A former musician with the RTÉ symphony orchestra, Clive Shannon uses meditation to ease the pain caused by fibromyalgia and RSI. Iva Pocock writes
'For seven years I was admitted twice a year to the Jonathan Swift psychiatric unit but since I started meditation in 1999 I haven't been back," explains Clive Shannon. He is one of a number of people who are turning to the ancient technique of meditation as a means of coping with chronic illness.
A musician who played for some 20 years with the RTÉ symphony orchestra, Shannon became manic depressive in 1992 after developing diffuse Repetitive Strain Injury, the pain of which left him unable to feed, wash or dress himself.
Both illnesses were tied up with the "triple whammy" of losing his partner, his house and his job, and were further exasperated when he developed the rheumatoid disorder, fibromyalgia.
"The pain is extraordinary," he says. "I have been in the burns unit at St James's Hospital with burns down my side and that was sore but this pain was much more."
One day in 1999 he reached a crisis point when the only apparent option was to admit himself to hospital. However, principal clinical psychologist at St James's Hospital, Dr Tony Bates, whom Shannon had met by chance in 1998, gave him Full Catastrophe Living by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, a US-based doctor who specialises in using mindfulness meditation to treat chronic pain and stress.
"I found it very inspiring," says Shannon, who then took up meditation for just 10 minutes twice a day at first. "The level of physical pain immediately went down quite a lot."
Training in the Transcendental Meditation technique in the 1970s was a help, he says, but meditation is "absolutely about practising. It's real junior infants stuff."
He now meditates for 45 minutes twice a day and says his practice is a necessity. "It's not a luxury."
Stressing that meditation is a completely non-religious practice, although many religions use it, Shannon explains: "The whole idea is focusing the mind on one particular thing whether it's the breath or a particular word."
This allows one's thoughts to pass like clouds and leads to the "hugely important" philosophical discovery that you are not your thoughts.
"It's a huge discovery to make, particularly if you are in pain, whether it's emotional or physical," says Shannon.
His chronic pain is now "low level" so it doesn't totally take over his life. However, he is aware of it all the time except for maybe three times during the week when his mind is completely involved in something else.
"When I am meditating I feel the pain but I am not the pain," he says. "There's a point where when you are in pain, you panic and you become more and more in a panic and you get involved in it rather than separating from it. That separation is terribly important."
Since taking up regular meditation, Shannon has also reduced his medication from 22 prescriptions to just two, but he still has a restricted lifestyle.
"I don't put myself up as an example of health by any means. I am an ill person but I think I am a good example of coping."
He is now a member of a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy behaviour group in St James's Hospital, which follows a programme based on Dr Kabat-Zinn's work adapted for people who suffer from depression. "It's the only class that I know of that actually deals with mental health," he says.
However, director of the pain service in the Adelaide and Meath hospital, Dr Camillus Power, is cautious about the term meditation, because "it means different things to different people".
Relaxation strategies and mindfulness, which is putting what's happening in the mind under observation, are all part of the pain management strategy taught to patients at the hospital.
"We wouldn't call it meditation and we don't link our strategy to a name. You can't say it is TM or Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn's technique but we do appreciate the benefits of learning relaxation techniques," he says, pointing out that for many patients it is difficult to sit still for even two minutes.
Human rights activist Tom Hyland, who spent many years campaigning for East Timor's freedom, also took up meditation for health reasons after developing high blood pressure.
"It's a difficult technique to master. It's not easy," says Hyland, who has been practising for a year.
The most obvious benefit of meditation is that it allows you to empty your mind and de-stress yourself, he says. "My mind for years has been a hive of activities and initiatives. I regret I didn't know more about meditation a few years ago," says Hyland, who reckons that the link between stress and ill health is hugely underestimated, especially in Western society.
He meditates with a small group of people who follow the teachings of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, and uses the technique based on concentration on the breath.
Hyland has no doubt that meditation has enormously positive health benefits. "It is hugely beneficial," he says.