Course Overview
Welcome to the Mindfulness and Pain Explained audio course with Dr. Adele Stewart. I’ve been a GP for over 30 years and bring that experience—along with my background as a mindfulness teacher, my interest in modern pain neuroscience, and my role as Chair of the Royal Australian College of GPs Pain Group—to this course. I also have my own lived experience of chronic pain.
My hope is that this course helps you discover a transformative approach to understanding and processing pain. You’ll explore the neuroscience behind chronic pain and uncover how greater awareness can reduce its intensity and impact.
This course can be undertaken as a WhatsApp course – a new one commences every 20 weeks. Each week the lesson audio and link to the meditation will be emailed to you and posted on WhatsApp. See the registration form for the next date of commencement. You will be accompanied and interact with others and myself on this adventure.
Alternatively you can do this course on demand via Premium Insight Timer (Subscription required). See the embedded link below. This is the same content as the WhatsApp course presented as a set of 20 daily lessons. (Although realistically a few days to a week should be left between each lesson.)
By shifting focus from a fixed “diagnosis” to a mind-body perspective—one that highly considers the level of safety and danger in our whole system—you’ll gain practical tools to navigate the pain-fear cycle. You’ll also learn how your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and even aspects of life that may seem unrelated to pain influence your experience.
We’ll demystify complex topics like neuroplasticity, nociplastic pain, and neuroimmune interactions, making them accessible and applicable to everyday life.
Bring along a pen and paper or an electronic journal to capture your reflections as we embark on this journey of curiosity and self-discovery.
Each lesson will begin with a brief grounding practice, followed by some of the following: education, reflection, meditation and exercises. Each lesson ends with a suggested home practice, including one of my meditations from the free Insight Timer app. The home practice is an important part of consolidating your learning in an experiential way.
This course is quite an ask. The lessons only average 15 minutes—some a few minutes shorter, some a bit longer. However the course represents a paradigm shift in understanding pain, challenging deeply help beliefs and requiring substantial energy to engage with. Like most things in life, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. Be patient with yourself though, as you navigate this new perspective.
You’re encouraged to post in Whatsapp or the Premium Insight Timer course (see below) as much as you like. Reading others’ posts and my responses can be inspiring along the way. I will usually get back to you within 24 hours, except for once a year when I do a 14-day silent retreat and am offline.
Course Schedule
This course can be undertaken as a WhatsApp course – a new one commences every 20 weeks. Each week the lesson audio and link to the meditation will be emailed to you and posted on WhatsApp. See the registration form for the next date of commencement.
Alternatively you can do this course on demand via Premium Insight Timer. This is the same content as the WhatsApp course presented as a set of 20 daily lessons. (Although realistically a few days to a week should be left between each lesson.)
You can also access Adele’s series of 5 audio–visual modules cost free. Please check out the MBSR for Pain course which is a much more involved and incredibly transforming course combining mindfulness and pain science education.
Adele’s Audio-Visual modules, articles, books, videos, apps and more!
To be kept informed about Mindfulness & Pain Explained offerings (3-4 emails per year)
Course Fee
The Premium Insight Timer on demand course costs $10US per month. Please click this link for your free trial and registration. You will have access to hundreds of other wonderful mindfulness courses if you do so.
The WhatsApp course is by donation – the invitation is to pay what you think the course teaching is worth within your means either before, during or after the course. A donation is expected.
Teaching donations can be paid by PayPal or credit card amounts as follows:
Credit card $50
Credit card $100
Credit card $200
Donations go towards subsidising the formal, more expensive meditation courses such as MBSR and the full MSC programme.
Dates
WhatsApp course starts every 20 weeks. See registration form for next course start date.
Premium Insight Timer course is on demand. Start anytime.
Course Lessons
Lesson 1: Pain is normal, real and protective.
Lesson 2: How we see things makes a difference.
Lesson 3: There are Danger sensors not Pain sensors.
Lesson 4: The Pain Signature
Lesson 5: Hurt not Harm
Lesson 6: The Power of Emotions
Lesson 7: Pain depends on the balance between Danger and Safety signals.
Lesson 8: Safety as a way out of the Pain Fear Cycle
Lesson 9: Somatic Tracking: Safe in my System
Lesson 10: Pain as an Emergent Complex System. Untangling the Pain Knot.
Lesson 11: The Pain Story
Lesson 12: Warmongering Metaphors of Pain
Lesson 13: The Importance of Context in the Pain experience
Lesson 14: The Pain of Disconnection
Lesson 15: Kindness for Self and Others
Lesson 16: Pain is not the only Protective Output
Lesson 17: Balancing the Neuroimmune System
Lesson 18: We are more than Neuroplastic – we are Bioplastic
Lesson 19: I am not my Pain
Lesson 20: The Road Less Travelled.