Model says meditation helps her with pain after childhood accident

Model says meditation helps her with pain after childhood accident

She is the glamorous international model daughter of two Scottish aristocrats.

However, a ski-ing accident when she was 12 has left Jean Campbell in constant pain for the past 15 years.

Now in a podcast called I’m Fine she has talked for the first time about living with the condition and how meditation and gentle exercise has helped her cope.

The model’s parents are Colin Campbell, seventh Earl of Cawdor, and Lady Isabella Campbell, a former editor of British Vogue.

The 27-year-old told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘I was small for my age at 12 and a man crashed into me from the side, sending me flying ten metres through the air.

‘I crashed down, with my right arm flung behind me at such an angle that it ripped apart muscles, tendons and tissue in my shoulder.

‘This accident was the catalyst for the chronic pain I’ve known ever since.’

At 16, had surgery to break her pelvis in three places and readjust it with three six-inch screws.

After the operation it was more than 18 months before she could walk properly having spent a month in a wheelchair and three months on crutches.

The constant pain also impacted her mental health.

However, she did not allow it to hinder her career, despite having on occasions to turn up for shoots on crutches, and is now one of Britain’s leading models having worked on campaigns for Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Louis Vitton.

Ms Campbell now wants to help others cope with chronic pain and added: ‘I now know that I had complex chronic pain - which, as well as physical structural issues, results in complications for your mental health.

‘Throughout my teens and earlier 20s, I had no idea that this is what I was dealing with and felt so guilty.

‘I didn’t know how to deal with my pain, or talk about it. It was a very lonely place to be.

‘I knew I couldn’t just take painkillers for the rest of my life so began exploring alternatives. The last thing that I expected was that low intensity exercise and meditation could help me – but that’s how I now cope with my ongoing agony.

‘Two things I can’t live without are meditation and moving my body. Meditation connects me to something outside myself, while reconnecting me to my body.

‘I’m telling my story because it’s important to hear about the reality of pain. It is an absolute given in everyone’s life.’

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