The Headache Healer’s Handbook. Jan Mundo

the exercise, you spent a minute or so working with two types of thoughts, and you likely noticed that something happened in your body as a result. Did you contract or feel fear with the negative and expand and feel joy with the positive?

      Of course, the directions were to move your body to match your thoughts. But I’m pretty sure that you didn’t take a deep breath, lift your head, and raise your arms to the sky when imagining yourself stuck in pain — or tighten your body when imagining that you were free of it. We naturally contract when under stress and expand when feeling safe.

      Here’s the point. Your body responded to two types of thoughts in the period of just a minute. How many thoughts do you have in ten minutes, a half-hour, an hour, a day, a week? A lot! And your body is reacting to each one.

      In fact, every thought has a bodily response. I repeat: there is no thinking without your body responding. If you are thinking angry or hopeless thoughts, what happens to your shoulders, jaw, posture, and mood? Your body responds. Every thought — happy, sad, angry, fearful, hopeful — has the potential to affect your headaches because it’s affecting your body.

      Body-centered psychotherapists Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks say that people view the world with either survival vision or wonder vision.¹⁰ In survival mode we see the world through fear-tinted glasses, and those filters limit our choices. We feel like we’re struggling tooth and nail just to make it. However, in wonder mode, we see the world through curiosity-tinted glasses. We allow ourselves to wonder about a problem and consider possible solutions instead of worrying about it.

      Drawing from the Always versus Never exercise, thinking that you will always be in pain is like seeing the world with survival vision. It looks like there’s no hope — your possibilities are limited and you’re barely scraping by. In contrast, thinking that you can be over your headaches is like viewing the world with wonder vision. You can be hopeful and see a future filled with possibilities.

       From Expert to Beginner

      Why is it important to be open to new possibilities? By the time I meet my clients, most of them have tried many therapies and are skeptical after repeatedly chasing hope that ends in defeat. They have become experts at knowing what does or doesn’t work for them, but they can be closed to exploring new avenues. They think they’ve already tried everything, and they don’t want to put out the effort and risk more pain and disappointment. They’ve tried alternative therapies and wonder how somatic self-care is different.

      In his classic book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi writes, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”¹¹ Zen philosophy teaches us to live life in each moment — savoring, appreciating, and learning from it. That’s beginner’s mind. Having beginner’s mind is like having wonder vision. Like a new puppy or kitten, we are open, inquisitive, and unjaded, and we want to explore everything. Beginner’s mind is that willingness to begin again and again.

      The first step in the Mundo Program is being willing to enter into a new inquiry process with fresh eyes despite what you have already tried. You might discover something that you missed previously — which is, after all, why we get second opinions about our health, our fashion choices, or anything else.

      This process of looking at your headaches in new and different ways is more than a one-time exercise. You have to keep refreshing your vision if you get stuck and can’t find answers. If you’re in a negative mood and feel as if nothing is working, if you’re questioning why you’re putting yourself through this again, that means you’re squarely in survival mode. It’s time to re-up, find your bearings, move forward, and return to wonder mode. To do so, stop, acknowledge your mood, take a breath, and find center.

      In chapters 11 and 12 you will learn meditation and breathing practices to help you to feel more calm and open.

       Becoming a Headache Detective

      Why do we love the image of a detective? Because detectives are dedicated to the case and intent on solving the mystery at hand. Using their wits, curiosity, and perseverance, they uncover clues and reveal possibilities that ultimately lead them to the culprit.

      The beloved fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes and Lieutenant Columbo embody the energetic perseverance that is needed to crack difficult cases. They’re the epitome of living in wonder mode — always poking and prodding what is hidden and what is obvious, plumbing the depths of the mystery, and searching for clues, for “just one more thing.”

      If you wanted a detective to solve your headache mystery, whom would you hire? If a detective said, “You know, I’m not sure I can help you. I’ve seen cases like yours before, and I’m not hopeful. But I can take your case anyway and see what I can do,” would you hire that person? Me, I would turn around and walk away; I wouldn’t even consider hiring someone who wasn’t hopeful, open, and gung ho about my case.

      I would want to hire the detective who greeted me with this:

      After you made your appointment, I did some initial legwork, and I’ve identified four doors worth exploring. In fact, I looked behind one of them, found a hallway, followed it to the end, found two more doors, looked behind each of them, found several clues, came back out, and am ready to explore what’s behind the three other doors. What do you think?

      When it comes to hiring the best person to solve your headaches, that detective is you! Be the detective you’d want to hire.

       Placebo: Your Inner Warrior

      The state of inner knowing and confidence, the belief that you can do something, is palpable in wonder mode. The power of belief is so real that it has a name in medical research: the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a beneficial result in a patient that is due not just to the treatment, but to the patient’s expectations about the treatment.¹²

      Blinded, controlled studies are the most reliable way to avoid bias in human medical research. Blinded means that patients won’t know which treatment they’ll be getting. The participants are split into groups, with all of them receiving a regimen — for example, a medication. But whereas one group receives the treatment that’s being tested, the other group receives a sugar pill, or sham treatment, called a placebo.

      This protocol helps determine how well a drug works and how much the patients’ thoughts and beliefs (that they are taking a real drug) affect the treatment outcome. Researchers have to gauge to what degree the real treatment works because the subjects think that it will. As it turns out, our thoughts influence the treatment a lot. Brain imaging studies show that the placebo effect is physical. It changes bioneurological pathways in the brain, causing release of the reward and pain-relieving neurotransmitters, dopamine and endorphins.¹³ Because this response is so consistent, research studies commonly factor it into their baselines. A fascinating study that looked at migraine and the triptan Maxalt found that pain intensity decreased when the drug was expected, even when participants received placebo. When Maxalt was administered but placebo was expected, the actual drug was not as effective.¹⁴

      Even the people who administer a treatment can bias the results if they know who gets the real treatment and who gets the placebo. For that reason, double-blinded studies, in which neither patients nor researchers know who is getting what, are considered to be the most reliable. However, in a stunning 2011 randomized, controlled trial of irritable bowel syndrome by Harvard Medical School Professor of Medicine Ted J. Kaptchuk and colleagues, both researchers and participants actually knew if they were getting the real therapy or the placebo.¹⁵ Remarkably, the placebo still worked to treat subjects’ IBS, even though everyone knew they were getting a sham treatment!

      We humans are very hopeful and imaginative creatures; our minds and beliefs can make us feel sick, or well. It’s amazing how powerful the mind is!

       Mind of