injury. She has a website, and a book, Living Well with Pain and Illness: The mindful way to free yourself from suffering.

General meditation resources

Amazon – A list of Amazon’s most popular books on meditation

Bodhipaksa – meditation teacher with a very friendly and informative website with free on-line tutorials. He will answer e-mail questions about meditation and also has an excellent CD called Guided Meditation: for Calmness, Awareness, and Love.

Meditation Oasis – free meditation podcasts and a written meditation guide. The meditation podcasts are short, simple and easy to follow. The website also sells an online meditation course (US$95) and CD’s of meditations.

Meditation Timer – Audio Dharma’s website has a series of nifty little downloads that function as meditation timers. A bell is rung once at the start of the time period and three times at the end. This allows you to do your own meditation – without looking at your watch!

Plumline – an on-line Buddhist meditation group, conducted through Yahoo Messenger. Useful for people who want to connect with other meditators, but can’t leave their home to do it. Currently they meet on Mondays at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM US Mountain Time Zone. (The 6pm group is 11am in Australia).

Sharon Salzberg – a down-to-earth teacher focussing on insight and Loving Kindness meditation. Has a website with books and CD’s and here is an audio interview with Sharon Salzberg. One of her popular CD sets is Insight Meditation Kit: A Step By Step Course on How to Meditate.

Sounds True – on-line store selling a wide variety of meditation and spiritual CDs and downloads. Has an excellent free weekly podcast interview series called Insights at the Edge. Many of the teachers and writers listed in this article have been interviewed in this series.

Tara Brach – books, CDs and podcasts. Tara is a psychologist and teacher of Buddhist insight meditation. She has a particular focus on dealing compassionately with issues such as shame and anger. A very gifted teacher who combines psychology and Buddhism.

Zen Habits – this is a short but very useful article giving 20 practical tips for beginning meditation.

I hope this list is useful to you. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any more resources I could add to this list.

Photo credits to Emma Corcoran.

If you are going to buy anything from Amazon.com, please consider using these links in this article. If you do, I'll get a commission - a small percentage of the sale price. It won't cost you anything and it will help to support me and Four Walls No Limits.

When I was first introduced to Loving Kindness meditation I thought, ‘What’s all this lovey-dovey stuff? I don’t need this! I want to be a proper meditator!’ I grew to realise that those who resist Loving Kindness meditation are perhaps the ones who need it the most – it’s now my primary meditation practice.

I think Loving Kindness meditation can be very important for people who have a chronic illness. We live in a individualistic society that rewards and lauds individual achievement, financial gain, and the perfect body. It’s easy to feel shame or guilt at having a disabling illness when we feel so different from people around us. Many New Age attitudes towards illness such ‘we manifest our illness’ and ‘we choose our illness’ can compound such feelings of failure and inadequacy.

This is why I think Loving Kindness meditation is so beneficial. It’s a mindfulness practice for the heart: a way to cultivate feelings of compassion and love for self, others and ultimately all beings. Buddhist meditation teaches a standard form of this meditation, which usually consists of sending loving kindness to yourself, then to a loved person, a neutral person, a person you have difficulties with, and finally, the whole world. Lisa Dale Miller provides a free audio podcast of guided Loving Kindness meditations. Continue reading “Loving Kindness Meditation”

Emma Corcoran

This is the first in a series of four short articles about starting a meditation practice if you have a chronic illness. This first article is about establishing a simple meditation practice, and finding a meditation posture. The next three articles will focus on:

• Mindfulness practice in everyday life
• Loving Kindness meditation
• Meditation resources: books, CD’s, websites, podcasts etc.

I have CFS and use meditation as a way to help manage my condition. Meditation certainly isn’t a magic ‘cure-all’ for every disease – but I think it can be an invaluable tool in dealing with the many challenges chronic illness presents.

Continue reading “Meditating with a Chronic Illness”