Ship on the Hudson © 2009 by Jan Mundo

There is a story that the native peoples of the Americas were guarding their shores from foreign intruders. However, despite their vigilance, the sailors from the old world made it to shore and began trading with the natives, who they later conquered. How was it that the natives, so keen to the elements and their land, did not see their future conquerors approaching? It is said that they could not see the sailing ships anchored in the bay because they had no concept of a sailing ship. The truth of this story as told in The Secret has been questioned, based on various captains’ logs that recount the native people’s use of large paddle boats: a boat is a boat, so they would have seen it.

When something’s right in front of our noses, of course we can see it. Or can we? Until last week, I didn’t know that my computer of four years had a photo share function under the export menu. I use my MAC everyday, yet have no idea how it works or how to fix it. I cannot see what a MAC Genius can see. Even if we cast our attention on the same object at the same time, I can’t necessarily tell what’s there because I don’t know what I’m looking at or what to look for.

After assessing people somatically for years, I can see how someone is shaped and how that shape creates and is created by the person’s reality. In working with headaches, my hands can intuitively pinpoint the “heart of the pain” or eye of the storm on a headache-y head. My comfort level with them comes from following and reading the big and small cues, based on my perceptions, intuition, and experience.

A coaching colleague referred one of her long-time clients to me for her horrible migraines, but the client never called. We wondered together why this happens with referrals, almost like a phenomenon. Her client needed the help, and I could give it. Moreover, the recommendation came from a trusted source.

Why do people suffer when they can avert it? What is difficult about making that first move?

Ginger Campbell, M.D. hosts the fascinating series Brain Science Podcast. Her interview with neuropsychologist Chris Frith, Ph.D. provided me with some food for thought. Neuropsychologists study the relationship between the brain and the mind. Frith studied schizophrenia in the early days of neuroimaging and gained insights into the relevance of perception, will, and consciousness in schizophrenic patients.

In his controversial book, Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, Frith notes that twentieth century psychological behaviorism was traditionally kept in a separate category than the brain/mind. Cartesian philosophy divided a person in two: the mind belonged to the church and the body was purely a dirty machine subject to the evils of the flesh. Body and mind were disconnected with no relationship whatsoever.

Frith asserts that modern medicine is largely practiced in this manner today. Psychology and the behavioral sciences are not accepted like the others; they are considered to be “soft” science and less credible because they can’t be measured in the same way. Frith explains that Decartes’ philosophy prevails because so much of the brain’s ongoing work happens automatically, behind the scenes and out of our consciousness. We take it for-granted. For example, our eyes are constantly registering new images with every micro-movement of our head, eyes, or the world. If we were conscious of every image, we’d be completely disoriented. So, instead, we make a good estimate of the composite image. We make predictions about everything, based on what we perceive and what we have experienced; and we keep adjusting our perceptions.

In this way, change is active and happens moment by moment: the world has shown us one thing repeatedly, and we have shaped accordingly. To create a change in a life pattern, we have to de-couple from our moment to moment predictable impressions and find a new prediction based on a new perception.

Referencing Thomas Bayes, Frith says that our perception of the world depends on the balance of the sensory information that’s coming in through our senses, and our prior expectations and knowledge.

His formula tells you how much do you have to change your model of the world
given the new evidence that’s coming in.  So, if you have very strong expectations,
that will affect what you actually perceive.  In a sense you can’t perceive things
that you don’t know something about already.

Frith asserts that in recent years, brain imaging has helped bridge this gap by measuring the subjective experience. Because the early brain scanners were physically restrictive, mental experiments were designed to measure brain activity. The experiments showed that the same areas of the brain light up when thinking about lifting a finger as when actually doing it.

Remember the Olympic Gold Medal winner, Laura Wilkinson, who broke her foot only months before the 2000 summer games? She won despite not being able to physically practice for months because she had devised a method of mentally practicing her dives and outcomes.

Sailboat at Night, East River © 2009 by Jan Mundo

Somatic coaches prompt their clients to envision, intend, declare, focus, plan, and embody the future they want. This embodied opening to focused intention, attention, and belief is the first step in the healing process. Because the “hard” sciences measure something, Frith asserts it’s easier for people to believe in them. (Isn’t it odd that we imbue machines with the power to measure a human being in all its subtle complexities and dimensions?) There is finally hard evidence to prove what somatic practitioners, meditators, and Buddhists have observed over time: our environment and moment by moment state of consciousness can provide insight and heal what ails us.

Have you heard of mirror neurons? Based on sensory awareness, our brains can take on the activities of other people as our own. First seen in monkey studies, people can mirror others’ bodies and emotions. When we see a happy face, we feel happy. When someone does an action, we want to do it, too, not move counter to it. Thus we have the brain evidence for The Secret, or why we want to be around people who make us feel good.

In the realm of coaching, how does the envisioning process create change? In other words, how do our expectations and experiences affect what we perceive? In the somatic domain, our body armoring – the way we constrict and hold ourselves together – creates a filter through which only certain information can get through.

The theory of mirror neurons looks at how the brain creates the best possible estimate of reality, but it is never the real world. That is, I believe, because of our filters. We test our predictions and find the errors. However in life, we don’t accept the error, or that we may be wrong. In the story of the sailing ships, the Native Americans couldn’t see the boats because they were outside the realm of their experience, so it came up as an error. I was surprised to find the simple sharing function in a pull-down menu I’d accessed thousands of times. What? Am I stupid? It always existed but was irrelevant to my experience before I needed it. My client may be amazed that my hands can find a headache on her head or discover a linchpin headache trigger, despite that she’s the one who’s been living with it. The medicine man, or representative for alternative world views, could see the boats. It is the coach’s job to show to their clients the possibilities they can’t yet see.

In reverse, an experience we have already had can set us up to expect the worst. For example, a history of chronic pain or headaches can set us up to have a fear of the next pain. This sense of expectation can actually affect our internal environment to make our body systems more susceptible to create it. The fear makes people contract in macro and micro ways.

Frith: Another way of looking at it is that it’s well known that you can anticipate pain.  So, if somebody knows they’re about to have a painful experience then certain bits of the brain will light up—which might have to do with anxiety or anticipation of pain—even though the pain hasn’t arrived.  And in a sense it’s the same bits that light up when we know that somebody else is in pain. Because, again, you don’t actually need the pain to worry about it.

Other studies showed that when you think of the face of someone you love, it is the same as the person “being there.” Your brain lights up in the same way. Firth discusses a study conducted by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about touch. It showed that:

If you see someone being touched—on their face, for example—then the bit of your brain that would be activated if your face was touched lights up, even though it’s not being touched. So, in a sense you’re sharing their sensory experience by watching them. But what is interesting here is you’re not aware of this, that it’s happening in your brain.

It makes sense, then, that humans love watching movies, plays, and sports. We receive the vicarious pleasure or pain. We might duck if an object is thrown or cover our eyes to avoid seeing something gruesome or scary.

How many headache sufferers have realities shaped by years of pain and medications? They repeatedly turn to medications because of the subtle tightening of the body and mind brought on by fear of the next pain. They cannot see the possibility of healing. They are too busy guarding themselves to prepare for the next pain.

Using the power of the narrative and the centered, open presence of a medicine man on the beach, the coach can help the client shape a new vision of what was before unseen or unknown. By following a revised internal vision, the client’s filters slide away, perception is adjusted, and a new experience is possible in each moment.

Speedboat at Night © 2009 by Jan Mundo

After living on a Farm in Tennessee (my version of Isak Dinesen’s, “I lived on a farm in Africa”), and walking the dirt, chert, gravel, and asphalted roads day after day, year after year—falling in my share of puddles along the way—I learned their crooks, dips, and turns, and became accustomed to walking in the dark. Of course, it was much easier when we got flashlights, but even they were no guarantee on very dark nights. I witnessed the stages of the oak trees and their leaves from sprout, to bud, to leafing out, and then their turning and their fall. These were the trees through which we carved out our roads that connected us to each other and to the outside world.

I learned the states and angles of light at different times of year. Depending on the season, I could hear the quality of sounds change as they bounced off one ridge onto the next when buffered by the presence or absence of leaves. I learned the seasons by the plants that emerged, bloomed, and fruited, and the bugs, bees, and birds that called them dinner. I heard that Spring and Fall were coming depending on the songs of the whippoorwill and woodpeckers, the deafening chorus of frogs and cicadas at twilight, and the inevitable sneezes of humans when ragweed flowered. I saw the woods filled with fireflies during the summer, saw them disappear with the cold and reappear the next year. Witnessing the constancy of nature was comforting, and I never forgot it.

In addition to living in communal multiple family dwellings, over the years I shared my home and gardens with various uninvited visitors who dared to drop in. These included: black snakes, rattle snakes, skunks, families of deer, squirrels, mice, racoons, and in Puerto Rico, a pig. The pig was deposited in our yard in remote Utuado by Tropical Storm Eloise in 1975. After days of rooting up our ripe bok choy patch, we captured him with Wonder Bread and a slip-knotted broom. Unfortunately, as a country pioneer, meaning I was raised in the city, I learned how to do everything as I went along. I shared my body with way too many chiggers (who ever heard of those growing up in West L.A.?), ticks, and patches of poison ivy than I’d like to remember.

Married to a mechanic, by accidental absorption, and six months on the road in a Caravan of school buses, I got to know something I never thought I would: recognize by ear the startup motor of a Toyota, VW, or Mercedes—or tell by its sound what kind of truck, bus, or car was headed my way down the road, or traveling on a nearby highway, especially during winter.

During three action-packed, wisdom-, strength-, and love-filled natural childbirths, guided by midwives and supported by my husband, at home in my bed I finessed the body-mind connection I’d first read about and then experienced in yogic, tantric, and East-West lectures, trips, and tomes. With trust and determined application, I learned to honor the ultimately intelligent oneness of my body and mind and the language they shared—that we, within and without our Selves, are truly One.

After living in the boisterously symphonic, yet quiet language of nature and the woods for so long, and visiting, feeling akin to, and at one with nature, in that Thoreau kind of way, for my entire life, I never felt like I left it, nor that it left me when I moved back to the city.

Ever since, I’ve said that “I carry the country within me,” which for me is always a comfort and a resource—a reminder of my Spirit, the ground, and grounding that sustains me. Yes, I’ve gotten lost and suffered along the way, but all in all, I remember and feel those roots, and that pull of nature within me. I appreciate it in the blooming of the trees in the parks as well as those planted in concrete-lined square holes that pepper the sidewalk. I feel it in the craftsmanship and attention to detail in the old buildings and the design, angles and slopes of the new ones—in how our bright island light hits, reflects, and makes rainbow prisms of the relationships between buildings, structures, and the sun. I feel it when someone offers me their seat on the subway, as I wonder if I look that old or if they’re just being kind and connecting? Yes, probably both.

In Manhattan, on foot or taking public transportation, most of us pack a bag of what we need for the day without the benefit of that instant-jump-in-your-car-transportation-that-you-also-use-as-a-truck-to-haul-your-stuff—to which I was accustomed while living in California. In NYC, my bag may contain layering pieces, hat, scarf, often an umbrella, digital camera, cell phone, wallet, shades, bottled water, sometimes a book, and a snack. Despite that, I always try to keep my load light, and my purse’s metal hardware to a minimum. (Yes, I had to learn that one, too.)

In California, my clients with chronic headaches, shoulder, neck, and arm pain would often walk in to my office for their appointments, weighted down with over-sized handbags, that they carried in from their car, and were used to lugging around regularly. I’d ask, now, what actually are you going to use for the day, and need to carry with you between the car and here? It seemed that even with a car, women would claim to “carry their life around in that bag.” At the same time, they hadn’t captured the connection between their chronic pain and how they were using their body on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. I blame how our society and modern medicine ignore the wisdom of the body and fight with instead of blending with nature. Read article and book after book, and doctors try to assuage patients that tension headaches are not their fault, nor an indication of bodily tension, rather than educating their patients on how to use gravity and nature in a way that supports rather than hurts them. And although I’ve got nothing against an occasional pain pill when needed, what do pain meds, or mind or muscle relaxants teach you about how to generate your own relaxation from, yes, say it with me, “within?”

Guess what? It IS bodily tension, and so what? It’s better to know it than to ignore it, which just perpetuates the problem. What is that bag doing to your shoulders, anyway? If it’s too heavy, it might make one shoulder lower than the other with just its weight. I remember that from junior and high school days before backpacks. But even today, how many kids carry backpacks, while thrusting their head and rounding their shoulders forward under the weight of tens of pounds of books? But most commonly, in order to wear a weighted-down shoulder bag or computer case, we have to meet the gravitational pull of the bag with an equal amount of tension required to hold our shoulder up to support the bag. This has the affect of creating tension in the upper body (shoulders, neck, arms, head and face) that feed into creating tension headaches. During sessions, I help clients soften, release, and become aware of that tension through bodywork and somatic self-care education. This education builds their ability to make decisions that help to use gravity to their advantage and in a way that supports them, until it becomes part of their nature.

The awareness of what we carry with us, literally and figuratively, can shape how we heal and how we self-generate.

And you? What do you carry with and within you?

The Headache Coach is offering a brand new way to help people with headaches learn how to overcome them, and for practitioners to learn how to help their clients: TELECLASSES!

New! Headache Healing Teleclass, Tues, April 28 – June 2, 7 pm – 8 pm EDT

In this 6-week self-care series, people who suffer from chronic headaches and migraines will learn how to relieve and prevent them naturally — from the master: Jan Mundo, aka The Headache Coach. Make the connection between your headaches and your: body and mind, foods, moods, posture, breathing, stress and tension, and use them to your advantage to create a headache-free life!

Special introductory rate: $150 for entire series. Pre-registration and payment are required in advance of class. Register today!

Free orientation calls: Tues, April 14 and 21, 7-8 pm EDT. Register today!

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New! Mundo Method Teleclass: Thurs, April 30 – June 4, 7-8 pm EDT

Bodyworkers, somatic practitioners, health and wellness professionals: Would you like to help your clients who ask for help with their headache pain? Now, for the first time, practitioners can take Mundo Method lessons from master headache healer, Jan Mundo aka, the Headache Coach. The Mundo Method is a fascinating, subtle energy, hands-on technique that works with the actual sensations of the headache or migraine, rather than in a fixed spot.

Special introductory rate: $150 for entire series. Pre-registration and payment are required in advance of class. Register today!

Free orientation calls: Thurs, April 16 and 23, 7-8 pm EDT. Register today!

“Hope for Headaches” is not just a title, it’s the initiation into healing a chronic cycle of pain. That first step is a shift in mood. Mood is largely invisible to us. Our moods have us rather than us having them. They can wash over us in a moment, due to one or any number of things: the weather, a casual comment, one’s hormonal state, or history with handling stress or untenable, uncomfortable situations.

Chronic headache and migraine sufferers, who typically have been trying to solve their problem for years, have largely lost hope. Why? Doctors tell them it’s a life sentence. Patients have tried a variety of therapies over years or decades, and with each re-up, they are hopeful. Then when that doesn’t work, or only works for a while then stops, the patient is back at square one, and deflates. They feel that all their work, time, trouble, suffering, and temporary elation have failed, and failed them. They’re stuck, and a failure, feeling let down and that they’re letting others down. They begin to get skeptical, because despite best efforts and most modern drug therapies or dietary restrictions, they’re back at square one.

And that is where we begin. That is, in somatic coaching terms, making the blend: listening to the story and holding a light to specifics that illuminate the way to the end of the tunnel. “Yes, and knowing that, here’s what is possible.” Somehow, in towing the line for a client’s healing, even a skeptical migraineur will take away more hope. From hearing that a headache can be stopped in the moment with a pair of skilled hands, and, based on one’s current headache narrative, that painless small steps can be learned and taken which add up to another result: relief and prevention of pain.

I’ve noticed that my headache healing classes can be an extremely compassionate way to move forward in solving people’s headache mysteries. I and the entire class listen carefully and neutrally to each person’s story. The class spontaneously learns listening distinctions, and begins to take on the model from which I listen, and from it each person realizes compassion — compassion for others and more importantly, for themselves. You see, there’s always someone in the class who’s had it worse than you, one way or another, which creates empathy. And . . . there’s always someone who isn’t as afflicted or who improves, which gives hope that life can be better, and headaches can change.

Chances are you’ve already seen your primary care practitioner, a neurologist or two, and other practitioners. You’ve done everything that was advised, yet still suffer. You’ve filled out your headache, practitioner care, and medication history over and over again. Yet during your appointment, your headache story seems like just a side note to the small amount of time you have to spend with your doctor.

However, it’s not a side note to you. Your story is your struggle with pain, your hard-fought attempts to solve its mystery, and the life you’ve had to curb because of its persistent grip. You’ve told your friends or partner about your debilitating bouts with pain, but they’ve heard it all before—many of them have been through years of it with you. You begin to feel like a burden and a complainer. No one seems to understand what you’re going through. You may feel listened to at first, but then you just hold it in.

Actually, your headache story can be a valuable tool to start the process of reversing your cycles of headache and/or migraine pain.

What is your headache story?

• How long have you had them?
• When did they start?
• What was going on in your life when you began getting them?
• What did you or your parents do for them?
• Did it help?
• If you’ve had them for many years, have your headaches changed over time?
• How has your life been shaped by your cycles of pain and other symptoms?

Exercise:

• Write your story or speak it out loud, and answer the above questions.
• Imagine that someone is actually listening compassionately to your story. What I mean is that you feel heard when telling it.
• There’s a distinction I’d like to point out here: If you’re listened to in an “oh-you-poor-baby” kind of way, that kind of sympathy can reinforce your staying stuck in that state as a victim. However, if you’re listened to with a “neutral ear” of compassion, you’re more likely to feel heard while not remaining stuck there. Reinforcing the victim position is a subtle way of dis-empowering the chronic sufferer.
• I’m suggesting that you split your attention into speaker, listener, and also observer. Try your story out on yourself using each persona—the over-sympathizer and the neutral compassionate.
• As the observer, notice what happens in your body when you imagine each one listening to you.
• Which makes you feel better? More heard? More able to move into a declaration to change your future? Where in your body do you feel sensations in reaction to that listening? What are those sensations?

Please share your experiences here!

Zazen is a Buddhist form of meditation that helps the practitioner quiet the mind and be present in each moment. Headaches and migraines can be approached in that same way. In his classic book, Zen Mind, Beginnner’s Mind, beloved Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki wrote:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

After launching The Headache Coach last week, two former migraineurs wrote comments that intrigued me: migrainingjenny wrote that the “texture” of her headaches had changed over the years. I’m not exactly sure what she meant, but it indicated to me that she had followed them enough to know that they’d changed in quality somehow. She had a qualitative, sensation-based knowing about her pain.

Another friend wrote to me offline saying she’d noticed that her migraines had stopped after she retired from her career as a librarian. There could have been several factors at play, but I’d imagine that (to put it delicately) there were decades of spores and dead skin in “them thar stacks,” to which my friend was sensitive.

And you? What do you know about yourself and your headache or your migraine patterns? In bringing your life with headaches to mind, does something within you shift? What do you notice about your body, your mind, your mood, your emotions? Is it familiar?

Now take a few deep breaths, settle within yourself, and sit with what you know for a few minutes. Sit with an open mind, a beginner’s mind. Without judgment, sit with love for yourself and what you’ve been through. What bubbles up? What do you notice now—about your body, your mood, your emotions—when look at yourself and your life anew, as if each moment could be a new start? Does anything change?

Suzuki Roshi explores what happens when we practice something. At first it can be easy and joyful. But then, if we continue for months and years, our practice can become automatic, by rote, and lose its original meaning.

“Our ‘original mind’ includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it will always be ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.”

What is that fine line or balance between being an expert about your headaches and your life, or anything for that matter, and looking at everything with fresh eyes in order to discover something new that you might have missed? Does already knowing something make it more difficult to see what you don’t yet know? Is it possible to honor what you know while still being open to what you don’t?

Welcome to The Headache Coach! I’m officially open for business. Please feel free to come in, kick off your shoes, and let your hair down.

This is a place for people who want to heal their headaches, and the family and friends who love them. I’ve created some tabbed pages up top to orient you to my approach, and hope you’ll look around.

And you, what brings you here?