Tension Headaches
I know a lot of people who suffer from headaches on a daily basis and just deal with it. You don’t need to suffer with headaches day in and day out. Tension headaches are the most common type of headache, and massage is a very useful tool to help break up those dense tissues causing the tension in the first place.
How do we describe tension headaches?
Tension headaches are usually triggered by musculoskeletal issues. This could mean a number of different things: spinal misalignments, eyestrain, myofascial trigger points, or jaw issues. Headaches have a variety of different feelings, including, feeling dull, aching, or sharp. They also can have different pain patterns. Some headaches are behind the eyes, on a certain side of your head, above your eyebrows or even feel like a question mark above your ear. Now that we know what a tension headache is and what to expect, let’s dive into why we might experience a tension related headache.
Why?
If you think about your head, it is pretty big. It generally weighs about twenty pounds. For a moment, let’s think of it as a bowling ball. Holding a bowling ball is heaving right? Now think of your arm as your neck when you are holding this bowling ball. Holding the bowling ball right on top of your arm is fairly easy, but as you bend your arm out more and more, it gets harder to hold the ball. This is the same thing as your neck and head. Especially with technology, we tend to crane our neck out or look down at our phones all day. This is very hard for our neck to hold up our head all day, which causes our neck muscles to tighten up to help support our head. With our muscles tightening up, this could lead to muscle strain and trigger points. There are many different stresses in our everyday life that may lead to muscle tightening, trigger points and spasms. When trigger points form from stress (physical or otherwise), this is when you endure headaches.
Massage Helps!
Fortunately, I know just the fix for your tension headaches!! Massage! “Tension headaches respond beautifully to massage, which can address both stress and the mechanical imbalances in muscle tension that are so often involved.” (A Massage Therapists Guide to Pathology, p.213) This statement couldn’t be truer. As your massage therapist, it is my job to access your muscles, and relieve tension and pain throughout. I have the ability to release trigger points and relieve stiff, sore muscles. Through massage, clients usually have more range of motion and less headaches.
Over the years, I have had many clients go from frequent headaches to rare or occasional in just a few sessions. Massage can be the answer for many people suffering daily.
So if you are sitting there reading this blog, thinking ‘I have tension headaches, I wonder if Nikki could help me?’ The answer is absolutely, yes! Don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call to relieve your headaches today. Therefore, you can live a more stress free life, with less tension and pain on a day to day basis. Wouldn’t that be amazing?!
