Inside Yoga 115 (15/9/14)
A few days ago a couple of publications were highlighting the effectiveness of meditation in reducing headaches and migraine. The news stories were citing a recent study that had discovered that meditation can reduce the number of migraines a person suffers from and also the length of migraine can be shorter by as much as 3 hours.
“Stress is a well-known trigger for headaches and research supports the general benefits of mind/body interventions for migraines, but there hasn’t been much research to evaluate specific standardised meditation interventions,” said Rebecca Erwin Wells, assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study.
The study focussed on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques, this is quite simply mindfulness meditation – based on the Buddhist practices of meditation, something I have been practiced for the past 20 years and teach as part of my yoga teaching.
I do swear by its effectiveness and it is good to see these techniques getting publicity in mainstream press.
It is also good to see meditation receiving scientific scrutiny because although there are enough people in the world who can say that meditation has helped them in so many ways, including the control and reduction of headaches, it still requires “scientific” proof that it works to get mainstream acceptance.
To read the stories see links below:
http://time.com/3340452/meditation-shortens-migraines/
The source report: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.12420/abstract
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