A recent article in Massage Magazine by Jan Mundo, Certified Massage Therapist (CMT) and Master Somatic Coach, lays out how massage can help people who suffer from headaches and migraines.
“According to the National Headache Foundation, in the
United States, an estimated 45 million people have chronic headaches, and more
than 29 million suffer from debilitating migraines. Hands-on therapies can be
highly effective for headache relief and prevention,” Mundo states in the
article. “When you help people recover from chronic headaches, you have the
opportunity to positively affect the quality and course of their lives.”
Helping relieve and prevent painful headaches has been a
decades-long passion for Mundo. She created a “hands-on method of headache
relief” in 1970, according to the article, and honed it into a mind-body,
self-care program for headache management that she now teaches privately and to
medical centers, universities and corporations. The technique is appropriately
called The Mundo Method.
“Like the found of Hair Club for Men, I’m also a member,”
Mundo quips. “I know what it feels like to have a blazing migraine, and I will
suffer if I don’t practice what I preach.”
Mundo thoroughly discusses her method in the article and
describes the four primary headache types: tension-type, migraine, coexisting
migraine and tension-type headache, and cluster. She emphasizes awareness of
“thoughts, posture, mood, breath, state of tension or relaxation, and the
combined effect of these on headaches.”
“Headache healing takes place over time, with baby steps and
giant leaps, sometimes two steps up, one step back,” Mundo states. “Using
body-centered coaching, somatic bodywork, exercises, handouts and other support
tools, clients are able to build an active lifestyle that supports their health
and sustains them in a life minus headaches. The first step often begins with a
practitioner’s skilled hands and the ability to relieve a client’s headache on
the spot.”