Connecting Mind to Body to Cure a Headache
An amputee swears he can "feel" his missing leg. A controlled study finds that a placebo group spontaneously healed without medication. A "voodoo" victim dies not from the voodoo curse of cancer, but from the heart attack caused by the belief he has voodoo-induced cancer. Our minds our so powerful they can create limbs, heal us without medicine, and kill us based on a belief.
Mary came to my office with headaches. She had been to two medical doctors. Nothing was wrong -- that they could find. X-rays and MRI's proved it. One doctor gave her oxycontin -- a highly addictive narcotic -- for her non-existent problem.
The first thing I noticed about Mary was that her right shoulder was higher than her left. Mary had been unaware of the different. Her doctors hadn't mentioned it.
Sitting incorrectly at a computer can cause head and neck problems. Mary's headaches started, she told me, after she started her new job.
We assessed the height of her chair, desk and computer. These were all correct for her height.
Was the job stressful? The required skills, she said, were well within her range. So what was different?
Well, at her old job, Mary said, her boss trusted her to get the job done. But this new boss didn't seem to trust her at all. The boss was always hovering over her shoulder, telling her how to do the simplest of tasks. Mary felt angry and untrusted.
Mary was used to being trusted. At her old job when she did a good job her boss told her. Her boss never told her how to do her job. But now, whenever Mary even thought of her boss, her body went into defensive armor-mode. Her shoulders moved up toward her ears. Her back muscles tightened. Her headaches began.
As a licensed massage therapist (in New Hampshire), my role is to help relieve pain. As a student of the mind-body connection, I also like to help discover the causes of the pain. Now that Mary is aware of her body's reaction to her boss, she can be more conscious about keeping her shoulders out of her ears. Combined with neuro-muscular and trigger point massage therapy, Mary's mindfulness of her body's reactions has kept her headaches away now for many months.
Massage therapy can be effective without examining the mind-body connection. It's just more effective with it. Eliminating the pain's cause is the most powerful gift you can give yourself.
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Joe Danna, LMT is a massage therapist in New Hampshire, with offices in Amherst and Nashua.
Mary came to my office with headaches. She had been to two medical doctors. Nothing was wrong -- that they could find. X-rays and MRI's proved it. One doctor gave her oxycontin -- a highly addictive narcotic -- for her non-existent problem.
The first thing I noticed about Mary was that her right shoulder was higher than her left. Mary had been unaware of the different. Her doctors hadn't mentioned it.
Sitting incorrectly at a computer can cause head and neck problems. Mary's headaches started, she told me, after she started her new job.
We assessed the height of her chair, desk and computer. These were all correct for her height.
Was the job stressful? The required skills, she said, were well within her range. So what was different?
Well, at her old job, Mary said, her boss trusted her to get the job done. But this new boss didn't seem to trust her at all. The boss was always hovering over her shoulder, telling her how to do the simplest of tasks. Mary felt angry and untrusted.
Mary was used to being trusted. At her old job when she did a good job her boss told her. Her boss never told her how to do her job. But now, whenever Mary even thought of her boss, her body went into defensive armor-mode. Her shoulders moved up toward her ears. Her back muscles tightened. Her headaches began.
As a licensed massage therapist (in New Hampshire), my role is to help relieve pain. As a student of the mind-body connection, I also like to help discover the causes of the pain. Now that Mary is aware of her body's reaction to her boss, she can be more conscious about keeping her shoulders out of her ears. Combined with neuro-muscular and trigger point massage therapy, Mary's mindfulness of her body's reactions has kept her headaches away now for many months.
Massage therapy can be effective without examining the mind-body connection. It's just more effective with it. Eliminating the pain's cause is the most powerful gift you can give yourself.
###
Joe Danna, LMT is a massage therapist in New Hampshire, with offices in Amherst and Nashua.