More on pain

I posted below about evidence that meditators feel less pain than non-meditators. I just came across an observation that explains why. This is from Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser:

Mindfulness meditation trains us to be less reactive to whatever it is in life that causes us suffering. It gives us an ability to experience our own pain without identifying fully with it, and therefore to be more free from it. Because of that experience during meditation, we begin to fear life's pain less, to contract around it less. We become more easygoing with ourselves. We still suffer, but with much less of the dramatic flair that only adds to our suffering and makes it overwhelming.