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  Dr. Jake Caldwell
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Help for Headaches

6/1/2017

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There are few things more devitalizing than headaches. They suck the life out of us. They put us in a crabby mood and make us want to do nothing but sit around. I remember one of my patients telling me that now that her headaches were gone, she had to go and apologize to her friends for being so irritable for the last decade due to her constant pain. Headaches and their release are actually life changing things.

One of the major keys to resolving headaches is the trigeminal nerve. I was working with someone's trigeminal nerve the other day, which is a complex technique involving many moving parts, when it suddenly dawned on me that patients can do self work on the trigeminal nerve! Now, that might not seem like a big deal to most people, but that's only because most people have no idea how important the trigeminal nerve is. The trigeminal nerve comes out of the skull deep to the jaw and wraps all over the head and face. It's the major nerve responsible for headaches, and most chronic head, neck, and jaw pain is at least partially due to trigeminal nerve irritation. Being able to release this nerve on their own at home is proving to be a major help for many of my patients.

This technique gently releases the nerve, making changes all over the head, face, jaw, and neck. All you have to do is get in the position, hold the position for about one minute on each side, and breathe deeply while you do so. The deep breathing changes the pressure inside the skull and helps to move and release the nerve. This technique has proven so useful to my patients that I now teach it to most of my patients with head and neck pain and to other bodyworkers in my Balancing the Head and Neck course. I consider it one of the first steps in managing head and neck problems.

The best way to imagine what we're doing with this technique is improving the blood flow through the opening in your skull, freeing the nerve and allowing it to function better. This area can become very stagnant, and stagnation means too much pressure and not enough flow of the fluids through the area. This pressure causes irritation. The technique helps to resolve this pressure by improving the blood flow through the region.

Instructions: Get into a hands-and-knees position and then drop your bottom to your ankles, and drop your head to the floor. Turn your head to the left so that you are resting the right side of your forehead on the ground (aim for the part of your forehead mid-way between the center of your forehead and your right ear). You'll probably feel an odd but painless pressure deep to your jaw on the right side. This is where the trigeminal nerve exists the skull, and this is where we want a gentle release to occur. Breathe deeply for about one minute. Each time you inhale the pressure will slightly increase, and each time you exhale the pressure will slightly decrease. This helps to pump blood and fluid through the opening in your skull, which helps the nerve to function much better. Then turn your head to the left and repeat for the left side. This technique should never be painful: if it ever is painful, then stop doing it.

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​Give this trigeminal nerve release a try for a few days and see how good your head and neck feels.
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Your Head Has a Mind of Its Own

4/1/2016

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In every ancient culture, the head held a special place of meaning. It has always been imagined as the place were something important resides. In the modern world, we imagine our Minds to be located in the head. For the ancient Greeks, it was the Psyche, or Soul, that lived in the head. For the Romans, it was the Genius (which is where we get our word genius). In ancient cultures all over the world, the head is the place of a deeply important part of who we are.

In the Timaeus, Plato says the rest of the body was formed in order to allow our heads to have the ability to move around in the world. To Plato, the head was a model of the cosmos, the perfect shape: a sphere, in which was housed the microcosm, or the little model of the universe that lives within each of us. No matter how you look at it, the head is an important part of the body.

In the ancient way of imagining the body, the head had a mind of its own. A sneeze was the head nodding "yes." The head could say "yes" for us even if we didn't want to say "yes." In some cultures it was even a binding oath if one were to sneeze during a transaction. It meant that one's soul was saying "yes," which carried more weight than anything else. One's head didn't lie.

Blushing was interpreted similarly. Blushing is something that we can't control. The head decides whether it will blush or not. The head betrays our emotions despite us. The word migraine comes to us through French from the ancient Greek meaning half a skull. A migraine headache was imagined as a splitting of one's head. Half one's soul was going one way, and half the other way.

All of this should give us a few more ways to imagine what might be happening when we have headaches or head pain. Any ancient person, and any ancient medical practitioner, would instantly recognize a headache as being connected to something deep inside the person. A headache was a message from one's soul. What that message might be is about as easy to decipher as one's dreams, but just recognizing that there may be more to a headache than the amorphous idea of "stress," or constriction of the arteries, or tension from neck muscles, or a joint dysfunction, can provide some meaning to a headache. Re-imagining pain so that it carries some meaning can go a long way toward alleviating the pain.

This month, spend three minutes each day gently massaging your scalp. When doing so, imagine that you are paying honor to your Genius, which the Romans imagined much as we might imagine a Guardian Angel, a power that walks with us through life and puts us on the right path. And when you find yourself talking about something important to you, do what the Romans did: touch your forehead in honor of your Genius. Or do what the ancient Greeks did: touch your chin in honor of your Psyche. Perhaps by honoring your head in this way, you may find that it has less reason to haunt you with headaches.

Postscript: I know how crazy this all sounds, but reflect for a moment that anyone not born in the modern world would think we moderns to be nuts for not recognizing the importance of the head in one's life, and everyone in their culture would recognize that the plague of headaches in our society is caused by the fact that we don't honor our Geniuses, or Psyches, or Souls, or whatever you want to call it. We may mock ancient ideas, but they would mock us for not knowing such basic things. From an historical perspective, we're the weird ones for thinking the ideas in this essay are weird.
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    Dr. Jake Caldwell, DPT

    I have a doctorate degree in physical therapy, an advanced certification in Functional Manual Therapy™, a bachelor’s degree in biology, a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and a bachelor’s degree in history. I draw from these diverse fields in my approach to working with the body.

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23276 S Pointe Dr, Ste 205
​Laguna Hills, CA, 92653
Phone: 949-391-6918
info@drjakecaldwell.com