Can Mindfulness Ease Stress And Pain?

Your mind craves rest, but you can't turn it off.

The to-do list loops. A friend's awkward response plays on repeat. And worries about tomorrow make it hard to sleep.

If this sounds familiar, you're in good company.

Nearly three-quarters of adults in the United States attest to experiencing stress severe enough to cause physical or emotional symptoms, according to the American Psychological Association's 2025 "Stress in America" survey. For clinical psychologist Neda Gould, an associate professor in the department of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine, that statistic reflects a troubling reality: Modern life pulls our attention everywhere but the present moment.

"We're rewarded for thinking about the future and being productive, and we have a tendency to ruminate on what could have gone better in the past," Gould says. "Spending so much of our time focusing on the future and past causes distress."

Mindfulness, she says, offers a way out.

As the founding director of Johns Hopkins Medicine's Mindfulness Program and a psychologist in the Office of Clinician and Faculty Care, Gould sees the benefits firsthand. She uses mindfulness in both programs to help people cope with a range of problems, from stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and mood and attention deficit disorders to cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions, tick-borne illnesses, and acute and chronic pain. She also offers classes to faculty and staff—an enormous hit, she says.

Her courses build on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, a program developed in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. "It's a wonderful program that brings a secular version of Buddhist mindfulness and meditation concepts to the Western world," Gould says of MBSR, adding that Kabat-Zinn's book about the practice, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (1990 Random House), is a global bestseller.

But MBSR is far from the only option. Dozens of other programs exist, and individual exercises can easily be found online. How does mindfulness work, and where do you start?

The basics

Mindfulness involves shifting your attention to some aspect of the present. It sounds simple, Gould says, but it takes practice and consistency to make it feel natural.

Most mindfulness practices combine informal exercises woven into daily life with more formal exercises that resemble what we think of as meditation—sitting or lying down to partake in a guided experience. Often, exercises center on what Gould describes as an "anchor to the present moment, or anything that pulls us out of our ruminations and keeps us grounded in the here and now." Anchors include our own breath, sounds in our surroundings, objects we can touch, and the shapes, colors, and patterns of various things we see around us.

Important tips

A key to making mindfulness effective, Gould says, is not to resist or judge thoughts or emotions that pop into our head or emerge in the body—let them exist, floating like clouds in the sky.

The advice seems counterintuitive, she admits, but it's important. Why? Pushing away and resisting our experiences tends to be ineffective. And judging ourselves and our experiences can keep us stuck in unhealthy thought patterns and add distress. "The trick is to learn to accept the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations we experience," Gould says, "to allow them to be present and begin to work with them in a different way."

Another key to an effective practice: Start slowly. In other words, don't undertake longer exercises until you're comfortable with shorter ones.

For many of us, taking a break from the responsibilities on our plate—and setting aside our smartphones and devices—doesn't come easily. We tell ourselves we don't have time. But here's the irony: Research debunks the idea that people produce more if they put their heads down and crank through. For instance, a 2025 meta-analysis published in Stress Health found that mindfulness significantly improves attention and task performance, while a 2016 study of employees at the health insurer Aetna found that it results in a gain of roughly 62 minutes of productivity a week.

Even still, it's hard to set aside our to-do lists, and this, in turn, can lead to racing thoughts—and a scattered mind, even when trying to be mindful. That's why Gould starts with short mindfulness meditations in her course, enabling people to build the capability over time as they work toward about 40 minutes a day and try to maintain at least 20 minutes after the course ends.

The takeaway, she says, is to go easy on yourself. Don't criticize yourself for a mind in overdrive. Accept and allow, and the rest will follow.

Getting started

"The great thing about mindfulness," Gould says, "is that you can do it practically anywhere, whether you're at work, out with friends, or sitting in an audience listening to a talk." The more you practice, she adds, the more you will build the capacity to be more present in your day-to-day life.

Try these now and see how you feel:

• Pause and pay attention to your breath. Don't control it—just notice the natural rhythm of your air in and out.
• Touch the sleeve of your shift with one or two fingertips. Slowly rub your fingertips along the material, noticing the feel and texture as you focus only on that.
• As you eat, chew slowly and notice the texture and taste of your food. Spend 20 to 30 seconds on each bite, noting how it feels to swallow. Then repeat these steps as you take your next bite.
• Wash dishes and focus intently on the experience—the feel of the water, the smell of the soap, the act of wiping leftovers from a dish.
• Listen to the sounds around you. Notice sounds nearby and farther away. Also notice moments of silence.

Do you notice anything?

Now try a longer mindfulness exercise like this: Lie down and do a "body scan." Slowly monitor your body from the top of your head to your toes, searching for physical sensations and areas of tension. When you sense tension or pain, pause and breathe into it for a few seconds before scanning the rest of your body.

Lasting effects

Over time, a consistent mindfulness practice can lead to actual changes in the brain—changes that show up on functional-MRI scans and electroencephalogram, or EEG, tests, Gould says. Medical researchers first conducted studies in the early 2000s on long-time meditators like Buddhist monks and, in the next decade, on individuals engaged in structured mindfulness programs. In both samples, they noticed positive alterations that include:

• increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which steers executive functioning, attention, and higher-order thinking
• decreased activity in the amygdala, an area involved in stress response and emotional regulation

Gould says changes have also been detected in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, which play roles in interoception, our ability to perceive and interpret body signals like pain and hunger.

At Johns Hopkins, she works with pain management psychiatrist Traci Speed to help patients shift their response to pain. "Typically, pain involves damage to the body from an injury, autoimmune condition, connective tissue disorder, cancer, or other health condition," Speed says. "The brain's neurocircuitry warns the body of danger. But when pain becomes chronic, that alarm system never gets turned off."

With rheumatoid arthritis, for instance, patients experience flares of physical discomfort from inflamed joints, which can trigger an emotional response, Speed explains. Mindfulness, which stymies emotional reactivity, can help patients shift their experience of pain—and, in some cases, reduce their medication. Most often, though, patients use mindfulness as a supplement to an existing treatment plan, rather than a replacement, Speed says.

One big plus for mindfulness: It doesn't come with side effects. And when practiced regularly, it can instill a lasting sense of peacefulness, as Gould discovered when she first encountered it.

"I was working as a postdoc at Johns Hopkins, and I was very future-oriented and intent on being productive," Gould says. "I'd never heard of this concept of focusing on the present moment and had no idea it was an entire way of living—with incredible benefits." She learned about the research behind it, became a certified practitioner, and pivoted to devote her career to mindfulness.

Mindfulness was the antidote she needed, Gould says, adding: "It transformed my life."