Until three years ago, Heidi Castro had suffered from “very, very intense” migraines that she’d put up with for about 10 years. She tried acupuncture and various pain-relief medications with mixed success, then she signed on to a migraine study at Sydney’s Royal Hospital for Women.
As part of the study, Castro attended a meditation workshop every Tuesday and Thursday for three months and meditated for five minutes twice a day.
“The first month the migraines and the number of migraines were reduced,” she says. “The following month they were reduced to about four in a month [10 was typical before the workshop], then after that I didn’t have any.”
She continued meditating for another two months and thought: “OK, I’m cured” and stopped. “I then started getting them back,” she says. “So I started meditating again. It has helped permanently.”