Usually we associate the suffering of migraine to intense pain, nausea and the restriction to live a normal social life. To this, we have to add the constant fear of the next migraine attack, that influences decisively the suffering of the client: The sum of these experiences produce a state of stress that with time exhausts the patient, reducing his resistance to the adversities of life. This can lead to a state of depression, which in its turn has negative effects on the illness.
So, we can observe two conditions that have to happen for a migraine attack to happen:
First there has to be a trigger. As a trigger we understand an environmental factor, that produces in the body a more or less intense stress. Those triggers may have a very diverse nature:
It may be a clearly physical factor:
- The ingestion of some not tolerated food (the most frequent is alcohol, but it can be also an intolerance to lactose, or gluten, to name the most frequents ones).
- A trauma in the skull, where only a scar or fibrous tissue is left, that can be the origin of the migraine.
- A hormonal reaction: Many women suffer from migraine attacks around the time of their menstruation, and often the attacks reduce or even disappear during the menopause. In other cases, the migraine starts with the menopause.
- Weather change: The raise or reduction of the atmospheric pressure, the changes of temperature, or even the variability of the humidity can create stress in weather-sensitive people.
- Irregular sleep: The lack of continuous sleep can be the trigger for the migraine, but it was also observed that an excess of sleep can lead to the same problems.
… and it can be an emotional factor:
- An uncertain working situation
- A personal or familiar problem
- A continuous sensations of fear, anguish or anxiety.
Generally, there is no only one trigger, but a sum of different factors that join to produce the physical stress.
Secondly, there needs to be a predisposition of the patient to suffer from migraines. Many people suffer the previous mentioned triggers and never get a migraine.
It’s scientifically still not clear why some people suffer from migraine (around one tenth of the European population) and others not. It’s also not definitively clear what happens exactly during a migraine attack. There are several hypothesis (the vascular theory, the neurogenic theory, the theory of the hypersensitivity) which try each one to explain the origin of the illness, and find a treatment, following the described physiological factors.
Nevertheless, we can state clearly three physical factors that are common to all the people who suffer from migraines:
- The patient is exhausted and has a very low energetic level.
- The physical stress created by different triggers leads him to reduce his breathing and to tense his body, especially the areas of the upper back, the shoulders and the neck. The patient reduces the blood flow to the head, and increases his sensitivity to the pain.
- The patient has a hypersensitivity on the surface of the skull, the forehead, and around the eye where the pain appears; touching specific points generates a pain and an experience similar to the migraine.
Obviously, the first step to treat the migraine will be to investigate the different triggers and then act upon them.
Nonetheless, when the triggers are not clear, or when we cannot act upon them, we propose the following treatment of the migraine.
We work on two parallel lines:
Improve the physical condition of the patient: We use breathing techniques, touch and attention to teach the client to let go efforts and tensions which are created by the physical and emotional stress. The blood flow improves, the energetic level raises, and the sensitivity to the pain reduces.
Working with the hypersensitivity on the skull: When the client recovers his capacity to relax and breathe deeply, we work on the hypersensitive points on the skull, the forehead and around the affected eye. This work is usually quite painful, as we touch points that generate a pain similar to the migraine. However, the client learns to relax with the pain, and the sensitive areas reduce their sensitivity.
Which results can you expect?
The migraine is a chronic condition. The patient’s body got used along the years to the suffering of the migraine, creating a full set of efforts and tensions that (at least partially) maintain the suffering and make the recovery difficult. Therefore, the required time to stop suffering from migraines will vary according to the person: their personal situation, their capacity to recover physically, and their capacity to apply what they learned in their daily life.
Even so, we can state a clear improvement of the condition in nearly all the patients after four consecutive sessions. This improvement can be observed as a reduction of the frequency, the intensity, and the duration of the migraine attacks.
To stop suffering from migraines, these 4 sessions can be enough for about 60% of the patients, as they manage to control the migraine attacks.
Another 25% of the patients will require a second round of 4 sessions after two to three months, and probably a third round after another similar period.
For the remaining 15% of patients, the recovery process will require a continuous work, that can last from 6 to 12 months.