Headaches can be a result of physical triggers as well as from our thought-led actions and the way we process stress, making them a true mind and body ailment. Anxiety, stress, worry, and poor habits all contribute to our overall well-being and can result in frequent headaches. However, you can take control of your well-being and reduce the occurrence of headaches. This article outlines some mind/body techniques that can help you stave off those nasty headaches.
Perception is Reality
The first thing you need to understand is that your perception forms your reality. Nothing is really “true” unless you believe it to be true. Your perception of each and every event in your life holds no real meaning other than the meaning that you assign to it. This is a crucial concept since headaches triggered by stress and anxiety can be controlled if we can control our perceptions.
A simple change in perception can help prevent stress-induced pains and diseases. By training ourselves to perceive things differently, we can improve our well-being and overall health, consequently avoiding triggers for headaches.
Meditation
Meditative practices are a great way to begin retraining our perceptions. Meditation helps to regulate the mind, make better decisions, relax the body, let go of stress, and ultimately, relieve headaches.
There are several meditation methods available, such as relaxation response, mindfulness, insight, jappa, and Transcendental Meditation that can help you quiet the mind, know yourself, understand situations, and think more clearly. If you can find one meditative practice and stick with it, that simple change in your daily routine can help prevent many headache triggers from ruining your life.
Qigong and Tai Chi
The ancient Chinese health practices of qigong and tai chi are gold mines when it comes to health and pain-free living. These practices coordinate mind, movement, breath, and focus. They quiet and focus the mind, relieve stress and bodily tension, tone muscles, improve respiration, increase oxygen intake, move toxins, improve digestion and elimination, and encourage blood flow.
In short, practicing qigong and tai chi can improve the quality of life and decrease the onset of headaches by creating relaxation in the body and environment that can prevent headache triggers.
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is becoming a mainstream method to deal with behavioral issues. There are even specific hypnosis protocols for headaches specifically and pain relief in general. The success of hypnosis leads to the notion that when we let down our walls of belief, we can be open to change our feelings and behaviors. In other words, our perceptions do not clutter our reality during the hypnosis session, and changes can be made on the subconscious level.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR is a well-studied but still relatively unknown method of changing how we perceive the world and daily situations, and thus how we react to them and their stress-causing headaches. EMDR sessions help us “clear” the negative thoughts and beliefs connected with events in our lives.
The technique combines specific story-leading methods with eye movement practices that reorganize and file our memories and emotions in the correct place in our minds. By keeping them in their proper place, they will not interfere with today’s reality (as we perceive it) or trigger an unnecessary stress response that can lead to headaches.
Incorporating one or more of these mind-body techniques into your daily routine can help reduce the frequency of headaches and improve your overall well-being. Learning to manage stress and control our perceptions is key to living a healthier, pain-free life.
