Headache research in mindfulness practitioners

[BarryL]

Dear fellow mindfulness practitioners

My name is Barry and I am an MSc Mindfulness student at the University of Aberdeen. I am a practicing physiotherapist with a special interest in headaches. My interest was born out of my own experience of daily headaches as a young man.
I believe that headache suffers should benefit from mindfulness practice, however in the last few years as mindfulness has been used in headache research the results are inconclusive. Some studies have shown positive results while others no effect. I believe that the traditional natural science approach to researching headaches with statistical analysis may be too removed from the lived experience of headaches to elucidate causative factors.
To fill in possible over sites in research I would like to interview mindfulness practitioners, like yourself, who suffer from headaches and try interpreting and understand the life experience of headaches. This sort of approach may be effective at providing direction to mindfulness practice in the future which could be beneficial to all headaches suffers.
If you suffer from headaches I would like to invite you to be part of my research.
• To qualify as a headaches sufferer you should get at least 1 headache per week (or 4 headaches per month). Headache here refers to any time of headache including migraine.
• To be considered a mindfulness practitioner you should have practiced for 3 months, for about 20- 30 minutes per day, 3 times a week.
Please note you have to be a mindfulness practitioner AND suffer headaches to be included in my research.
Your agreeing as a volunteer would involve:
1. Having a 40 to 60 minute interview with me via SKYPE. This is the main thrust of the study. I will record the interview and transcribe it. At the end of the study all the transcribed interviews will be compared using a process known as interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). In this way I will analyse common themes that emerge.
2. Signing an informed consent form saying you agree to take part in the study.
3. Keeping a headache diary (which I will provide) for one week on a daily bases just before the interview. This involves completing a one page table once a day. It involves simple ticking blocks mostly and tackles less than 2 minutes. This will allow me to know what type of headaches you suffer from, for example migraine, tension headaches, cervicogenic headaches, etc.
I hope to hear from you soon to schedule your Skype interview at a time that is most convenient to you. If you would like further information or have any questions please feel free to email me.

Mindfully yours
Barry

[Gareth]

I see you managed to figure out the registration process.

I'll put some links to this topic via Twitter soon.

[BarryL]

Took a while but finally figured it out

[BarryL]

I would just like to add, due to a query I received, that all information given in the interview will be kept 100% private and that your anonymity is guaranteed. No one will ever see the transcripts of the interviews other than my self. No one will even know you took part in the study.

P.s. had an interesting sitting this morning. Tried a satvic directed meditation. It was amazing!

[BarryL]

Just an update and feedback on some of the interviews.

What has surprised a few people is how much they benefited from doing the interview.
One person commented at the end of the interview:
“That was fascinating, I never expected to gain so much from it”
Another said:
“Gee, that was fun, thanks. Very enlightening!”

The questions are designed to bring insight into what is causing the headaches and how to stop them.

I still need a lot more interviews so please do volunteer.

It has come up that one of the things making people reluctant to volunteer is keeping the headache diary for a few days. I have decided that keeping the headache diary is not really necessary so you may volunteer without keeping records and simply do the interview only. One quick interesting chat and you’re done!

[Gareth]

The Twitter links to this topic go out over the next few days. I hope it gets you some interest.

[BarryL]

Hi Gareth

Did you manage to do twitter links?

[Peter]

He did. I saw them
Peter

[Gareth]

There is an indicator of how many times that a topic has been viewed. That jumps massively whenever I do Twitter links to the topic.

There are definitely people reading about this. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee any uptake.