In This Issue -
Tension Headache Relief
Blog Highlights
* * *
"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles." - Anne Frank
* * *
Tension Headache Relief
Learn how to manage and prevent headaches with improved posture, stress reduction, and massage...
Many Americans suffer from chronic tension headaches and typically treat them with pain-relieving medication. Do you have frequent tension headaches? Would you like to feel better and reduce your reliance on medication? Massage is an effective treatment to relieve and prevent tension headaches.
Causes of Tension Headaches
Tension headaches are the most common type of headache and are usually caused by poor posture and exacerbated by stress. The most common cause of tension headaches is a forward head. This causes tightness in the muscles of your neck, shoulders, and back, because the weight of the head is not properly balanced on top of the spine. When properly aligned, your head weighs about 10 pounds. But if it's forward, it can cause much more strain on your muscles, forcing them to work as hard as if your head weighed up to 4 times as much.
When the head is forward, the muscles on the front of your neck and shoulders are shortened and tense, while the muscles on the back of your neck and torso are tight and straining. This poor posture is often caused by work station positions and body mechanics.
Other Types of Headaches
- Migraines
Occur when the blood vessels in the brain become dilated, usually due to food allergies, hormonal changes, or stress. Symptoms include visual disturbances, severe head pain, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, sensitivity to light. Usually felt on one side of the head, but can be on both sides.
- Hormonal Headaches or Menstrual Migraines.
70% of migraine sufferers are women. Most female migraines are related to changes in the levels of hormones during the menstrual cycle.
- Mixed Headaches.
A tension headache combined with a migraine. Typically, the tension headache starts first and the pain causes a migraine to develop. With a pattern of mixed headaches, the best way to avoid the onset of a migraine is to treat the tension headache.
- Migraine or Not?
A headache that includes dizziness, nausea, and visual disturbance may be a migraine. However, these symptoms may also be part of certain types of tension headaches that affect C1, the top vertebra just under the skull, or the Vegus nerve, which passes through the neck.
What You Can Do
Attention to body position, stress management, and regular massage treatments can help prevent or reduce the frequency of headaches, and consequently your use of medication.
- Attention to Body Position
Be aware of where your head is at as you move through your day.
Learn what it feels like to have the base of your skull in line with your tailbone while allowing natural curve in the neck and low back.
Notice how it feels to have your ears aligned over the middle of your shoulders.
- Stress Management
Includes such techniques as meditation, aerobic exercise, and yoga.
Yoga is especially good for reducing stress and improving posture.
By strengthening and stretching muscles of the upper body, chest-openers, backbends, and spinal twists help to counteract the pulling forward caused by much of what we do in daily life.
- Massage
A recent medical study showed regular massage can help relieve stress and decrease pain in people with chronic tension headaches. Tension headaches are the most responsive to massage. With mixed headaches, a tension headache that is combine with a migraine, massage can quite effectively address muscular tension and stress. However, massage can't help much with a headache that is predominantly a migraine or hormonal.
How Massage Helps
Massage relieves muscle tension and promotes general relaxation. It alleviates the tension, range of motion restrictions, and stresses on posture at the root of many headaches.
Muscles eventually adapt to being shortened when they are chronically tight due to poor posture or stress. Massage teaches them how to let go of tension and lengthen again. Massage can also free the connective tissue which creates a new way for muscles to function.
Reiki and other energy healing techniques promote relaxation, reduce pain, remove energy blockages, and restore healthy energy flow to the body and being.
You Can Feel Better
You can reduce the severity and frequency of your headaches and even prevent them with good body mechanics, stress management, and regularly scheduled massage treatments.
To take care of ourselves properly, we need intention, knowledge, and self-awareness. To notice what our bodies are telling us, we need to prioritize time to slow down and listen. Then we must respond in a self-compassionate way to the messages we receive.
Be a best friend to yourself. Care for the house you live in. In a healthy being, there is no room for separation of mind and body. The union of mind, body, and spirit helps us move toward a healthier life and greater peace in our being.
* * *
"When I discuss survivors, I'm interested in how they embrace life, not how they avoid death." - Bernie Siegel, M.D.
* * *
Blog Highlights
Click to Read a letter from Chief Looking Horse calling for prayers to heal the Earth
or copy and paste into your web browser:
http://SueRedding.blogspot.com/2010/06/call-for-prayers-to-heal-earth_06.html
"Where wisdom is available, we seek guidance to carry us home."
* * *
Receive New Issues of Free Spiral Eye Newsletters
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment