Migraine & Lucid Dreaming

[SUNDANCE]

I've noticed over the past few months as I try to build routines for lucid dreaming that my migraines have gotten significantly less debilitating. For context, I've suffered from migraines with severe visual and auditory aura since I was child: people's faces will start to blur and fractal, or I will hear what sounds like people murmuring in another room even when I am alone in my home; when it is really severe, I can't look at any sharp inside corners (such as the corner of whatever room I am in, or the inside of a box, or even the crease between pages of a book) because they will start to... split open, for lack of a better description. the two edges start to come apart in a searing light that leaves me completely blind and unable to move through the pain. I take a migraine medication as needed which does help, as long as I catch it early enough, but I've been taking that medication for over a year now and I was still ending up bedridden about every other week. I mean unable to move, to talk, to think, to perceive anything but the pain and fractal light.

In college I had some minor success in treating my migraines with meditation, but never enough that it felt worth it to try and find the time for regular deep meditation within my hectic schedule. My work in creating routines for lucid dreams, or maybe the stronger connection that I've felt to my dreams since beginning it, seems to have had an effect on my migraines that has my doctor confused. Not to mention myself! It's a massive relief, not being completely gut-punched by these migraines all the time, but I don't understand why lucid dreaming work would have caused this. I've gone through all of my other routines and nothing else seems a more likely candidate: if anything, I've been under more stress than usual which usually makes my episodes worse.

I guess this post is part journal, part question. Has anyone else who suffers from migraines with aura noticed improvement when doing lucid dream work? Does anyone with more knowledge of the spiritual backgrounds of the practice have an explanation? I can come up with some fantastical reasons about the pressure of the subconscious weighing and pushing out into the waking mind, but that feels.... silly.

 

[borbponderer]

Migraines are horrible. You have my sympathies. I can't vouch for lucid dream work but paying attention to my gut health has elimated them almost completely.

Caffeine is also factor. I won't drink coffee any more but tea is a manageable way to maintain a moderate caffeine habit.

 

[Digiquo]

I suppose the "why" would depend on what methods for achieving lucid dreaming you are utilizing. If you're using the wake back to bed method (waking up mid way through a normal sleep cycle and returning to sleep shortly after), I would wager the cycle interruption probably affects your brain chemistry in some way that reduces the triggers for your migraines.
Certain supplements/foods/drinks which can aid in lucid dreaming do so because they possess certain minerals/oils/enzymes/etc, and that could also play a factor.
Reality checks would be a much harder reason to pin the donkey's tail on. I can't think of any physiological reason that would influence migraines.

My advice would be stick to what you're doing since it seems to be working, but unless you do some hardcore experimentation and writing down literally every detail, I'm doubtful you'll be able to know for sure the "whys" of this without seeing a some kind of sleep expert. Even then, this could be uncharted territory and even they wouldn't know.

 

[iseht]

I bet this is a genuine side effect of your practice. Psychedelics are well known for disrupting migraines over decent periods of time after a single dose. Meditation practices share many overlapping effects with psychedelics, I would not be at all surprised to find that lucid dreaming practices operate on the same default mode network disruption that meditation and psychedelics do. I'm prone to similar migraines as you and I've found some relief through meditation, but particularly the middle pillar exercise which seems to stop the aura from progressing if I catch it early.

 

[Dènye Patwon]

This may be out of the question but are you certain that they aren't "Cluster Headaches"?

I suffer from them and lately I pick up on mini ones but when they are full blown they are a major pain. Not sure exactly what causes them asides maybe Caffeine.

I'd hope this response isn't taken too far from the original post but, if it even has your doctor confused then maybe it's worth seeing a neurologist to get a sleep study done possibly.

Godspeed.

 

[SUNDANCE]

I bet this is a genuine side effect of your practice. Psychedelics are well known for disrupting migraines over decent periods of time after a single dose. Meditation practices share many overlapping effects with psychedelics, I would not be at all surprised to find that lucid dreaming practices operate on the same default mode network disruption that meditation and psychedelics do. I'm prone to similar migraines as you and I've found some relief through meditation, but particularly the middle pillar exercise which seems to stop the aura from progressing if I catch it early.

Very heartening to know I'm not the only one who has had success with this! Would you be willing to share more on the "middle pillar exercise"? I don't think I'm familiar with it, and I've been trying to expand my meditation practice recently!

Post automatically merged: May 4, 2026

This may be out of the question but are you certain that they aren't "Cluster Headaches"?

I suffer from them and lately I pick up on mini ones but when they are full blown they are a major pain. Not sure exactly what causes them asides maybe Caffeine.

I'd hope this response isn't taken too far from the original post but, if it even has your doctor confused then maybe it's worth seeing a neurologist to get a sleep study done possibly.

Godspeed.

not out of the question, but something I've already looked into. I have a neurologist I see 2-3 times a year, and I've had a sleep study done in the past! I am sure that it is migraines, as I've had attacks that have lasted several days. Cluster headaches are usually shorter, anywhere from 10-15 minutes to 2 hours, whereas migraines can last up to 72 hours. I did cut back on my caffeine intake about 18 months ago, and that helped a little bit, but definitely not to the extent that my migraines have lessened recently.

 

[iseht]

Very heartening to know I'm not the only one who has had success with this! Would you be willing to share more on the "middle pillar exercise"? I don't think I'm familiar with it, and I've been trying to expand my meditation practice recently!

Its a Golden Dawn ritual. You begin visualizing white light at the crown of your head, at Kether, and then you bring the light down through the middle of the body vibrating names of God. Eheieh at Kether, YHVH Elohim at Daath (throat), YHVH Eloah ve-Daath at Tiphareth (heart), Shaddai El Chai at Yesod (pelvis), and Adonai ha-Aretz at Malkuth (feet) while seeing each sefirot light up in its respective color.

The whole process of bringing the energy down from the head through the body, equalizing each zone and dispersing unsettled energies with vibration quiets the mind and body and leaves you with a collected pool of energy at the feet that you then bring back up and let eject out of the crown like a fountain. You can then sit letting the fountain of light fall around and circulating back up in meditation as long as you'd like. There a few different variations on this, some people circulate the energy in different ways, I've seen reworkings of the vibrated names if Abrahamism isn't to your choosing. The vibration matters more than the name being spoken, but these particular names correspond well to the regions you are targeting in how they are projected vocally. You should feel the names vibrating like a deep massage in your soul.

 

[Amadeus]

Regarding migraines. You should carefully analyze all the spiritual practices, whatever you're doing. I had very severe long lasting headaches caused by the practices and it took me a while to understand what was going on.
I had pains in head almost daily, months at a time. Almost everything was caused by the practices. We do have a history with headaches in the family but whatever I did made it 1000% worse. Pains all the time. Horrible memories...

It can be anything, a certain practice, excessive energy, instability caused by some seemingly innocent thing. Overloaded chakras, excessive processing, mixing practices which might not go along well. Also everything can change over time. A might turn bad with B or become problematic after a while. This line between the two good and bad is very thin and fragile.

A very good idea is to practice deep meditations, inner stillness, emptying the mind, focusing on one path as the main. Such meditations can help with the pains and you might be able to get rid of them or at least lower them by some %. You could find beneficial methods to get into special dream like states too.

I'd highly recommend digging deep into various practices to find something useful, it could be a game changer. It might take a while but it's well worth it.

 

[kiki]

I should probably make a separate posts so I don't go too far off topic here. First off, it's great to hear that you're having some success as an unexpected side effect, and I'm probably going to be inspired to re-engage in lucid dreaming practices for this reason. Second, I had gone to something called a myth salon several years back and was talking to the host who had had issues with migraines and seizures for years and I don't remember our exact conversation, but in his spiritual practices he had an experience that ended up resolving the seizure issues and he actually knew that they were resolved in his system during a particular process, but they didn't stop an active flare up. He just came to a kind of knowing that it was over. I I think that astrology and timing plays a big part in amplifying ritual and spiritual practices and there's a part of me that wants to say that you are doing it enough during a certain time period when the veil was thinner and it allowed for a particular transformation. But I also concur with the other sentiments about your particular brain, chemistry or things changing because this is a scientifically documented phenomenon. Pretty severe debilitating migraines and intractable low-level seizure activity in my brain for a majority of my life and later on sort of learned that my constitution, which is very overthinky tends to draw a lot of energy to my crown and that specific practices that allow me to open up that area and soothe and cool it down. But also you know expressing myself through creative writing and speaking and practices like that, particularly singing and humming have actually helped remediate the issues. So I think that there may be a combination of spiritual and biological influences at play here.