Thanks to toothache and back ache, Padraig O'Morain was able to put theory into practice.
'It won't put an end to the pain but will make a difference to their quality of life," says Dr Kate Healy.
She is talking about a course in mindfulness aimed at people with chronic pain, stress or fatigue and which she and her colleague, KD Ryan, have just presented at the Dublin Buddhist Centre.
The eight-session course is called Blue Sky and it is, as the above suggests, out of the ordinary. The presenters teach techniques of mindfulness (deliberate awareness of what is going on right now, and not as easy as it sounds), relaxation and a little yoga.
On the first day of the course Ryan tells those of us who took part in it that he has no interest good, bad or indifferent in converting us to Buddhism.
Healy, a GP, asks us to continue to bring our medical problems to our own GPs.
The course, she says later, "is not alternative medicine - it's not even complementary medicine. It's more of a lifestyle we are teaching - not medicine."
With the disclaimers out of the way, we get down to business. We learn to do a body scan - focusing on different parts of your body in full awareness while lying down - and each session starts with a scan led by Healy.
Then we learn about mindfulness, usually from Ryan, who used to work for Barclays Bank in the UK and who then, in what must be a pretty unusual career move for a financial services executive, became a Buddhist and director of the Dublin Meditation Centre.
He leads us through 20 minutes of mindfulness of our breathing and then it's time for a tea break. I am pleased to report that the Dublin Buddhist Centre is not as austere as you might expect and does a good line in chocolate biscuits.
Later we do a bit of gentle yoga, under the watchful eye of Healy and Ryan.
What's it all got to do with chronic pain and stress and fatigue?
"We can't make the essence of the stress or pain go away but we can help people with how they get on with their lives through mindfulness," says Ryan.
As they explain on the course, we have a choice in how we respond to our experience.
If we can dwell in the present moment, we can be aware of our experience without reacting to it. The pain, illness or sources of stress may not go away, but responding differently can loosen its grip on us and give us a sense of initiative and peace.
As it happened, there were plenty of opportunities to try out the approach during the course. They included the pain of a week-long tooth infection and a variety of neck and shoulder pains from lying on a rock-hard pillow which smuggled itself into my bed one night.
True enough, the approach didn't make the pain go away. However, I didn't make matters worse by telling myself how awful and unfair it was that I was in pain and I was able to maintain awareness of those parts of my body which were not in pain and of what was going on around me. The net result was a significant reduction in distress.
Of all the concepts taught to us on the course, that of primary suffering and secondary suffering was the one I found most helpful.
Primary suffering is the pain that comes from, say, a toothache. Secondary suffering is what we add onto it by "awfulising" about it: it's terrible that I have this pain, really unfair, I can't stand it, my day is ruined, why does this have to happen to me, and so on. Maintaining mindfulness makes it possible to cut out the secondary suffering so that you are dealing with the basic pain alone.
If this all makes the course sound terribly solemn, it's giving the wrong impression. Healy and Ryan can do "serious" but a gentle humour runs through their interaction with participants and the Dublin Buddhist Centre frequently resounded with laughter while we were there.
Why did they decide to run this course?
"I as a doctor would see a lot of people with pain, chronic stress and chronic fatigue," says Healy. "We have both come from a place where we are meditating and we have both seen the benefits."
Ryan has seen a much-loved relative suffer with chronic back pain and has experience of similar courses in the UK.
Their work is also inspired by a famous course run at the Stress Reduction Clinic of the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn for more than 10 years. Patients referred to his clinic by their doctors suffer from everything from high blood pressure to cancer.
Kabat-Zinn who is "hot" at the moment - he has been written up in Time magazine - has described his method in his book Full Catastrophe Living. His very readable introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are, is currently in the bookshops.
Healy and Ryan hope to see their course brought into medical settings. "We would love to get into hospitals or into primary care programmes," she says.
"We would be looking forward to taking referrals from GPs and hospital clinics."
The next Blue Sky course starts on Tuesday evening, February 22nd and will be held at 42 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2. The cost is €300 for the waged, €200 low waged and €150 unwaged. You can find out more by visiting the Blue Sky website at www.bluesky.ie (email: info@bluesky.ie) or by ringing 01-6615932.
Each session in the Blue Sky course lasts for two and a half hours except for a final, five-hour session which went remarkably fast. Our final day happened to be on the day after Buddha's birthday so we got to scoff the cakes, biscuits, sandwiches and (non-alcoholic) drinks left over from the occasion and we left a little happier, a little heavier and feeling more in control of our lives.