The Neuroscience of Reducing Chronic Pain and Everyday Addictions | Eric Garland

Mar 9, 2026 58m 49s 11 insights Episode Page ↗
Dr. Eric Garland, a neuroscientist and Professor at UCSD, discusses his MORE protocol (Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement). This protocol integrates mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and positive psychology to address everyday addictions, chronic pain, and emotional distress through its three core parts: mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring.
Actionable Insights

1. Savor Natural Healthy Pleasure

Focus mindful attention on pleasant everyday events, noting their sensory details. When positive emotions and pleasurable sensations arise, turn your attention inward to deeply immerse yourself in and expand those feelings throughout your mind and body. This practice retrains the brain’s reward system, increasing sensitivity to natural pleasures and weakening the pull of addictive behaviors.

2. Reframe Negative Thought Patterns

Challenge and change negative thought patterns by asking yourself questions like, “What’s a more helpful way to see this situation?” or “How is facing this adversity helping me to grow as a person?” This reframes challenges as opportunities for personal growth, reducing negative emotions and cutting off the stress response.

3. STOP Automatic Unhealthy Habits

Use the “STOP” method to interrupt automatic habits: Stop right before engaging, Take a few mindful breaths to calm your mind, Observe your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations (noting cravings are impermanent), and Proceed with intention. This simple practice helps gain awareness and control over unhealthy automatic behaviors, often leading to the desire fading away.

4. Mindfully Manage Physical Pain

Calm your mind with mindful breathing, then “zoom in” by focusing intensely on the pain sensation, breaking it down into subcomponent parts (e.g., heat, tightness, tingling) and noticing any spaces or pleasant sensations within or near it. If overwhelmed, “zoom out” by returning to your breath and imagining sending breath to soften the pain. This practice can acutely alleviate pain by about 30%.

5. Structured Reappraisal: ABCDE Method

When stressed, identify the Activating event, your negative Beliefs about it, and the emotional and behavioral Consequences. Then, Dispute or challenge these negative thoughts using mindfulness (e.g., “Is there an alternative explanation?”), and Evaluate the positive effect of this reappraisal on your emotions and constructive actions.

6. Integrate Savoring Daily

Integrate savoring into your daily life by pausing for 20 seconds to a minute to mindfully appreciate pleasant sensory experiences, such as the warmth of the sun or a child’s smile. Focus on the positive feelings that arise, letting them pervade your being, to cultivate joy and reduce cravings or pain.

7. Practice Mindful Awareness

Cultivate awareness and acceptance of your present moment thoughts, emotions, and body sensations by observing them as an objective witness. Focus on your breath, and each time your mind wanders, gently notice it without judgment, acknowledge it, and bring your attention back to your point of focus. This de-automatizes habits by increasing awareness of automatic behaviors and regaining conscious control.

8. Seek Self-Transcendent Moments

Cultivate self-transcendent experiences—moments where the normal sense of self becomes quieter and you feel connected to something greater (e.g., absorbed in music, awe in nature). These experiences provide inherent reward value and inner well-being, which can reduce the need to seek positive feelings through addictive behaviors.

9. Enhance Practice with Savoring

Conclude any mindfulness practice by turning your attention towards any positive mental states that have arisen, taking a moment to immerse yourself in them and appreciate them. This helps retrain the brain’s reward system and rewire it for healthy pleasure and joy.

10. Expand Body Scan Awareness

After moving your attention through your body during a body scan, extend your awareness beyond your body to the space enveloping it. Progressively expand your focus further out into space, as far as you can conceive, and then rest your awareness in that expansive space. This helps cultivate non-dual or self-transcendent awareness.

11. Mindful Breathing for Oneness

Conclude your mindful breathing practice by directing your awareness towards non-dual or self-transcendent states, aiming for a sense of oneness where awareness and space are indistinguishable. This helps tap into a deeper sense of interconnectedness and insight into the fundamental nature of reality.