International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
June 12, 2026
Carter Minnick, Adam W. Hanley, Eric L Garland
BACKGROUND: Spanish-speaking individuals in the U.S. face a number of barriers to quality pain care and limited access to culturally adapted treatments. While mindfulness-based interventions are effective for chronic pain, few have been translated for Spanish-speaking populations. This pilot study tested a brief, Spanish-language adaptation of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (Spanish...
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
May 11, 2026
Kush V. Bhatt, Adam W. Hanley, Chantal Martin-Soelch et al.
Mindfulness-based interventions are efficacious nonpharmacologic treatments for chronic pain, yet the psychological mechanisms mediating the pain-relieving effects of mindfulness-based interventions remain incompletely understood. One potential mechanism may involve nondual awareness, a state of consciousness characterized by attenuation of the subject-object duality, reduced self-referential...
Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine
May 1, 2026
Steven D. Pratscher, Lloyd Lalande, Allison Davis et al.
Chronic pain is a major public health problem. Due to the persistent, costly, and complex nature of chronic pain, there is a need for new safe and effective treatments. Integrative breathwork interventions, or therapeutic styles of conscious breathing, have promise as novel treatments for chronic pain. The primary objective of this proof-of-concept study was to examine the feasibility,...
JMIR Research Protocols
April 23, 2026
Kennedi Childs, Carter Minnick, Geraldine Martorella et al.
Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) imposes a significant psychological, physical, and emotional burden on millions of adults in the United States. A challenge in treating CMP is its tendency to become enmeshed with a person's sense of self. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) offer a promising approach to help patients disentangle pain from their sense of self. However, rigorous research is...
Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
January 3, 2026
Karolina L Bryl, Adam W. Hanley, Raymond E Baser et al.
1 citation
Chronic pain affects many cancer survivors yet remains underdiagnosed and inadequately managed. Existing treatments (e.g., opioids, NSAIDs) carry risks like addiction and limited long-term relief, while non-pharmacological options show modest effectiveness. Given these limitations innovative, evidence-based interventions are needed. Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), a multimodal...
Complementary Therapies in Medicine
December 1, 2025
Adam W. Hanley, Yoshio Nakamura, Robert R Edwards et al.
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a prevalent chronic pain condition that significantly impairs quality of life and is often treated with interventions that carry risks or provide limited relief. Reiki, a non-invasive complementary therapy, has shown early promise for pain management but lacks rigorous evaluation among American adults with KOA. This study evaluated the specific efficacy of Reiki and...
European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education
November 25, 2025
Sean D Young, Adam W. Hanley
Objectives: Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) is the leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide and the costliest health condition in the United States. Mindfulness is an effective treatment for CMP, but traditional mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are inaccessible for many CMP patients for both format and content reasons. An MBI that leverages music may be a more accessible...
Psychological services
July 21, 2025
Tracy Herrmann, Joanna Ellen Bettmann, Adam W. Hanley et al.
1 citation
Veterans' reluctance to engage in mental health treatment coupled with high attrition in such treatment should motivate practitioners and researchers to create innovative ways to treat veterans. Nature-based interventions show promise as a means for addressing veterans' mental health needs. The present study aimed to test the feasibility and acceptability of a manualized nature-based...
Cureus
March 1, 2025
Sean D Young, Josh Kim, Adam W. Hanley
1 citation
A mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) focused on listening to music might reduce chronic pain and provide a new approach to overcoming challenges from traditional MBIs (e.g., breathing). Due to the potential unpredictability and unfamiliarity of jazz, an MBI focused on listening to improvisational jazz music might be a particularly efficacious pain reduction intervention. This pilot study...
International Journal of Wellbeing
October 1, 2024
Michael Dambrun, Adam W. Hanley, Eric L Garland et al.
5 citations
In two randomized controlled trials, we tested the effect of two attentional mindfulness meditation practices on positive mental health. We hypothesized that attentional meditation would increase various positive emotions (gratitude, interest, hope, pride, elevation, and awe) via three processes induced by mindfulness (body awareness, meta-awareness, and self-transcendence) and that positive...
Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine
September 1, 2024
Adam W. Hanley, Ayaka Lingard, Eric L Garland
7 citations
Introduction: Traditional, 8-week, mindfulness-based interventions can effectively treat chronic pain, but require a time and resource investment too burdensome for many patients and providers. The solution to this logistical challenge may be to distill the core, therapeutic elements of an efficacious 8-week, mindfulness-based intervention, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), into...
JAMA Psychiatry
April 1, 2024
Nina A Cooperman, Shou-En Lu, Adam W. Hanley et al.
39 citations
Methadone treatment (MT) fails to address the emotion dysregulation, pain, and reward processing deficits that often drive opioid use disorder (OUD). New interventions are needed to address these factors. To evaluate the efficacy of MT as usual (usual care) vs telehealth Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) plus usual care among people with an OUD and pain. This study was a...
American Journal of Psychiatry
January 10, 2024
Eric L. Garland, Y. Nakamura, Craig J. Bryan et al.
OBJECTIVE. Evaluate the efficacy of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) for past and current military personnel prescribed long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) for chronic pain. METHODS. In a clinical trial, 230 past and current U.S. military personnel prescribed LTOT were randomized (1:1) to MORE or supportive psychotherapy (in-person and then online via Zoom after onset of COVID-19)....
Mindfulness
May 24, 2023
E. Garland, Bhanuteja Gullapalli, Kort C. Prince et al.
The opioid crisis in the USA remains severe during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced access to evidence-based interventions. This Stage 1 randomized controlled trial (RCT) assessed the preliminary efficacy of Zoom-based Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) plus Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) prompts to practice mindfulness triggered by wearable sensors (MORE +...
Psychological Medicine
April 1, 2023
Eric L Garland, Spencer T Fix, Justin Hudak et al.
51 citations
Neuropsychopharmacologic effects of long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) in the context of chronic pain may result in subjective anhedonia coupled with decreased attention to natural rewards. Yet, there are no known efficacious treatments for anhedonia and reward deficits associated with chronic opioid use. Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), a novel behavioral intervention combining...
Mindfulness
2023
Eric L Garland, R Lynae Roberts, Adam W. Hanley et al.
14 citations
Mindfulness is theorized to decrease the affective amplification of chronic pain by facilitating a shift from emotionally-laden, catastrophic pain appraisals of nociceptive input to reappraising chronic pain as an innocuous sensory signal that does not signify harm. Understanding of these hypothetical psychological mechanisms of mindfulness-based analgesia has been limited by a lack of direct...
Science Advances
October 14, 2022
Eric L Garland, Adam W. Hanley, Justin Hudak et al.
39 citations
Self-regulation is instantiated by theta oscillations (4 to 8 Hz) in neurons of frontal midline brain regions. Frontal midline theta (FMΘ) is inversely associated with default mode network (DMN) activation, which subserves self-referential processing. Addiction involves impaired self-regulation and DMN dysfunction. Mindfulness is an efficacious self-regulatory practice for treating addiction,...
JAMA Internal Medicine
February 28, 2022
E. Garland, Adam W. Hanley, Yoshio Nakamura et al.
Key Points Question Does a mindfulness-based intervention reduce comorbid chronic pain and opioid misuse in the primary care setting more than supportive psychotherapy? Findings In this randomized clinical trial that included 250 adults with both chronic pain and opioid misuse, 45.0% of participants receiving Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) were no longer misusing opioids after...
Behaviour Research and Therapy
February 28, 2022
Anna Parisi, Adam W. Hanley, E. Garland
Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) is an integrative treatment that simultaneously addresses chronic pain and opioid misuse. MORE has been found to produce sustained reductions in opioid craving, pain, and negative affect-key risk mechanisms precipitating opioid misuse for patients on long-term opioid therapy (LTOT). However, less is known about MORE's impact on state measures of...
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
May 8, 2021
Nina A Cooperman, Adam W. Hanley, Anna Kline et al.
Background: Chronic pain is highly prevalent among people in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) for opioid use disorder and is known to be an important contributor to treatment discontinuation and opioid relapse. Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) is one of the few interventions developed and tested as an integrated treatment to simultaneously address both pain and illicit...
Psychology of Consciousness
November 19, 2020
Adam W. Hanley, D. Dorjee, E. Garland
Self-transcendence is theorized to be a core, mechanism of mindfulness. Yet, no known empirical study has investigated the process by which self-transcendent experiences emerge in novice practitioners. To address this gap, this study explored whether changes in decentering in response to mindfulness training translated into increases in self-transcendence over the course of five mindfulness...
Neuropsychopharmacology
September 12, 2020
Justin Hudak, Adam W. Hanley, William R. Marchand et al.
46 citations
Endogenous theta stimulation during meditation predicts reduced opioid dosing following treatment with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement.
Mindfulness
May 1, 2020
Adam W. Hanley, Michael Dambrun, Eric L Garland
66 citations
Mindfulness training is believed to encourage self-transcendent states, but little research has examined this hypothesis. This study examined the effects of mindfulness training on two phenomenological features of self-transcendence: 1) perceived body boundary dissolution, and 2) more allocentric spatial frames of reference. A sample of healthy, young adults (n=45) were randomized to five...
Psychotherapy
April 30, 2020
Simon B. Goldberg, Adam W. Hanley, Scott A. Baldwin et al.
22 citations
Mindfulness-based interventions are commonly used to reduce psychological symptoms and enhance positive qualities of human functioning. However, the influence of mindfulness practice dosage remains poorly understood, limiting dissemination and implementation efforts. The current study examined the association between practice dosage and several constructs related to psychological functioning...
Drug and Alcohol Dependence
August 5, 2019
E. Garland, Adam W. Hanley, Anna Kline et al.
Background Methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) is an efficacious form of medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), yet many individuals on MMT relapse. Chronic pain and deficits in positive affective response to natural rewards may result in dysphoria that fuels opioid craving and promotes relapse. As such, behavioral therapies that ameliorate chronic pain and enhance...