Doesn’t The Headache Healing Challenge sound like it could be the name of a new game show? You’re a contestant, and an expert panel tells you exactly how to solve your chronic migraines, just like that. It’s taped in several segments, with you going through various challenges along the way, and you win because you get rid of your pain and get your life back! Wouldn’t that be great? Considering that in the U.S. alone there are an estimated 50 million headache sufferers, over 30 million of whom get debilitating migraines, we’d be a much healthier nation with that problem solved.

The game show challenge sounds a lot like my professional practice as a headache coach. (Some clients call me a headache whisperer.) People I work with have suffered from headaches for years, sometimes a lifetime. They live in pain or ignore it, curb and restrict their lives, and extinguish their dreams. They’ve seen neurologists and a host of other practitioners and tried many, many treatments and medications—if it’s been around, they’ve done it. They feel sick, sick of the pain, sick of dealing with the pain and with their medications’ side effects. They want to re-up their efforts and are resolved to do something that works once and for all, with no side effects.

However, many longtime headache patients initially discount body-mind solutions, such as diet, stress reduction, breathing, self-massage, and transformational bodywork, because, they say, they’ve tried it all. They’re skeptical: how could something so simple work when the most advanced medications could not? In looking at why body-mind solutions may not have worked, I’ve noticed a pattern. Usually, it’s because they’ve focused on one particular therapy or aspect of their lives at a time, such as meditation, which may or may not have worked, and then they dropped it and tried another.

But, here’s the key . . . Continue reading →