How to Introduce Mindfulness to Patients in 2 Sessions

There’s a situation many of us recognise. You’re sitting across from a patient with chronic pain, someone who’s tried everything, who’s frightened and exhausted, and all you want to do is help. You know mindfulness could make a real difference, but you also know the moment you say it, their eyes might glaze over or worse, they nod politely and never come back.

Getting patients on board with mindfulness-based approaches is one of the genuine clinical challenges in chronic pain. It’s not a lack of evidence, it’s getting the patient buy-in that’s the really tricky part – this isn’t surprising, many of these patients have tried multiple different interventions with little relief, and introducing mindfulness-based care runs the real risk of losing trust by implying their pain is “in their head.”

Physiotherapist Mitch Hunter integrates mindfulness into practice through a spiritually integrated healthcare framework. In his Case Study, he shows exactly how he approaches this in real life. This blog highlights a few practical takeaways from those early sessions.

If you want to see exactly how expert mindfulness physio Mitch Hunter implements his approach in practice, watch his full Case Study HERE. With Case Studies you can step inside the minds of experts and apply their strategies to get better results with your patients. Learn more here.

The patient

Mitch’s case is a 43-year-old mother of two, presenting with progressive central low back pain over five years with no specific incident.

She’d been given a fibromyalgia diagnosis, had longstanding depression and anxiety, had previously worked in childcare before going on workers’ compensation, and was on a waiting list to see an orthopaedic surgeon. Previous physiotherapy had been largely gym-based and unhelpful. Massage had provided some short-term relief.

On assessment: restricted lumbar range in all directions, 8/10 pain on sit-to-stand (STS), elements of allodynia, and no neurological flags. The link between her mood and her symptoms was clinically obvious. She was highly fearful and reactive to pain.

This is the type of presentation where purely biomechanical approaches have often run their course, and where mindfulness-based strategies, if applied well, can offer something different.

So, how do you approach it?

Session 1: Starting the conversation (without losing them)

Mitch’s first move isn’t to introduce mindfulness. It’s to find out what the patient already thinks about it.

Before anything else, he explores their interpretation of meditation and whether they might be open to it. His framing is deliberately practical and grounded in physiology. He avoids language that can feel abstract or spiritually loaded for patients who aren’t there yet. Instead, he uses phrases like:

• “Meditation can help to desensitise the nervous system”
• “It gives your body a moment to slow down, pause, and reset”
• “It can help you understand your pain in more detail”

None of these are inaccurate. They meet the patient in a biomedical frame and gently expand it. Once (or rather, if) the conversation is open, Mitch introduces the first key concept of interoception, which involves bringing awareness to internal experience.

He explains, in simple terms, that thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations are linked and influence each other, and that noticing sensations without immediately interpreting them is a skill worth building. The research backs this: mind-body therapies produce measurable changes in interoception in chronic pain populations.

See Mitch demonstrate how he might introduce interoception in that initial appointment in this clip from his Case Study:

The home exercise at this stage is deliberately light: a brief body scan through the core areas of the torso, 2–3 minutes, twice daily, at a set time of day. The routine matters as much as the exercise itself, so planning these at a specific time of day, or environment can be beneficial too.

Session 2: Start layering strategies

Session two introduces paced breathing, with slow, deep, full breaths in and out. The physiological rationale is solid: slow deep breathing modulates the autonomic nervous system and has a meaningful evidence base in chronic pain management.

But Mitch is careful about how he frames the goal. He’s explicit with the patient that this is not about trying to reduce their pain, but to achieve relaxation.

This distinction is important, patients with chronic pain who approach any new intervention as a pain relief attempt are setting themselves up for disappointment and disengagement. Reframing the goal removes that pressure and makes genuine engagement more likely. See Mitch demonstrate how he would introduce this simple yet effective exercise to a patient in this clip from his Case Study:

The home programme expands slightly: body scan plus slow deep breathing, five minutes total, twice daily, with the same emphasis on building a consistent routine.

Wrapping up

Mindfulness-based approaches are increasingly finding their place in physiotherapy practice, and for good reason, but knowing where to start with patients is half the battle.

We can’t blame patients for being sceptical, many people with chronic pain have been through a lot, seen a lot of clinicians, tried a lot of things, why would sitting there and breathing deep sound appealing?

That’s where we come in – how we frame it, when we introduce it, and how we build it progressively can make the difference between disengagement and genuine buy-in.

Need to know more? Mitch Hunter’s full Case Study covers his complete clinical reasoning, session-by-session progression, and practical approach for anyone wanting to build these tools into their own work. Watch it here.