What Every Migraineur Needs to Know About Relieving Muscle Tension

Getting relief from migraine headaches begins with developing greater body awareness. Like it or not, this is one truth that you cannot escape nor should you try to escape if you are really serious about taking charge of your migraines.

We cannot change what we do not acknowledge and learning to recognize the level of muscle tension that exists in your body, (especially in your upper body—head, neck, and shoulders) is necessary for anyone who wants to become a greater part of the solution for their migraines.

As a person with migraine disease, becoming more aware of your muscle tension will greatly support you in eliminating key factors that contribute to your migraine attacks. An extreme amount of muscular tension contributes to blood vessel constriction. As a Migraineur, you want to create normal levels of muscular tension and keep your arteries dilated.

In times of stress, when the fight or flight response kicks in we experience muscle tension. It’s a natural response to stress or any perceived threat that we experience. We tighten the muscles around our blood vessels. The blood travels away from our extremities and towards our primary organs at the center of the body. If your body becomes prone to too much stress and you neglect to release it you can wind up with unhealthy, weakened and tight muscles that do not get the proper blood and nutrients they need. Healthy blood flow is imperative for migraineurs seeking relief.

Picture This…

Lets imagine that your blood vessels were like a garden hose. You have the hose turned on and the water is flowing evenly out of the spout. Now imagine that you walked over to the hose and stepped on it, creating significant constriction in the flow of the water. Picture the water barely (if at all) dribbling out of the mouth of the hose. This is metaphor for what happens when you are experiencing extreme levels of muscular tension in the body. The muscles cause the blood vessels to constrict just like your foot on the hose constricts the flow of the water.

Now, the problem is that sooner or later you are going to take your foot off of the hose. When you do, what do you imagine will happen? Whooooosh! That’s right. A surge of water is going to rush out of the hose fast and furiously. And that’s the same thing that happens to us migraineurs when our blood vessels finally dilate. We get a Whooosh of blood to the head and a migraine attack is in full force.

Your objective is to learn how to keep your foot off the hose and let the water flow freely and naturally.

Is Your Muscle Tension Extreme?

Having been a practicing massage therapist for over 12 years, I have never given a massage treatment to a migraine sufferer that didn’t carry extreme muscle tension in the neck, and shoulders. Extreme tension in the jaw muscles is also a prime area that many migraine sufferers need to address.

Becoming more aware of your muscle tension will greatly support you in eliminating factors that contribute to your migraine attacks. Remember, an extreme amount of muscular tension contributes to artery constriction. As a Migraineur, you want to create normal levels of muscular tension and keep your arteries dilated.

Severe muscle tension in the neck, shoulders and jaw is a hazardous combination for migraine sufferers. The good news is that you, without a doubt, can train yourself to become more aware of the tension in your body and also treat these symptoms with daily relaxations practices, massage, and also stretching.

Achieving natural migraine relief requires that you learn to release stress and tension that you hold in the body. While a normal amount of tension in these areas is healthy, the extreme levels of tension that migraine sufferers tend to hold in these areas is not. The shoulders, neck and jaw will be the primary areas of your body that you will need to learn to relax if you want to get relief from migraine headaches.

What happens when you’ve Adapted to Extreme Muscle Tension?

The sneaky thing about extreme muscle tension is that most of us don’t know we are carrying it around, nor are we typically conscious of how we create it. If you’ve already adapted to extreme muscle tension than your body awareness will have likely dulled, so to speak. Most of us are unaware of the levels of physical tension we hold in our bodies.

When extreme tension becomes the norm you do not always receive obvious signals from your body telling you that there is something that needs your attention. I would estimate that as much as 40% of my clients exhibiting high levels of muscular tension claimed to have no pain or any sense that they were carrying a lot of tension in these parts of their body.

For most people, the muscle tension becomes more obvious when I work on these areas and the muscles release and relax. Remember the old saying that you don’t what you’ve got until it’s gone? Sometimes the easiest way to become aware of our muscle tension is to experience our body without the tension.

If you suffer from headaches or migraines it is very likely that you are carrying high levels of muscular tension in these areas of your body. It’s important that you become aware of the tension and then learn to release it so that it doesn’t stimulate migraine activity.

Are you wondering how aware you are of your own muscle tension? Follow me and I’ll take you through a natural migraine relief muscle tension test that will help you build greater body awareness and relax your neck muscles all at the same time.