Everything counts. Everything you do and are adds up to your pain. Change occurs when you claim self-empowerment, use “beginner’s mind,” incorporate stress reduction and hands-on therapies, and examine the deeper realms of your life. As the program unfolds, you will be able to summon your inner headache warrior, detective, and coach.
Somatic Self-Care
This self-care path takes a somatic approach, which means it works with your inner awareness of body, mind, emotions, and spirit. The term somatics, coined by Dr. Thomas Hanna, derives from the Greek word soma, or “living body.” A somatic approach defines the body as an expression of one’s entire being. More than simply a collection of mechanical parts, the body holds our life experience, including our history, and shapes our thinking, language, moods, and actions.
But how can somatic awareness heal headaches if modern medicine can’t? Somatic self-care addresses a different realm than that of standard medical treatment and even some alternative therapies. In a somatic approach, the treatment is the process. It empowers you to take healing into your own hands. A pill doesn’t address why and how you collect stress in your shoulders, clench your jaw, or stop breathing. Neither does it teach you how those factors contribute to your headaches, how to change them, or when and why you first embodied them.
Beyond tips and techniques, somatic self-care builds awareness of your automatic, unproductive reactions or patterns when they arise. It includes your inner experience and opens possibilities for shifting yourself in the moment. In this way, you can affect those seemingly unbreakable patterns that have added to your stress and challenged your health.
Life without Headaches: A Coach’s Promise
How can you change your outlook from one of despair, fear, and powerlessness to one of faith, hope, and empowerment? With the help of a coach, of course!
A great coach, healer, teacher, or mentor in any domain is someone who believes in and sees the best in you. A coach tells you that you can and will do better and supports you in reaching your goals. A coach helps you look at things in new ways, kicks your butt if you lose your way, encourages you to get back on the horse when you fall off, and tells you to keep going when you want to give up. A coach keeps you focused on what is important and teaches you how to weigh your options and make choices based on your goals. A coach holds your big vision for you when you can’t, don’t, or won’t and reminds you when you forget or forget how.
The Mundo Program is designed to be your personal headache coach. By taking on the practices and integrating the material in these pages, you will know more about yourself and your headaches, gain better health, and feel empowered to take charge of your life in many areas. In the process you will learn to rely on your own vision to see the big picture as well as the small one and to trust yourself to evaluate your options, make choices, and correct course if you falter. In the end, you will have become your own coach and healer.
For Kids and Teens Too
This book is for anyone who wants to both relieve and prevent headaches naturally, which includes kids and teens.
Some children and adolescents I’ve worked with started suffering from headaches as young as five and six years old — and some can’t recall a time without them. Because their pain began at such tender ages, it’s as if their bodies were readouts of the stress around them. Some felt tension or upheaval at home from divorce, illness, or familial birth or death; some were coping with bullying, trauma, or relocating to a new home, school, or city. Some were influenced by negative messages about diet, weight, appearance, and belonging. Some kids felt pressure to be perfect, excel, and win, while others felt frustrated and isolated because they were always sick with migraine. They carried the burden of their emotions (and often the result of “plain ole” bad habits) in their headaches.
Luckily, kids respond well to information about food, diet, and exercise, and are even open to learning new ways to calm down, like meditation or changes in their breathing and posture. Just as with adults, the key for kids is finding the right combination for each person, creating motivation, and teaching them and their parents. Instead of taking medications, they learn to make the connections between their stressors and their headaches, along with practical things they can do to avoid pain.
For Family and Friends: How to Help
Family and friends of people with migraine can feel helpless because they want to do something but don’t know what to do or how to do it. If you are reading this book to support someone you care about, bravo!
Migraineurs are super sensitive to all stimuli, including touch, so it can be hard to know what is helpful or why your usually effective massage is not being welcomed. Not feeling well, migraine sufferers often withdraw from their usual family, work, and social activities, which can strain relationships and commitments — and then they feel bad or guilty about that too.
In these pages, you will find a variety of ways to help and support your family member or friend with migraine, and hopefully you will be inspired to add healthy living practices to your own life. Most people don’t want to be treated differently because they are sick — especially children and teens. If the whole family has a healthy diet, your child, teenager, or spouse will feel that it’s the norm. The same goes for postural awareness and stress reduction practices like breathing and meditation. By following the program, friends and family members can help while improving their own health.
It’s true: some people have never experienced a migraine. If you have never had one and are trying to support someone who does, the first step is understanding how disabling it is. Try to recall the worst hangover you have ever had. If you are underage or have never had a hangover, do you remember having a fever, cold, virus, flu, infection, or other illness that left you feeling as sick as a dog, with your head about to explode?
In migraine, as with hangovers and illnesses, the symptoms are not just in your head, which would be bad enough. They take over your entire body. You feel overpowered, weak, and nauseated. Your skin turns pallid. The slightest movement makes you feel worse, and lights, sounds, and scents become magnified. You’re disoriented and can’t think straight, let alone sit or stand. You feel lucky to make it to the bathroom to throw up a few times, have the dry heaves with what’s left, and make it back into bed.
You get the picture. Although everyone’s experience is slightly different, if you have ever suffered like that, you have a glimpse into the world of migraine sufferers — except that their condition returns, often unpredictably, again and again. Can you see why someone would be sensitive to remarks like “How bad can it be — it’s only a headache”? Your empathy and gentle suggestions can be more helpful than you realize.
Make Sure You’re Okay, Then Proceed
The program and methods in these pages are not a substitute for medical advice. Before you proceed, make sure you have gotten a headache diagnosis from your doctor to rule out any other serious causes. All my headache clients are, or have been, under the care of neurologists and were initially examined by their primary care providers.
If you experience a negative change, especially a sudden worsening, in your regular headaches or headache patterns, whether or not you have had a diagnosis, contact your doctor right away!
Most headaches are primary and inorganic, which means that (1) the headache is the actual cause of the pain and (2) you can’t locate it in a fixed, physical spot in your head, like a tumor, for example.
Secondary headache means that the headache is secondary to an underlying organic, often more serious condition, such as a concussion, brain tumor, cancer, meningitis, or an aneurysm.5 If an underlying condition related to injury, illness, or disease is causing your headache, get treatment for it immediately.
If you are taking medication for your headaches, continue to work in conjunction with your doctor. After you have a strong grounding in mind-body practices for relief and prevention and your headaches have become less frequent and intense,