Yesterday, had my first "emergency" case. As I was getting ready to treat a patient, SACHR's director made an appointment for someone she said was suffering from migraine. When the guy came in, I could see that "suffering" was a bit of an understatement. He was in agony. His eyes were tight shut against the light, and he was starting to curl around his chest. The pain was also affecting his breathing.
The pain was right behind his left eye-ball, and was intense. He also indicated the left side of his head. Speech was very slow and labored. His pulses were rapid, and bounding, indicating exuberant heat.
In my experience with drug users, there is often a surfeit of Liver/GB channel fire. The drugs they take directly affect the Liver. The drugs move qi for a little bit, but then the qi stagnates rapidly after. The constant cycle of moving and then stagnating qi heats the Liver. If they also drink, and most do, the alcohol damp-heat further insults the Liver. Eventually, that heat has to go somewhere, and it usually ends up in the GB channel. Usually, treating the GB channel goes a long way to soothing and smoothing a user's qi.
With this person, I felt I had to act quickly, so I didn't bother placing him on a table, but treated him where he sat. I needled GB 20 and GB 43 bilaterally with draining. GB 20 to unconstrain the qi in his head, and GB 43 to descend GB channel fire, which was essential. Within 2 minutes, the pain had diminished, and he was able to open his eyes somewhat, but not entirely. He also appeared more relaxed, and he had uncurled from around his chest. I retained the needles for about 20 minutes.
After removing the needles I sat him down on a low chair, and did tui na on his GB 21 area, including pushing, grasping, kneading and dredging GB 21 as well as SI 11, and beating along the traps. I also round-rubbed up along the medial border of the scapula, up into GB 20 again. The area around GB 21 was very tight, indicating a lot of stagnation of GB channel qi. After finishing the tui na treatment, the patient was able to completely open his eyes, and he said the pain was completely gone.
For someone like this, Longdan Xie Gan Tang would be ideal, but no one at sachr can afford herbs. Points like GB 43 and GB 34, which clears Liver/GB damp-heat, also work well. For someone who isn't in such extremis, I also like to use GB 41 a lot to help clear the head and spread Liver qi.
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In the mid seventies, when I was apprenticing in bodywork, the head masseur was known to be able to treat migraines, something western medicine had no answer for at that time. He allowed me to observe his technique. He worked intricately around the eyes and then with small thumb circles basically followed the GB line above the ears and back into the skull base around GB 20 and UB 10. Some of his patients were medical doctors who had no explanation for why he was effective.
ReplyDeleteAfter studying with master yang and developing a finer feel for my own qi and others' I found a lot of success with people who were in the early stage of migraine pain by simply pressing my index into their bai hai, connecting to their rising (and usually pulsing)qi and then opening my K1 with the intention of moving their qi downward likewise. The flush of erratic qi down into the feet was intense. I could feel the shadow of their qi in my feet and when it filled them out and began to drain I could see their faces relax and knew the treatment had been completed.
Two very important notes on this.
One. I have never used it on someone suffering from the full blown effects of migraine.
Two. I once had a rare opportunity to work on two people in a row with this technique and though both felt fine after I had to dissolve the effects on my own qi. I felt like I was coming down with a migraine. I used the water method qi gong dissolving standing technique I learned from Kumar Frantzis' book "Opening the Energy Gates of the Body."
With more full blown migraine cases I pretty much follow your tui na technique. the top of the head is too sensitive and might be balanced with cloud hands (placing the lou gong palms on the edge of both sides of their qi head so to speak and slowing moving the hands in a soft circular fashion to qi massage the GB points) Then I want UB 10 followed by GB 20 and 21. GB 21 is key if you can get the qi to flow down to it. In Shiatsu I was taught by a great master that it is a diagnostic point. One of the two most common places we break our body up (the mingmen through the navel would be the other).
Don Arrup