Headaches: They're a Pain in the Neck!
No, that’s not a typo—it’s a play on words because your headache might actually be coming from your neck! While it may feel like your head is the problem, research suggests that about 80% of headaches are actually caused by tension in the muscles at the back of your neck (Travell & Simons, 1999).
Trigger Points: What Are They?
You’ve probably heard the term "trigger points" and wondered what it means. Maybe you thought it was the same as knots or pressure points—and you wouldn’t be far off. A trigger point is a hypersensitive nodule found within a tight, hypertonic band of muscle. These nodules often form in muscles that are injured or dysfunctional. Imagine a small area of muscle that’s much tighter than the rest, and within that tight spot, there’s a part that’s really irritated. When you press on it, it’s painful, and that pain can even be felt in other areas—this is known as referred pain.
The Mystery of Pain Referral
One of the most intriguing aspects of trigger points is their ability to cause pain in areas far from where the trigger point is located. The exact mechanism behind this pain referral is still not fully understood, but it appears to be related to the myofascial tissue—the connective tissue that surrounds and penetrates our muscles. This tissue seems to play a key role in how the pain travels, but the details of this process remain a topic of ongoing research.
How Massage Therapy Can Help
Massage therapy should be known for its effectiveness in treating headaches. Unfortunately, many of us only get a brief introduction to headache treatment in massage school—if at all. I was lucky. During my advanced training, my teacher mentioned that many headaches, including migraines, originate from tension in the back of the neck. As a migraine sufferer myself, I was intrigued. Could there really be a treatment that didn’t involve taking pills?
So, I asked my teacher if he’d work with me as a client, even though I was also his student. He agreed, and we set up an appointment. He worked on the back of my neck for about 45 minutes to an hour. We repeated the treatment the following week and kept it up consistently for a few months. The results? It’s been 20 years, and I rarely get headaches. The first sign of a migraine after those treatments was 15 years later, and it was only a faint reminder of what I used to experience. I was driving home after a particularly stressful week, and I got one of those visual disturbances (often called migraine aura) that usually signaled a migraine coming. I hadn’t had one of those in over a decade! I rushed home, expecting a full-blown migraine, but it never came. Instead, I did a little work on myself, and then I sought out a therapist I had trained in this technique, got a series of treatments, and found staved off the migraine gremlins for another time!
When I find something that works, I dive in deep. Back in that advanced training, I studied my teacher’s headache protocol inside and out. I studied it with him, I read about these pain patterns in thick medical texts, practiced the protocols, and received them myself. I immersed myself in it, just like I have with many of the other treatment plans that seemed substantive. And you know what? It works!
I’ve used this method to help thousands of people with chronic and debilitating headaches. No matter what type—temporal, occipital, migraine, or tension—they’re all treatable with Clinical Deep Tissue: Pain Management Bodywork!
