Can Mindfulness Help Relieve Migraines?

You’ve seen it on morning shows, heard it on the radio, and watched it slowly take over your Instagram feed… but what does the mindfulness revolution really have to offer?

According to experts, quite a bit: lower stress levels, increased focus and productivity, improved memory and cognitive flexibility, higher relationship satisfaction, a greater sense of peace and acceptance, improved coping skills, and… (you guessed it!) fewer migraines.

Mindfulness has been encouraged as a supplement to mainstream migraine treatment for years. Studies (like this one and this one) have repeatedly found that adding mindfulness based stress reduction, meditation, and yoga into the treatment mix results in fewer, shorter, and less intense migraines.

For people who do not currently practice mindfulness, this is good news. There’s something simple you can add to your daily routine that science says will help your migraines.

But what about the rest of us? The ones who already practice mindfulness, and still get migraines? Are we doing something wrong? Is this the most relief we can get?

If you already live a mindful lifestyle, but you still get migraines, there's actually good news for you too. There is something you can do to make your mindfulness more effective at relieving pain, and the adjustment won’t be too hard. So chin up, and read on.

Before I found relief from my migraines, I lived mindfully. I attended yoga classes, meditated on a regular basis, and did my best to live in the present. The experts were right about most things: I was feeling happier, more satisfied, less stressed, and more productive. But the migraines… they still came right on schedule, twice a month, ruining my life and making me a prisoner of my own bed for a full 48 hours a piece.

It wasn’t until much later that the same mindfulness techniques I was applying to the rest of my life began to reduce my migraine pain… and when it did, the difference was radical.

Simply put, I was missing two secret ingredients: education and guidance. Once I learned what was happening in my body and how to direct mindful practices toward those ideas, I finally began to experience relief. The same techniques that I already swore by were now having a profoundly different impact on my mind, body, and experience of pain. When coupled with education and guidance, mindfulness wasn't just a supplement to my migraine treatment, it was a total replacement.

Whether you already practice mindfulness, or you’re new to all of this, education is a great place to begin. That’s why we’ve made dedicated the entire first stage of the Curable journey to learning. You can access Curable’s library of quick, informative audio lessons at no charge, with no commitment.