Embodied Mindfulness — The ‘New Medicine’

for Chronic Pain and Anxiety

I’m Steve Templin, a retired Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncturist, and Biofeedback practitioner. Now I teach individually tailored, embodied mindfulness skills to people online to help them overcome chronic pain, anxiety, and more.

The treatment of chronic pain, and other chronic illnesses, is a prime example of where high-tech, modern medicine has fallen short, disastrously short.

Chronic Pain in the U.S., the most medically advanced country in the world, is an epidemic involving up to 20% of the population. The problem is that conventional medicine is focused on resolving pain in the body when the real cause of most chronic pain isn’t in the body, but in stress and trauma-induced circuitry in the brain.

When pain becomes chronic, meaning that it lasts beyond three months, beyond the time it takes to heal physical injuries, the source of the pain in the brain has changed. Whereas physical pain pathways drive acute pain, chronic pain is maintained by emotional centers in the brain. The pain is just as real, but its source has changed.

This new neurological understanding of chronic pain and anxiety also applies to most other chronic conditions, especially those that resist conventional approaches to treatment. The emerging insight here is that most chronic symptoms are not hardware issues, but rather software or programming issues, and should be treated accordingly.

This begins to explain why the chronic pain epidemic is growing and why novel treatments like emotionally expressive writing and mindfulness approaches like mine, that engage and reprogram the brain’s emotional centers, are proving to be highly effective. 

Embodied Mindfulness is more than a meditative practice, it’s a state of being that’s nurtured with practice. The more consciously embodied and present we become the less defined we are by our early life traumas and stress-based conditioning. This conditioning plays a huge role in determining our health, emotionally and physically, as adults.

This process is based on 35 years of my clinical work, trauma-related neuroscience, Energy Medicine, Somatic Psychology, and the HeartMath Institute’s science and practices. This practice is particularly well suited to the sensitivity and needs of the highly sensitive person (HSP).

I’ve validated this approach with thousands of heart rate variability sessions and positive client outcomes.

(Click here for more background and supportive research)