Can Yoga Relieve Headaches?
Are you unhappy with the options available to manage chronic headaches or migraines? Yoga offers a natural way to relieve your pain and could even decrease the frequency of your headaches.
Headache Causes
Headaches can be triggered by:
- Stress
- Eye Strain
- Caffeine Withdrawal
- Alcohol Use
- Allergies
- Fatigue
- Migraines
- Illnesses
- Hormonal Changes
- Dehydration
- Strong Odors
- Bright Light
- Smoke and Pollution
- Missing Meals
Both tension headaches and migraines can happen when the muscles in your neck and shoulders become uncomfortably tight. In some cases, headaches may be related to forward-head posture, a problem that happens when you hold your head farther forward than normal. As the head moves forward and down, pressure increases on the neck and upper back.
At the same time, some muscles that support your neck and head may shorten and tighten while others weaken. As a result, you may develop headaches and stiffness in your neck, shoulders, and upper back.
Older people are more likely to develop a forward-head posture, but age isn't the only factor. If you frequently bend your head when using screens and digital devices, you could develop forward-head posture, called "text neck" in this case.
Forward-head posture may also be caused by slouching when sitting or standing, arthritis, or imbalanced muscles.
How Yoga Eases Muscle Tension
Yoga offers a simple, effective way to ease muscle tightness in the neck, shoulders, and scalp. The ancient mind/body practice uses a combination of poses, deep breathing, and meditation to relax your body and target headache pain.
Poses like cat-cow lengthen the spine and reduce tension in the back, shoulders, and neck. The pose, performed on all fours, involves two distinct parts. During the cow portion of the pose, you'll lift your head and arch your back. As you transition to the cat pose, you'll round your back and drop your head.
During yoga classes, you'll learn other poses that will relieve stiffness and improve flexibility, including the standing forward fold, downward facing dog, and cobra pose. According to a narrative literature review published in Cureus in 2023, yoga can help tension headaches by relaxing muscles, improving posture, and strengthening back, neck, and shoulder muscles.
When your muscles become more flexible, it may be easier to correct your posture and reduce headaches due to tight muscles or improper positioning of your head.
Do migraines frequently ruin your day? Practicing yoga could reduce the frequency of your migraines, according to the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience. Yoga could also help you manage your triggers, like lack of sleep. Yoga may improve sleep quality and duration and offers an excellent way to wind down at the end of the day.
Using Yoga to Manage Stress
Stress can be a factor in both tension headaches and migraines. The slow breathing techniques used while practicing yoga poses calm the nervous system and help reduce stress and anxiety.
Meditation and mindfulness helps you focus on the present and ignore thoughts that could increase stress. If you feel your stress level increasing, a quick five-minute meditation session will relieve tension and may prevent headaches.
Yoga and meditation can help you change the way you react to stress and improve your self-esteem. Long-term yoga practitioners reported that yoga offered many benefits for physical and mental health in a qualitative study published in BioPsychoMedicine in 2023. The participants noted improvements in pain, sleep and flexibility and felt that yoga helped them cope better with stress and anxiety.
Need to Improve Your Posture? Yoga Can Help
Yoga improves your posture by strengthening the muscles that help support your bones and joints. Poses also improve the alignment of your spine and help you keep your head properly centered. The mountain pose can be very helpful if you tend to slouch or tilt your head downward to look at your phone. The standing pose aligns your spine, tones the muscles in your core, improves flexibility, and calms the mind.
Ready to find out what yoga can do for your headaches? Sign up for one of our yoga classes.
Sources:
Journal of Clinical Neuroscience: Effectiveness of Yoga Therapy for Migraine: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Studies, 5/2022
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096758682200025X
NCBI: Cureus: Role of Yoga as Adjunctive Therapy for Migraines: A Narrative Review of the Literature, 11/7/2023
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10701189/
BioPsychoSocial Medicine: Perceived Benefit of Yoga Among Adults Who Have Practiced Yoga for a Long Time: A Qualitative Study, 5/15/2023
https://bpsmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13030-023-00276-3
NCBI: Journal of General Internal Medicine: Yoga for Treating Headaches: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, 10/30/2019
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31667736/
Healthline: What Can Yoga Do for Migraine Relief, 1/5/2023
https://www.healthline.com/health/yoga-for-migraines#prevention
NIH: Headache Pain, 3/2014