A randomized, controlled trial of mindful meditation in people with Multiple Sclerosis: Effects on mood, inflammation and volume of the hippocampus.

Mindfulness Meditation training will be conducted in groups of approximately 10 patients per group. Participants will be contacted by the trained Mindfulness therapist (Alice Shires) and given information about the group that they have been allocated to. Each group session will be 2 hours and will be conducted on a weekly basis for 8 weeks. Mindfulness training is a form of attentional training which requires a daily practice of deliberately focusing attention on one’s own experience from moment to moment and in a non-judgmental way. Participants are helped to develop the ability to quickly recognise and inhibit their typical response to emerging thoughts, to prevent distractibility and refocus their attention on the breath. As participants develop these skills, they are then taught to scan their body systematically and develop an ability to feel both salient and more subtle sensations while purposefully inhibiting habitual, learned reactions. As participants have learned to do with their thoughts, participants develop an increasing ability to accept whatever arises in their body from moment to moment while remaining as non-reactive as possible. Participants will be taught mindful meditation techniques which are practised in the group session and then particpants are encouraged to continue daily practice between group sessions using guided meditation practice via CDs distributed in the group sessions.