What chanting gives me when pain takes over

As some of you may already know, I had been practicing various forms of mindfulness and meditation for over thirty years by the time chronic pain came into my life. I had learned different ways of working with my attention, my breath, and the constant activity of my own mind.

But pain changed the equation. Many of the things I knew how to do suddenly felt much harder to access when my body and brain were overwhelmed by pain that was both acute and relentless. This was also a time when the anchors of my daily life were slipping away, and the identity I’d built seemed to disappear.