Dooley Noted: 8/22/2016
I was teaching at an NKT seminar this weekend, when it hit me like a Mack truck.
The vice grip on my skull was unrelenting. The nausea debilitated me so that I couldn’t eat or drink.
I knew the feeling all too well, although it has only happened twice in the last year.
It was a migraine.
I have spent the bulk of my career studying migraine, and the single most significant part of my understanding has been explained in Chinese medicine theory.
Biomedicine simply falls short, particularly with their treatments that left me sicker than I was prior to the onset of my migraines.
So, I tapped into what I know.
In Chinese medicine, migraine is often a component of an underlying deficiency, which results in a concept called liver yang rising.
Even biomedicine agrees with this theory, noting that improper circulation and dilation/constriction of cerebral blood vessels cause a dural response of crushing head pain and subsequent nausea from increased vagal tone.
However you want to explain it, the person feels as if they’re going to die.
But I’m an old hand at migraine. It doesn’t happen to me often, but I know how to deal with it when it does.
I didn’t tell the NKT class and rob from their experience.
So, I dealt with my situation with what I had and let nothing show.
Then, I nourished myself with meditation.
I surrounded myself with silence and a phone that was far, far away from me.
I put up my hood and tapped into my body.
I place myself in a Supine 9090 breeding position, but my body was at its maximum stability (with a little help from the floor).
I got back to the only thing that keeps me alive: my breath.
As I watched my intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) rise and fall, I saw how my pain was being affected by the way I breathe.
I told myself that feelings weren’t facts, and I felt my nausea leave me first.
I hit key binding points of the posterior layer thoracolumbar fascia that were creating an intense neck pain.
I didn’t get caught up in sensations.
I focused in on the anatomy and watched as the feelings dissipated.
I didn’t let my thoughts of fear nor pain discourage me from what I knew about life.
Life is about building breath and doing it well. Everything else is a complication of what really matters most.
This is why I love teaching for NKT and Immaculate Dissection.
Each course focuses on how much breathing matters, and how you can do it well as to not use parts to compensate for good quality IAP.
Breathing is not just for performance. Good quality breathing and meditation can help you get yourself out of pain.
And circulation is pretty dependent upon the air embedded within the blood.
Breathing matters.
Don’t forget this when you feel you’re at your worst.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley
