A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine
found that yoga and stretching ease chronic low back pain equally.  As a result, they discounted yoga's "mental
components" and attributed the improvements of "at least several months" to the stretching and strengthening components.

Well, I certainly won't argue with the effectiveness of targeted stretching and strengthening.  In fact, that's what I do, and
I and any number of my clients have experienced considerable, often dramatic relief for all kinds of pain.  KI-Hara Resistance
Stretching  http://www.humanhyperformance.com/page/page/2606882.htm is not only the most effective form of
self -administered stretching, it is fabulous strength training.  And the fact that
the Ki-Hara system uses 16 different stretches to target all the major muscle groups, and allows you to find out where the
muscle imbalances (that are causing your problems in 9 out of 10 cases where there's no disease process active) are and
dismantles them, re-aligning the body that you've worked so diligently to mis-align, well, that's just a HUGE bonus. 
 
And the strengthening is just as important as the stretching.  Pain preempts strength, and strength preempts pain.  This is not
just philosophy, it is physiology.  Pain and strength use the same neural pathways.

Having said that, physical pain is often a signal that something's wrong; it's your body talking LOUDLY
to you.  It would like, if you aren't too busy, to fix the problem.  Now.  Before it gets worse.  So Ki-Hara up, already!

But sometimes nothing can be done about the cause of the sensation (the feeling) and you have to work on
the perception (how you interpret it).  And this is where I differ somewhat with the medscape article.

Attention and anger amplify pain: both increase the importance that your brain assigns to the pain.  In addition,
this process acts as an additional stressor, and you can see where this is going.  Why, you may even have been
there.  If so, you might find the following helpful.

Breathing slowly and deeply into the pain can reduced the perception and sometimes even the sensation.
By using an Optimal Breathing Development technique   and adding visualization you can often experience relief from pain.

Ready for blast off?  Slowly inhale for 4 seconds, visualizing soothing energy flowing into the pain area (this can help
for emotional pain, too).  Then slowly exhale for 4 seconds, visualizing pain leaving the area as it opens up into
empty space - which it mostly is, at the atomic level.  Then pause for 4 seconds, and feel positive memories or emotions
filling the area, smiling as this happens.

Repeat this for several minutes.  Adding Emotional Freedom Technique  can increase the effectiveness.

Your mind is a terrible thing to waste.  You can't always choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond.   
Peter