'Mindful breathing' might help cancer patients ease pain, anxiety

A meditation technique called mindful breathing can help cancer patients manage their pain and anxiety, a new study finds.

Cancer patients who engaged in 20 minutes of mindful breathing experienced a greater reduction in pain than those who weren't taught the technique.

"Twenty-minute mindful breathing effectively and rapidly reduces pain intensity, pain unpleasantness and anxiety in patients with cancer," wrote the research team led by Dr. Tan Seng Beng , a palliative medicine consultant with the Subang Jaya Medical Center in Selangor, Malaysia.

"This brief and accessible intervention offers a complementary approach to traditional pharmacological strategies," the team concluded.

Mindful breathing requires that people focus their attention on their breath as they inhale and exhale, researchers noted.

However, prior research on the potential pain relief from mindful breathing has focused on short meditation sessions lasting just 5 to 10 minutes, researchers noted.

For this study, researchers randomly assigned 40 cancer patients to one of two groups.

In one group, the patients were taught how to do mindful breathing in a 20-minute session. In the other, doctors listened for 20 minutes as patients talked about their cancer journey.

Pain assessment scales showed that all patients who performed mindful breathing experienced a reduction in their cancer pain, compared to the control group.

The new study was published Tuesday in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care .

"The 100% response rate and the absence of adverse events underscore the feasibility and safety of the 20-minute mindful breathing intervention," the researchers said in a journal news release. "The intervention can be quickly learnt and applied with beneficial effect."

Such meditation practices could compliment traditional pain relief using opioid drugs and other treatments, researchers said.

More information

The University of California, Berkeley has more on mindful breathing .

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