talking to the muscle...

As part of migraine treatment, I went to massage therapy for a while. Geoff was the one who suggested it...when your husband tells you that you should go get massages: you go and get massages! Our insurance didn't cover it, unfortunately, but I went ahead anyway.

They helped a little. They got me through some difficult times. Though one I had did trigger a migraine...though I think drinking water triggered migraines for me for a while! :)

To my point:
My wonderful therapist, whom I haven't seen for a while, was talking to me one time about relaxing the muscles. She said something to the effect, "It may sound really weird, but I talk to my muscles. If I feel a muscle tighten, I talk to that muscle." She went on about how she reassured it, and told it that it didn't need to be tightening.

I didn't think it sounded too weird. But it wasn't until lately that I've been trying it.

You see, at the base of my neck, where the shoulder meets the neck, and then up through to to base of my skull, the muscles tighten, sometimes, as my neurologist and I believe, causing some of my migraines. I'm pretty sure it is stress, both physical and emotional, that accounts for this tightening.

Physical stress: my trapezius muscle in the middle and lower area are weak. At the gym, one to two times a week, I do resistance training targeting that muscle area. Because those muscles are weak, the top of my shoulder does a lot of work. I was talking to my mother today and she mentioned something that made me think that perhaps her middle and lower trapezius muscle is weak and that I have a genetic disposition to this. But not sentence! That is where weight lifting comes in to strengthen the weak.

Emotional Stress: well. This is a completely different arena. I don't have to be lifting something for those muscles to go into a little spasm or start tightening up, though lifting has triggered a migraine that began with lovely vertigo and vomiting...Mom still hesitates to ask me to lift things for her. Back to subject: As soon as I feel the pain my arm goes up there, sometimes without thinking, to massage and "smooth" the area. The past few days I've thought about what my massage therapist said and I started "talking" to that group of muscles. Tonight I "talked" to the muscles about stress, and to try to push that tightening down to my arm (while I stretched out my arm), that my arm could handle the stress and push it out. A little mental imagery for me and my cute little tight neck muscles.

I am sure I sound crazy. (Just between you and me, I am, just a bit!)

But lo and behold, I'm not having a migraine right now and my neck muscles are relaxed. That is power. All from a little self talk. Maybe I can try it on a migraine? Push the pain down and out of my head, past my shoulders and out of my hands? I'm not sure...but it can't hurt to try. Maybe I could go one step further, before the pain starts, after an aura (that I can't see coming) and talk myself out of a painful day?

Maybe I'll start talking to my adipose tissue and tell those fat cells that they don't need to hoard all that energy in them...that energy can be excused to leave my body! Seriously...I think I'll try it. Like when I'm on the treadmill or elliptical or doing yoga or lifting weights....after all, you have to earn it, right?

What have you told your body today?