Migraines affect 6 million people in the UK, and I, unfortunately, am among their number. Treatment is difficult, as each person’s condition is complex. Plus, according to New Scientist, research into migraines is “dismissed, derided and underfunded”. And, of course, migraines are an engrained element of the gender health gap. After puberty, women are up to four times more likely to suffer from them than men, according to a 2022 study.

I’ve struggled to get a hold on my migraines since I began having them as a teenager. Identifying triggers has often been difficult because they seem to come in clusters regardless of my stress levels, and finding the right medication has been just as much of a challenge. At their worst, my migraines have lasted a week – they are tedious and debilitating, leading to many hours of lying frustrated and weak in the dark.

Before, during and after a migraine episode, I feel disconnected – not just from the outside world, but from my own body because I can’t control the fog and pain it was putting me through. I feel low, exhausted and resigned to waiting it out.

Almost two years ago, I got a daith piercing in each ear, which is meant to stimulate your vagus nerve (which runs from your brain into your body) and works like acupuncture to block pain receptors that contribute to migraine. The practitioner stressed to me that the piercing would work best if I maintained good posture and took care of my back and neck. While I had the best intentions, I wasn’t consistent in doing this at all. 

Then, earlier this year, I spent a week in Granada with family and tried a couple of remote yoga classes with my aunt on her sunny patio before the 40°C heat hit each afternoon. Just before we flew home, a painful and disorientating migraine hit, later accompanied by sore shoulders and back pain, so I decided to commit to a better routine, aiming for two or three sessions a week at my local yoga studio. 

Having taken a class here and there during my teen years and early 20s, my expectations weren’t high. I first tried yoga at age 17 with two far more flexible friends and found it to be something of a disappointment. I failed in my struggle to empty my mind of all thought and concentrate on breathing, so I figured it wasn’t for me.

After the piercing practitioner’s warning about posture, however, I decided to give yoga another go. That was six months ago, and I’ve not had a full migraine since. 

Dr Sara Crystal, a migraine expert and medical director of Cove, a digital health platform for people living with migraine, says: “Yoga may help with migraine prevention by improving posture. Poor posture can contribute to neck pain and headaches.”

Dr Cyriac Athappilly, a GP and headache specialist at the National Migraine Centre, agrees: “As a holistic practice, yoga surely has a role in migraine management – as a form of exercise, stress management and mind-body connection.” She credits regular yoga practice as a way to “keep the internal environment of the individual more stable… reducing muscle tension, leading to more active relaxation, better stress management and better sleep quality”. 

While medical experts are hesitant to draw a direct relationship between yoga practices and alleviating migraine triggers, it’s clear that it can contribute to alleviating symptoms and managing stress that might manifest into migraines.

According to Dr Athappilly, stress management is “a big aspect of migraine prevention”, and yoga can contribute in spades. “Research shows that regular yoga practice leads to enhanced vagal tone [a higher capacity for stress] and decreased sympathetic drive [the activity within your nervous system that controls your fight-or-flight response],” she says, crediting yoga’s focus on mindful, deep breathing as a likely reason for this.

She adds that deep rhythmic breathing in a specific pattern can activate the vagus nerve (much like the daith piercing), and thereby the ‘rest and digest’ parasympathetic nervous system. “The more easily one can activate this nervous system, the better one becomes at managing stress.”

Once I’d established a regular yoga routine, the stress of daily life didn’t necessarily reduce but I was able to move through it better, both emotionally and physically. Any anxious or stressed thoughts could be sifted through much easier, and I felt an improvement in my posture.

“Long hours spent in front of our computer or phones can cause increased tension in our upper back, the back of the head, our jaws and face – all of which can make the physical symptoms of migraines more acute,” explains Peter Chierakul, clinical director and founder of headache and migraine clinic The Art Of Healing. The back bends and other stretches offered by yoga, he adds, are the “antithesis of the forward head posture”, a common issue we can develop from hunching over computers and our phones.

Of course, it’s important not to push things too far and injure or strain parts of your body in pursuit of the more sophisticated poses before you’re ready (if ever). “Certain yoga poses such as inversions and headstands can cause more strain on the neck and increase blood circulation to the head, potentially worsening migraine symptoms,” Dr Athappilly advises, recommending caution.

Above all else, in each yoga class, I practice self-acceptance – that I’m not that flexible, but I’m improving. I continue to struggle to quiet my thoughts for an hour-long class, but I try my very best. Putting time aside to feel accepting and compassionate towards my body feels instrumental in how I approach yoga and the impact it’s had on my migraine symptoms.

For me, yoga is all about suspending any ego or expectation of myself and using classes as a means of recalibrating the connection between my body and my mind. I found that regardless of whether I can do the more complicated poses, the satisfaction and peace that comes from mastering a flow of vinyasa poses (lowering my body from a plank position to an upward-facing dog and raising it to downward-facing dog, for instance) really helps to ease whatever work-related or personal gripes that are rushing through my mind at that time, and however they might manifest themselves – mentally or physically.

This ease has helped me get to know my body better, which has made all the difference in navigating what might trigger a migraine.

“People who practise yoga regularly often become more attuned to their bodies and are better at recognising early signs of stress,” Dr Athappilly explains. “They may even be better at picking up early warning signs of migraine attacks and therefore manage them more effectively.”

But perhaps the most valuable skill that regular yoga practice has given me is the ability to sit with and acknowledge my body and mind’s limits – from poses that don’t feel right to me on the day to thoughts or habits I need to let go of as they cross my mind during a class.

Accepting and feeling attuned with my body and mind, and understanding both better through regular yoga practice, has done wonders in alleviating the most debilitating of my migraine symptoms and attacks. One of the worst things about migraines is the way they disconnect you from control over your body: how you see, how you hear, how you feel.

So even if I never achieve crow pose or comfortably perform a headstand, yoga still gives me an unimaginable amount of peace.

Images: Getty