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A blurb in Psychology Today reports that research shows three months of intensive yoga practice (1 hour a day, 5 days a week) involving meditation and relaxation breathing can reduce the intensity and frequency of migraines as much as 70 percent.
Researchers speculate that yoga, meditation and deep breathing help prevent migraines by raising serotonin levels.
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Content by Diana E. Lee.
4 comments:
I wish I had enough energy, motivation and time to give an hour a day, five days a week to yoga, and meditation because the outcome is so good. But being wracked with migraines so often the possiblity of reaching that goal seems so far away. But thank you for posting this data. As far as a therapy go, it beats any drug I've seen. Guess I should be doing yoga and meditation. Wow, thanks for posting that.
Ironically enough, I was an avid yogi prior to developing an intractable migraine in early March that has yet to go away. Now, I've had to give up yoga; my medication makes me unable to practice Bikram Yoga due to the heat and the pounding in my head only gets worse during inverted poses which eliminates most anything with sun salutations. I would have thought that an activity which claims to reduce the frequency of migraines would have helped prevent them in the first place.
I wish the article had more information about what specific activities the participants engaged in so that we could try to replicate it. I suspect it was more focused on breathing and gentle poses than more challenging ones.
I have a follow up post in the works that discusses ways to ease yourself into a gentle mind-body practice.
I'm so sorry you've been driven from an activity you love by an unrelenting migraine, Kate. :(
As a yoga teacher, I have to add that a gentle practice would be best for most migraine sufferers. Many headache sufferers are also dealing with some level of exhaustion due to the pain, so attending a vigorous class may be counterproductive. Don't know why they would say "intensive" yoga practice - maybe the sheer fact of practicing 5 times a week makes it intensive. Restorative, gentle yoga, hatha classes would all be very beneficial. As with everything, every one reacts differently to yoga - people with head trauma may not tolerate some seemingly gentle moves, while someone with stress-related migraines may be able to do a lot. Take it slow, get a teacher who has experience with this and track what works and what doesn't. But don't give up on yoga - it really does work for migraines. For a book reference, try Relax and Renew by Judith Lasiter.
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