Mini-Meditations for Stressed Out Migraine People on the Go

Stress might not be considered a direct migraine trigger anymore, thanks to certain science-types, but it sure isn't helping either.

Relaxing and meditating does help to decrease the frequency of migraine attacks, if one does it regularly. But truthfully, even among the people who meditate, not a whole lot do it more than once a day.

Yours truly have wrote earlier about The Relaxation Response. Dr. Herbert Benson and his coleques have been hard at work for the last 40 plus years to perfect the ways people can induce it by performing some simple exercises.

Some of those practices are so simple that they require only a minute or two to perform. They call it "do a mini".

Here's some examples:

Mini Version 1
Count very slowly to yourself from 10 down to zero, one number for each breath. With the first diaphragmatic breath, you say "10" to yourself, with the next breath, you say "nine", etc. If you start feeling light-headed or dizzy, slow down the counting. When you get to "zero", see how you are feeling. If you are feeling better, great! If not, try doing it again.

Mini Version 2
As you inhale, count very slowly up to four; as you exhale, count slowly back down to one. Thus, as you inhale, you say to yourself "one, two, three, four," as you exhale, you say to yourself "four, three, two, one." Do this several times.

Mini Version 3
After each inhalation, pause for a few seconds; after you exhale, pause again for a few seconds. Do this for several breaths.

For more details and other exercises, check out Benson-Henry Institute for Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

That site has quite a bit of relaxation techniques available free of charge if you figure out how to navigate those tricky menus. Worth checking out.

link: "do a mini"