15.11.22, clear winter night
A continuation of last cycle’s tension headache comes on yesterday afternoon, builds through the night, and breaks over me this morning. These are new to me: vise on the back of the head wraps around into the temples and over the forehead in a pounding band, spreading out through the neck, across the shoulders, and down the spine, in this case. Feel the nerves radiating out laterally from the spinal cord and vagus: it’s as if they are thick braided ropes soaked in gasoline, the frayed ends of which have just been lit.
I take measures (what follows is a note to self should the need arise again). It is cold; pull on cashmere turtleneck and turn on the heater. Get out books on women’s acupressure and energy medicine, searching each index for headache. Google tension headache and take an acetaminophen and put water on to boil for caffeinated tea to shrink up the blood vessels. It occurs to me that I have not had any caffeine for at least five days, maybe seven—since before the winter week of the cycle—which is probably a record from the last thirteen years of my dependency. The headache may be exacerbated by caffeine withdrawals.
Refer to books, then apply firm pressure to certain stomach and gall bladder points on the brow of the face, breathing slowly. Massage the ridge at the base of the skull in a circular motion; bounce gently on the rebounder with unlocked knees.
Perform headache isometric press exercise in Donna Eden’s workbook and drink a strong black-green tea blend with no milk or sugar (can bring on headache). Take a B-complex vitamin, maca, liver capsules, and ashwagandha. Toast a sprouted wheat bagel and butter it, holding the salt (can bring on headache).
Stretch the neck mindfully in the cardinal directions. Press the tongue up against the meeting of the back of the front teeth and the roof of the mouth, to relax the jaw. Try a few cat/cows. It lets up as I’m drinking the tea, which enables me to get out of bed and eat half of the bagel.
It is my theory that after completing a full monthly cycle with no cramps at all—being generally light on symptoms, previously an impossibility in my adult life—my body was working out the conditioned expectation of enormous tension…
So it took that regular pattern of intense contraction and release that usually manifests in lower-body cramping and transferred it into an intense upper-body pain spiral concentrated in the head, neck, and spine. My legs, for example, usually experience fatigue and deep muscle soreness for around 48 hours after the bleeding stops, recovering from their role in steadying my body during contractions. This time, there were no cramps—if I keep repeating that point, it is out of real wonder, amazement, that this is possible after almost twenty years of reliably chronic agony—but/and/of course there’s still a cyclical buildup of tension… the body has to express this somehow. Jaw/neck/head (throat/ajna chakra) is ‘the other opening’, if you will (vs. the root/sacral nexus). It makes sense to express the tension there to get it addressed.