The Problem with Mindfulness...

As regular readers will know, I've been following the mindfulness meditation programme laid out in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living.  Its quite hard core (45 mins of Vipassana or yoga daily, plus 20-45 mins sitting meditation daily, increasing as you go along). While I haven't always managed to fit it all in, its been very helpful in lots of ways.

But I've come up against a wall. Mindfulness doesn't seem to help me with the pain I'm in.  Why try to be in the present moment, when the present moment is a horrible place to be?  (Yes, I know all about that acceptance stuff, that's all very well if it doesn't hurt.)  Right now I am feeling terrible, and it seems like my imagination is the only thing thing that is relieving the misery.

On the other hand, its a thick book, and I haven't got to the chapter on pain yet, so maybe I'm missing an important piece of the jigsaw! ( I'm pretty sure the Buddha must have thought of an answer for this anyway.)