Migraine, stress and meditation

6th June 2012 By Abhijit Kamat www.simplemeditation4health.wordpress.com www.stressguru.co.in

Migraine is a chronic disorder characterized by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea. Although some believe it to be a neurological disorder, there is no evidence to confirm this theory. men.
[2] [1]

Migraines are about three times more common in women than in

( ref Wikipedia).

This topic is to suggest meditation and emotion management for those who want to try it. This does not recommend patients to stop their medicines. Everybody has his/her own capacity to progress in meditation and emotion management. There are also some other factors that may be affecting the healing process. Infinite patience is required.

Why migraine:Everyone has the habit of getting lost into thoughts, unfortunately most of the people think of either past or of the future and get entangled into emotional pains, however that has no present value. This article is to explain how this emotional pain, -ve thoughts may create migraine.

Why and What do people think?

a) When people think about the past, its some unwanted painful incidents, namely insults, losses, separations etc. where Igo had got hurt very badly. We generally dont forget those pains and we love to cuddle our ego and the fire remains active deep inside our mind. b) When we think of future, we imagine some bad things, starting from our own death, death of the near and dear ones, business losses, separations, health problems etc. This has as such no real value today, but we think and feel sad. Its a habit. c) Third category is day dreaming. We think of beautiful things and try to feel happy, those are not possible today. For eg. Income exceeding in multiples and from multi directions, extra marital affair, promotions, owning a big property- vehicles, having multiple girl/boy friends etc. After the dreaming is over when people come to reality, they feel sad. d) These above mentioned thoughts are just examples to show where mind can swing. It has no limitations.

How is this different than planning? Pl. note that above process of thinking is not planning. During planning one is in control of thoughts and target is known. Its a systematic effort to reach to some conclusion. In above category of thinking, ones mind is swinging and there is a sole purpose of pleasing own mind or pin down with sadistic feeling.

How these thoughts are related to migraine? 1. There is a simple example how thoughts can create magic in body. During adolescence, boys often get erection with simple thoughts of sex or orgasm. The whole mind-body machinery gets activated for sex (In reality, the situation may be totally different or hopeless, but brain tricks the hormone secreting glands and they release hormones). 2. Another example. When you are solving SUDOKU and you can't complete it, it does not matter. But if that is a part of a contest and its winning is going to give your $5000 prize, then the whole mind-body would be under stress to achieve it anyhow. Under this situation, every simple thing may turn difficult. Your blood pressure may rise, fingers may tremble, mind may get confused over priorities. What will happen if the prize is now $1 million. More stress? that means when the stakes are higher it results into higher stress. 3. Some people like to work in stress. They feel that there is more zing thing to complete targets on last moments. This zing thing is nothing but the effect of hormones released in stress and people are not aware what the long term effect would be. 4. Now our topic, thoughts and migraine. a. Have you ever tried to drill down (analyze in detail with detached interest ) into headaches? For example, its intensity, orientation, timing and duration etc? b. Have you analysed what happened during that morning or previous day etc? what did you eat? What was your bodys reaction, when you had thoughts of helplessness, anger, shame or disgust and you could not express them. c. Every individual has a thinking capacity and when it is loaded with painful or awkward situations, brain may get flooded with many signals and trips, its circuitry gets over heated and we call it head ache. In computer terminology it is called PC gets hung when you try to run too many or heavy programs or type too many commands at one time.

d. Some old, unknown mental pains ( or thoughts?) remain active in subconscious for years, that may bounce back occasionally on minds surface without our knowledge and we call the result as chronic migraine. e. Women are more emotional than men, Does this result into more women suffering than men. Pl. read again article from Wikipedia ( Moreover, fluctuating hormone levels indicate a migraine relation: 75 percent of adult patients
are women, although migraine affects approximately equal numbers of prepubescent boys and girls. )

Self help: Pl. read again, be comfortable, relax, try and start drilldown into your mind before reading on meditation.

Why meditation? I recommend any specific meditation that would help in stilling your thoughts (or help in focusing mind in one direction), not only during the time when you sit for mediation but throughout the day. For eg. Buddhist call it moment to moment awareness, Mr. KD Belsare refers it as anusandhan in his various books on Naamsmaran.

The results are astonishing. Because , 1. With the calm mind, when there are no sundry thoughts, there is no diversion of your mental energy ( and obviously physical energy). With frequent practice of stilling your mind, whatever old unwanted neurons (of thought patterns) are formed start disappearing. 2. It is often referred by saints as Body evolves along with changes in mind( " " ). Sri Sri Ravishankar had referred it as DNA changes with the longer
practice of meditation.

3. Even if you get dragged into unwanted thoughts, you can retain balance and come back to normalcy. 4. Faith factor improves References and links: i. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine

ii. Articles on what is meditation? iii. Guided body scan meditation. iv. Stress and health problems of type A personality businessman v. Breathing problems, stress and healing vi. What is samkhara (mental conditioning) vii. Various articles by Dr S. kashalikar.

PS- Pl. do provide your valuable feedbacks and blessings. Abhijit Kamat