‘‘ I
had a fixed image of yoga in my head,” says longtime migraineur Teri Robert, patient educator, advocate and author of Living Well with Migraine Disease and Headaches.“ It was for skinny, flexible, fit people, and none of those things was me. I was reluctant to try because it looked too freaking hard.”
But it turns out— limber, slender or otherwise— many headache and migraine sufferers can benefit from regular yoga practice. A study published in the May 2007 edition of the journal Headache found that three months of yoga therapy, which included gentle postures and breathing exercises, reduced both the frequency and intensity of migraines.
“ Yoga postures are just the smallest part of what yoga is,” explains Gyandev Rich McCord, PhD, director of Ananda Yoga
Worldwide and the Ananda Yoga Teacher Training program and co-author of Yoga Therapy for Headache Relief. He notes that yoga’ s breathing techniques can play a therapeutic role and that meditation sometimes can be even more beneficial than either postures or breathing techniques.“ In any case, it’ s not about doing the‘ triple-pretzel pose,’” he says.“ It’ s about doing simple things that most people can do fairly easily. Pain should never be involved.”
MIND OVER MATTER Yoga is a mind-body practice, which means it can help mitigate both the mental and physical impact of chronic headaches.
When someone suffers from headache disorders,“ there’ s a sense of being out of control,” says Baxter Bell, MD, who does medical acupuncture, teaches yoga and is a therapeutic yoga educator in Oakland, Calif.“ When a headache happens, life is put on hold to attend to the pain.” This can have serious repercussions on a person’ s everyday life and emotional state.“ They may feel anxiety, discouragement or even despair,” he says. However, several of Dr. Bell’ s students have used yoga to reclaim“ a kind of control over their lives … that’ s encouraging and empowering.”
While practicing yoga,“ the normal thought process and tendency to be anxious and fearful is suspended,” Dr. Bell explains.“ You unconsciously step out of your habit of thinking and are guided in a very engaging way for an hour or hour and a half, which is refreshing to the spirit, mind and emotional balance.”
There’ s also a physical component. Yoga helps adjust poor body posture, which McCord says is a regular cause of headache pain.“ On a less obvious level, yoga works with the body’ s subtle energy, or life-force,” he adds.“ When the flow of that energy is blocked in some way, ill health results. Yoga can be used to promote a freer flow of energy.”
A PROCESS, NOT A PRESCRIPTION Although both Dr. Bell and McCord believe
36 HEAD WISE | Volume 1, Issue 1 • 2011