You Are Not Your Pain

by Vidyamala Burch, Danny Penman

Developed by two authors, Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman who themselves have struggled with severe pain after sustaining serious injuries, You Are Not Your Pain reveals a simple eight-week program of mindfulness-based practices that will melt away your suffering.

The eight meditations in this book take just ten to twenty minutes per day and have been shown to be as effective as prescription painkillers to soothe some of the most common causes of pain. These mindfulness-based practices soothe the brain's pain networks, while also significantly reducing the anxiety, stress, exhaustion, irritability, and depression that often accompanies chronic pain and illness.

Whether you experience back pain, arthritis, or migraines, are suffering from fibromyalgia, celiac disease, or undergoing chemotherapy, you will quickly learn to manage your pain and live life fully once again.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Meditation, Medical, Audiobook

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2015

About the author

VIDYAMALA BURCH is founder and codirector of Breathworks, an organization offering mindfulness-based approaches to living well with chronic pain, illness, and stress and with teachers in over 15 countries. She is the author of LIVING WELL WITH PAIN AND ILLNESS, based on her acclaimed program, and YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAIN.

Reviews

[Karen Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are several things I really like about this book. I like the CD with its 8 tracks of guided mindfulness practices - Vidyamalas voice is just gorgeous and instantly transports me into a calmer, less tense, trusting state where my painful body can relax and my breath can help me be 'be here now'. I like the case histories, not just Dannys & Vidyamalas own personal experiences, but all the other examples of people suffering with different conditions, and their ways of translating mindfulness into everyday activities that gave them so much more freedom and enjoyment in their lives again. I like the encouraging tone of the book and the gentle way in which the reader is invited to experience these moments of mindfulness as they progress through the course and reflect on how it feels for them. I've read both 'Finding Peace' and 'Living well', the 2 authors other books, and found them both incredibly useful and helpful. I've done the courses and now teach mindfulness, so I've read a lot around this subject and I can honestly say that this book has made mindfulness as simple & do-able as possible - anyone could read or listen to this book, follow the CD tracks and begin, immediately, to experience the benefits for themselves. I'm giving copies of this great book to family, friends and neighbours as I know it will help ease their suffering. I can't recommend "You are not your pain" highly enough.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent basic primer on mindfulness-- I'd recommend this for anyone who suffers from chronic pain and is interested/curious about how alternative, non-doctor oriented modalities can help. Includes a CD of guided meditations-- very useful/helpful and worth the price of the book. Vidyamala is an excellent teacher, with a very comforting, soothing voice.

[Stephanie Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent guide to using mindfulness meditation to address chronic pain. Both authors deal with significant physical challenges, and have created an 8-week program they use in the UK to work with others. Inspiring, specific, and the meditation CD is fantastic (can also download all the meditations). Highly recommended.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book with easy to use meditations. Nothing works for everyone but if you're dealing with chronic pain, illness or stress it's worth checking out.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I listened to Vidyamala Burch during an online mindfulness summit, and was please when someone addressed chronic pain in a real way. I haven't completed the program, I don't know if it will work for me. But I give it 5 stars for putting into words exactly what happens to me when my pain gets worse, exactly what my thoughts are when my pain gets worse. Instead of trying to explain to other people, I will print out excerpts from this book to hand to them to read. I've already put parts of the book in front of my husband - that in itself can be a lifesaver. And explaining to me how I'm putting myself into a cycle of secondary pain - also a lifesaver. Thank you Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I need to read this several more times to really implement all aspects of the practice into my daily life.

Update: Just finished it for the 3rd time. So much life-changing information to incorporate. I feel extremely grateful to the authors for writing this book.

[Lisa Butterworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really well written and well laid out book/program. It is written specifically to deal with physical pain, but I think all the methods and ideas would work equally well for depression or anxiety, it's all pain after all.

[Prisa Hdez Rdez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente guía de apoyo para consultantes y terapeutas. Vale la pena leer y releer

[Lisa Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful book for understanding the difference between primary pain (actual, physical pain) and secondary pain (the mental loop of what we tell ourselves about our pain--which can either reduce the primary pain or increase it).

[Nancy Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book and method to follow if you're suffering with chronic pain. The meditations were very helpful and the exercises to help mentally manage being in pain all the time were useful. The authors have a good and simple way of relating the information that is need to reduce suffering.

[Jmp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical suggestions ideas for helping others or yourself dealing with pain.

[Marius Heje Mæhle · Rating 4 out of 5]

📘 Overview
You Are Not Your Pain presents an 8-week mindfulness-based program for people living with chronic pain, drawing on MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) and MBPM (Mindfulness-Based Pain Management).
The program is built around two short daily practices (often ~2 × 10 minutes) and frequent micro-practices throughout the day.
The core insight is simple but radical:
Pain is often unavoidable. Suffering is largely optional.
While physical pain may persist, much of what makes pain unbearable comes from secondary suffering: fear, resistance, catastrophizing, frustration, and self-criticism. Mindfulness directly targets these layers.
Through structured practices (breath, body scan, movement, awareness, kindness), the reader learns to:
• Reduce secondary suffering
• Interrupt automatic pain reactions
• Expand identity beyond the painful body
• Respond rather than react
• Live with more ease, stability, and connection—even when pain remains

🔑 Core Messages
1. You are not your pain
You have pain, but you are not defined by it.
Your identity is larger than bodily sensations. At a deeper level, you are the awareness that experiences pain, not the pain itself.
2. Primary pain vs. secondary pain
• Primary pain: unavoidable physical sensation
• Secondary pain: fear, resistance, anger, tension, catastrophizing
Mindfulness dramatically reduces secondary pain—even if primary pain remains.
Learning to accept primary sensations allows secondary suffering to soften and progressively diminish.
3. Resistance amplifies pain
“What we fight, we fuel.”
Struggling against pain adds muscular tension, emotional fear, and cognitive alarm.
Letting go of the fight does not mean resignation—it means dropping the unnecessary struggle.
4. Awareness itself is healing
Mindfulness calms pain-processing circuits and reduces emotional reactivity.
Simply seeing clearly what is happening, moment by moment, often reduces suffering without force.
5. Self-compassion is medicine
Kindness toward yourself:
• Soothes the nervous system
• Reduces stress chemistry
• Makes pain more workable
Compassion is not weakness—it is a stabilizing force.
6. Short, frequent practices work best
Micro-practices throughout the day reshape your relationship to pain faster and more sustainably than long, infrequent sessions.

🧠 Core Mindfulness Skills
You learn three foundational skills, woven throughout the program:
1. Focused awareness
○ Paying attention to one thing at a time (breath, body)
○ Builds calm, stability, and grounding
2. Open monitoring
○ Resting in broad, open awareness
○ Observing thoughts, sensations, emotions as changing events
○ Helps you perceive life more accurately and less reactively
3. Loving-kindness and compassion
○ Cultivating warmth and care toward yourself and others
○ Dissolves stress, isolation, and reactivity
○ Restores connection and wholeness

🧭 Doing Mode vs. Being Mode
• Doing mode: problem-solving, analyzing, fixing
○ Useful for tasks
○ Harmful when applied to pain, emotions, or distress
When the mind tries to solve pain emotionally, it often creates:
• Anxiety, Stress, Depression, Exhaustion
• Being mode: pure awareness
○ Thoughts and emotions are observed, not fought
○ You learn to look at thoughts, not from them
○ Thoughts are not facts
Shifting into Being mode allows thoughts and emotions to soften naturally.

🫁 Meditation Practice – Breathing Anchor (Refined)
Why
The breathing anchor provides a steady reference point that:
• Signals safety to the nervous system
• Reduces amplification of pain
• Interrupts catastrophic thinking
How
• Bring attention to the natural rhythm of the breath
• Do not control or change it
• When pain, tension, or thoughts arise:
○ Acknowledge briefly
○ Gently return attention to the breath
• Practice for 1–5 minutes, many times per day
Dropping awareness into the breath regularly can head off anxiety, stress, depression, and exhaustion before they escalate.

🕊️ Three-Minute Breathing Space
A brief, structured reset for moments of distress or pain flare-ups. It helps you step out of autopilot, shift from Doing mode to Being mode, and respond rather than react.
How:
1. Notice what is present (thoughts, emotions, sensations).
2. Gather attention on the breath.
3. Expand awareness to the whole body, holding pain within a wider field.
Key insight: Pain may remain, but it no longer fills the entire experience.

📚 Chapter summary
Intro quotes
- The book is based on MBCT - Mindfulness Based Cognitive Theory, and then based on MBPM - Mindfulness Based Pain Management.
- The approach takes patience, courage, and a willingness to work of practice. No one else can do the work for you, but good and trustworthy guides are invaluable.
- Mindfulness hands you back the volume to the pain
- Mindful acceptance is not resignation to your fate. It is not the acceptance of the unacceptable.
- Accepting the sensations of primary suffering allows the secondary suffering to take care of itself - and to progressively diminish.
- You are not your pain. You are the awareness that feels the pain.
- Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
- When we stop fighting our experience, we stop adding layers of tension and fear.
- Mindfulness allows you to respond rather than react.
- You can learn to live well, even with pain.
- Open to your experience rather than contracting around it.
- Thoughts are not facts — they are mental events.

Week 1 – “Mindfulness: Learning to Live in the Present Moment”
Focus: Developing awareness of breath and body.
Purpose: Stop “auto-pilot pain reactions.”
Key Themes:
• Noticing how the mind amplifies pain.
• Distinguishing between pain sensations vs. emotional reaction.
Main Practices:
• 10–20 min Body Scan
• Breath Meditation (Anchoring in the breath)
Habit release:
- Take a walk in the woods. Spend a little time with nature, and soak up the natural surroundings.
Key quotes
- Mindfulness hands you back the volume to the pain
- Use Body Scan when you go to bet
- Try to be as kind and understanding towards yourself as you can
- Remind yourself that this too shall pass
- Simply watching you pain with calm and acceptance can begin to transform suffering.
- Be gentle with yourself; you are doing the best you can

Week 2 – “Turning Toward Difficulty”
Focus: Meeting pain with curiosity instead of resistance.
Purpose: Reducing secondary suffering by stopping the fight.
Key Themes:
• “What you resist, persists.”
• Opening gently to discomfort.
Main Practices:
• Breath and Body Awareness with Pain Focus
• 3-Minute Breathing Space (short mindful reset)
• Label sensations: tightness, heat, pressure, pulsing.
Habit release:
- Watch the sky for a while. Pause for a while and soak up this expanded awareness. Throughout the week, stop once every hour and just take everything in.
Key Quotes
- Feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, and exhaustion can create physical pain, and make us more sensitive to it, and make it more unpleasant than it need to be. This triggers a vicious cycle.
- Doing vs being mode: auto vs conscious mode, analyzing vs sensing, avoidance vs approaching, striving vs accepting, and how you view thoughts


Week 3 – “Mindfulness of the Breath and Body in Movement”
Focus: Mindful movement and gentle physical exploration.
Purpose: Reduce fear-based avoidance.
Key Themes:
• Reconnecting with the body in compassionate ways.
• Moving with the body, not against it.
Main Practices:
• Mindful Movement (gentle stretching, slow yoga-like motions)
• Awareness of posture, transitions, walking
Habit release:
- Watch a kettle boil. Habits of impatience can be compelling.
Key quotes:
- Try to avoid the trap of believing that you should be able to move in a certain way - or to a certain extent
- Adopt an attitude of play and curiousity
- Focus on the less challenged parts of your body first


Week 4 – “Learning to Respond, Not React”
Focus: Understanding automatic pain reactions.
Purpose: Build emotional space.
Key Themes:
• Reactivity creates more suffering.
• Response = choice + awareness.
Main Practices:
• Breathing Space (longer version)
• Observing thoughts without buying into them
• Questioning thought patterns: Is this true? Is this helpful?
Habit release:
- Make peace with gravity. Let your weight sink into gravity with acceptance and self-compassion
Key quotes:
- Mindfulness acceptance first step is to learn to be compassionate towards yourself. Stop attacking yourself for your perceived failures, weakness, and inadequacies. Compassionate acceptance will improve your life
- Pacing principles
○ Pacing is about taking a break before you need it
○ Start within your baseline
○ Remember to change your position regurarly
○ Vary the ways you use your body throughout the day
○ Keep to your plans and goal without stressing to much
○ On a bad day, take more rests breaks
○ Do something enjoyable on your rest days



Week 5 – “Mindfulness of Thoughts”
Focus: Seeing thoughts as mental events, not facts.
Purpose: Break catastrophizing loops.
Key Themes:
• Cognitive defusion.
• Pain catastrophizing = amplifying systems in the brain.
Main Practices:
• Watching thoughts like clouds passing
• Naming thoughts (“worrying”, “planning”, “catastrophizing”)
• Expanding awareness beyond painful sensations
Habit release:
Write down ten good things at the end of the day that makes you happy or gives you pleasure.
Key quotes:
• Understanding the negativity bias is the first step towards rebalancing it.
• Evolution has given us a brain that constantly tricks us into overestimating threats and understanding rewards and opportunities
• The art of pacing is learning to fit it into your life
• Experimentation is the key

Week 6 – “Mindfulness of Emotions”
Focus: Emotional literacy.
Purpose: Work skillfully with fear, sadness, frustration.
Key Themes:
• Emotions are forms of energy in the body.
• Opening instead of contracting.
Main Practices:
• R.A.I.N.-style work (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture)
• Breath & Body practice focusing on emotional waves
• Loving-kindness seeds (“May I be well…”)
Habit release:
Stopping to look and listen for 5 min each day
Key quotes:
• Pain disability: that is, the degree to which pain interfered with one's life - was far lower in those who were more accepting
• Open monitoring
• Increase the baseline with 5% each week

Week 7 – “Kindness Towards Yourself”
Focus: Self-compassion as pain medicine.
Purpose: Reduce internal criticism; increase resilience.
Key Themes:
• Self-kindness reduces stress chemistry (cortisol).
• You can befriend your pain instead of fearing it.
Main Practices:
• Loving-Kindness Meditation
• Compassionate Body Scan
• Gentle phrases: “This is hard — and I can meet it with kindness.”
Habit release:
Commit an unexpected act of kindness
Key quotes:
• When it comes to kindness, be reckless.

Week 8 – “Living With Presence: A New Relationship to Pain”
Focus: Integrating mindfulness into normal life.
Purpose: Make mindfulness a sustainable habit.
Key Themes:
• “Pain may stay, but suffering can diminish.”
• You expand beyond your pain identity.
Main Practices:
• Daily short practices multiple times/day
• Mindfulness in everyday activities (eating, walking, waiting)
• Creating a long-term plan of practice.
Key quotes:
- The three core mindfulness skills
You have learned three foundational mindfulness skills:
1. Focused awareness – learning to place attention on one thing at a time (such as the breath or body) to cultivate calm and stability.
2. Open monitoring – resting the mind in a broad, open field of awareness and observing how experiences constantly change from moment to moment, allowing you to perceive life more accurately and live more harmoniously.
3. Loving-kindness and compassion – cultivating acceptance, care, and warmth toward yourself and others, which softens stress and reactivity and restores a sense of connection and wholeness.

🧰 The Mindfulness Toolkit (Consolidated)
Key reminders for daily life:
• Use the Three-Minute Breathing Space
• Thoughts are not facts
• Pace yourself
• Notice what is pleasant
• Recognize Doing mode
• Move slowly and mindfully
• Befriend difficult feelings
• Accept what you cannot change
• Change what you can, gently
• Remember your breath is always with you
• Practice small acts of kindness
• If overwhelmed: zoom out
• If numb: zoom in

[Nancy Butts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has the longest title of all time, having to do with using mindfulness meditation to reduce suffering in an eight-week program. It includes audio recordings, which I had to download from a website, of guided meditations. I did find Vidyamala’s voice quite soothing [and her British accent, with no trace at all of her New Zealand upbringing oddly, was a nice bonus]. But of all the meditations, it is only the Body Scan that I come back to. I found it much more detailed and thus more helpful than the scant instructions for this practice on the Headspace app. I especially liked the concept of how the entire body is touched and massaged by the breath, or echoes of it.

I also thought there were many helpful suggestions in this book for sufferers of chronic pain, especially the pacing diary. I read the book all at once, but for now I am not going back through it one week at a time to actually begin the process as I am already using the Headspace app which for now at least I am finding more helpful. But I may come back to this at a later date.

[Neil McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't or have ever mediated , this is a step by step instructional book.

The author has achieved remarkable health through meditation.

Congratulations, good for her and for creating this book to assist other in need.

I am able to walk, which I do listening to audiobooks.

This is time in which I set aside to focus on my breathing and health each day (or as offer as able)

Yes, I believe it is important to set aside healthful time for one's self each day.

Book recommended to broaden ones options for health.

[Meg]

Great content and excellent narration-- but problematic in an audio format, as it's an 8-week program that you'll need to return to again and again. I may need to purchase a copy of this book in order to read it the way the authors intended (unlikely). But I enjoyed listening to the first few chapters, anyhow.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The audio book is read by Vidyamala Burch. She has a beautiful voice. I still listen to certain chapters and meditations almost daily. They are very comforting and act to heal me from physical pain and a significant amount of work stress.

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually did this with a class in 2018 the CD is very good speaking from someone who has Fibromyalgia and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Some days I needed this to get though. Well be rereading soon.

[Mario Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on mindfulness.

[Christjan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pain is Right

Purchased for a course. Started good but devolved into another bummer of psychiatric self-serving rubbish. Sad face. Seriously sad face.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you use the meditation guides, it helps. It takes discipline to maintain.

[Sarah Bigham · Rating 5 out of 5]

8 week program of mindfulness related to chronic pain. Comes with CD of guided meditations. I cannot recommend this highly enough for anyone dealing with pain.

[Stephen Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is healthy, especially on CD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[María · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha parecido un libro bastante bueno ya que, entre otras cosas, destaco que está completamente fuera del mito actual de " ser feliz" y considero que refleja muy bien la esencia del mindfulness

[Holly Mclaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to this one and loved the meditation narration. I plan to buy this one in hard copy, so I can practice the meditations more.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book on mindfulness to help with pain. Focus seems be on breathing and being more aware. Very specific exercises to help.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3 stars // ★★★☆☆

If you already know about neuroplastic pain and mindfulness techniques, you won't learn anything new. Still a decent book regardless.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. My only quibble is the authors found mindful enlightenment very early in their pain journeys, so it's a little hard to identify with them. But this doesn't take away from the fact that the info they provided is sound

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be a journey, as I continue with the 8 week program. I decided to listen to all audio CDs and then started my daily mediations as instructed/suggested by the author. I have found the meditations very helpful!

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've read the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn or are already well-versed in the literature of mindfulness and mindfulness meditations, this book won't necessarily say anything new or earth-shattering that you won't have already heard elsewhere before, but the CD that it comes with is quite useful.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting program. I am starting my 8 week plan next week. The book itself was hard to get through on audiobook but the material seems solid enough that I recommended it to a couple of friends. I will update this review if I am blown away.