Weekly Assessments: To examine the process of change, brief (15 minutes) weekly telephone evaluations of major important domains (pain, physical function, psychosocial function, sleep) will be conducted. The measures are a subset of the collected baseline measures (see D.3.3.1). These data will allow a detailed examination of the temporal association of the individual weeks of the 8-week MBSR program with the primary outcomes of pain and physical function as well as secondary outcomes of psychosocial function. It will also allow a detailed examination of the temporal relationship between time and frequency meditating and the primary and secondary outcomes. All measures will be collected weekly over the telephone one-two days before the treatment sessions. These measures will be collected by the research assistant who will be blinded to randomization assignment. These weekly dependent measures will include assessment of pain, physical function, psychosocial function and sleep with 1) the SF-36 Physical Function scale, 2) self-reported pain in the past week on a scale of 0-100, 3) the short-form of the Multidimensional Pain Inventory, 4) subjects' reports of any pain medication usage (including OTC) during the previous week (type, dosage, and frequency), tracked with diaries, 5) the five item MAAS, 6) the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; and 7) Acute Illness/injury or exacerbation of comorbidity will be assessed with yes/no questions and if answered positively, the participant will be asked to describe the event.