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Posts Tagged ‘yoga’

Relaxation for Migraineurs – A Cool Breeze Blowing Through your Brain

November 13th, 2008

BREESE – Breathe RElax Easy SmilE

(Yes, I know that’s not the right way to spell breeze.) I use the analogy of a breeze to learn to relax and disengage mental and emotional energy. In his book Breaking the Headache Cycle, neurologist Ian Livingstone, M.D. explains how our nervous systems need both a reasonable amount of stress, building the tone of the nervous system and keeping us growing, and a reasonable amount of relaxation, allowing the nervous system to rest and recover, and calm down.

Migraineurs are not necessarily more keyed up or more stressed than others (despite lingering myths about a “Migraine personality”), but our nervous systems are more sensitive to stimuli, and the higher our stress load, the lower our resistance to Migraine triggers. Dr. Livingstone cites research showing that Migraine frequency and severity can be reduced an average of 40% through regular practice of relaxation. A study at the University of Rajasthan, India, found that “Three months of intensive yoga practice—one hour, five days per week—curbs frequency and intensity of migraines by 70 percent,” according to Liz Somes in Psychology Today.

Imagine a soft gentle breeze blowing through our minds and bodies, carrying our stress away. We can generate the breeze through:

Breathe – We rarely breathe fully, but to breathe fully induces relaxation. In particular, we hold our inspiration and do not breathe out fully. One deep breathing practice is to breathe in deeply, to a count of three, and then breathe out completely, to a count of five.

 

Shortly after I started working with Dr. Livingstone I took on breathing like this for 10 – 15 minutes a day, and also any time I noticed myself getting anxious, tense or upset. Later that month I was driving to the airport for a business trip, cutting it rather close for my departure time, a situation which makes me very agitated. I noticed my stress level rising and the tension increasing in my hands, arms, shoulders, and neck. A few minutes later I had a tell-tale pinpoint of pain over my right temple. I began the 3 in – 5 out breathing practice and felt myself calming down. By the time I got to the airport half an hour later my head pain was gone.

 

RElax – Relaxation is a completely different state for our nervous systems than excitation. We need both states to be healthy. But many of us do not consciously and deliberately relax very often. Relaxation can occur in sleep, in meditation or visualization, in enjoyable conversation with a friend or loved one, in exercise or sexual activity, in reading or listening to music. Some of the activities we think of as relaxing – some computer or video games, for instance, actually excite us and raise our stress levels. I took on a daily practice of spending 15 minutes doing deep breathing, meditation and visualizations. Within a couple of months my migraine frequency was cut in half. When I stopped doing it regularly, within a couple of months the migraines had inched back up again.

Easy – give it up, let go, don’t worry! Stress and anxiety are real, physiological states. But they are also occurring in our minds, where we can notice them. I have taken on a practice of detachment with love, creative disengagement, stepping down. This becomes easier with a regular practice of meditation, where I can notice the things I need to let go of and picture myself dropping them.

SmilE – cultivate gratitude, humor and joy. This doesn’t mean you can’t gripe and vent when needed – but keep a commitment to do it in order to clear the bad stuff and regain your own optimism. Without gratitude, humor and joy, life is not worth living. When we smile it actually affects us physiologically, emotionally and mentally. Maybe you don’t want to smile – but try it anyway. You may say, “Megan, this just the power of positive thinking!” I won’t argue with you, but I will suggest that most of us spend most of our time submitting to the power of negative thinking! So try this for a change. Watch, read or listen to a gentle comedy. Look at something beautiful. Talk to someone you love. Play with a child. Find something to smile about.

If you practice generating the breeze, you can calm your system and reduce your Migraines. If you want to make it easier to practice, join us for the initial Free my Brain relaxation teleclasses. I will be leading a group in learning and practicing yoga breathing and full body relaxation, and guided visualization, in two 35 minute teleclasses, coming up on December 1st and 4th. Click here to read more or to register for the BREESE teleclasses.

– Megan Oltman

Grass in the breeze image courtesy of Andrew Storms.

Tags: breathing, Ian Livingstone, M.D., meditation, Migraine management, relaxation, yoga
Posted in Managing, Tips & Techniques | Comments (7)

Physical Therapy (Again) – This Time for Migraine

July 29th, 2008

Past results not a guarantee of future performance.

I had my first physical therapy appointment yesterday, prescribed by Dr. Gerhardstein, my new headache specialist, as I discussed in Update on my Headache Specialist Visit.   The idea is to release tension in my neck and retrain me to loosen those muscles, and avoid straining them.  As I understand it, neck pain and tension lead to tension headaches.  The muscles in the neck connect directly with the fascia over the skull, so tension in the neck muscles will lead to tightening of the fascia, leading to that tightening-all-over-the-head pain of tension headaches.  Since my tension headaches almost always morph into Migraines, this should help reduce that trigger.

I took my first yoga class at 15, going along with my mother to the local Y, and I was proud of how flexible I was compared to the 30, 40 and 50ish women in the class.  Now I’m that 40-50ish woman and I’m not so flexible.  The physical therapist (who is about my age, I’d guess) must have said “at your age” at least 4 times in the course of a 45 minute session.  “Your posture is not too bad for your age.” “It’s common to have that kind of limited range of motion at your age.”  (And the one that really killed me) “You might still be able to tighten up those abdominals at your age.”

My mother always corrected my posture as a child and a teen, but when I went to college I took and then taught women’s self-defense classes.  I learned to stand tall, strong, and proud.  After my pregnancies I worked hard on tightening those abdominals back up.  It is a rude awakening that I’m slumping even a little, at my age!  I had to laugh at myself – she said she was going to assess my posture, I stood up straight (I thought) and prepared to receive my A+ and she said my posture was “not too bad,” and that my abdominals were weak.  Not too bad?  She might as well have given me an F!

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked her.  She applied moist heat and a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) unit, then ultra-sound, then a gentle (Ahh!) neck massage.  Since the session yesterday I have been hyper aware of my posture.  Each time I go through a doorway I true myself up – ears over shoulders, head held high, abdominals in.  I did the yoga exercises she gave me before bed and the neck stretches in the shower.  I’m looking forward to my next appointment, later in the week.

Here’s what the rude awakening is.  The fact that I did yoga regularly as a teen and on and off in my twenties and thirties will not help me now.  The fact that I know how to have good posture, how to relax my neck, how to exercise my abdominals, none of that is the same as doing it, now.  The physical therapist doesn’t see the woman who did all that great stuff decades ago.  She sees the woman with chronic pain and stiffness in her neck.  She sees the limited range of motion, and treats that.  Thank goodness!  Being a teacher’s pet will not help me here!  Having been a straight A student has no relevance!  This is about a daily practice to help me live better and feel better, now.  In my 49 (and a Half!!!) year old body, not the 15 or 25 or 35 year old one I once had.

I wanted you to know about PT as an option for helping with Migraine.  I also wanted to remind myself, and you, to live now, in this day, in this body (the one you’re in).  Bring peace to this day.  Bring healing to this day.  And there is hope for those abdominals yet!

– Megan

Model of the head image copyright 1995 Buyamag Inc., yoga stretch image courtesy of Bandita.

Tags: flexibility, migraine, physical therapy, posture, TENS, tension headaches, yoga
Posted in Managing, Medicine, Rant | Comments (1)