Welcome,
My name is Celia Roberts and today we're looking at meditations for headaches.
Make sure that you're comfortably seated with your hips higher than your knees or that you're resting with your forehead slightly higher than your chin.
Bring your concentration gently to the breath and allow the belly to become as soft as possible.
This improves vagal tone,
The tone of your nervous system,
And increases oxytocin,
Your calm and connection hormone.
Allow the whole body to follow the softness of the abdomen.
So on each out breath,
Allow the whole body to become soft.
When we have headaches,
Tension,
Pain,
We tend to brace.
See if you can just gently unravel the body.
For the protection and the bracing.
In this way,
Blood flow,
Lymphatic flow,
Start to flow more freely.
In turn,
Prana,
Qi,
Or qi,
Life force,
Starts to flow more freely in areas where it may be blocked,
Obscured.
Now gently,
With compassion,
Bring your attention to the source of the pain,
Where you feel the pain most acutely.
Recognize the teaching that comes from Buddhism,
The only way out is in.
So to see through pain and suffering,
We must enter into the pain,
Into the suffering.
If you can,
Go right to the source,
Right to the source,
And feel all sensations at this point.
Just by your attention alone,
And through the science of psychoneuroendocrine immunology,
We know that you are improving blood and lymphatic flow to the area.
Now a good majority of headaches are vasoconstriction headaches,
Up to 90%,
So this would be ideal.
Letting all science go now,
Really focus your attention in once again on the source of the pain.
Really accurately pinpoint all sensations,
Without fear of pain.
The research shows us that pain is about protection,
And so we anticipate and fear pain,
Often making the condition worse than what it is.
So we begin to unbrace the body and feel into the reality of the sensations that are with us.
Use your out-breath to really help your nervous system be still and quiet,
And then keep really targeting into the pain,
Feeling all the sensations at that point.
Observe the nature and the quality of the pain,
Go as deep as you can.
Start to notice,
Is this pain as real as I think it is?
And notice the words,
I think.
Is this pain as real as I think it is?
Pain is remembered and anticipated.
Pain is about protection.
We fear pain,
And often create more intense pain.
So just be with what is,
There's no right or wrong.
Just be with what you can feel,
As accurately as you can.
Just feeling sensation after sensation.
Sensations arising,
And sensations passing.
All sensations always arising and passing,
Always.
This too will pass.
From this point,
Start to expand your awareness outwards,
And just feel as deeply as you can into the sea of sensations.
Feel as many sensations as you can throughout your body,
The sea of consciousness,
Recognizing that human beings don't have an energy field,
They are an energy field.
So you're feeling into your energetic field,
The sea of your sensations,
And your consciousness.
And we're broadening our awareness from that point outwards,
To encompass all sensations more broadly,
With more awareness.
This can often take our hyper-focus on the pain,
And allow our awareness to spread,
Our fear to decrease,
And it can really change what's going on in our field of consciousness,
Our field of awareness,
Our bio-human energetic field.
If there's possibility,
With awareness of sensation,
Keep expanding the field of concentrated awareness outwards,
As far as you can,
And then gently bring your attention back to the softness of your body.
When we practice yoga,
It's about creating a state change,
So just observe the pain,
And perhaps the state change that you've created just by meditation alone,
Just by breath and open awareness.
To complete the practice,
Just really offer yourself gentle compassion.
It's very human to have pain and suffering,
And through our suffering,
Our pain,
We learn.
We learn how to free ourselves,
To practice compassion,
To be gentler on ourselves and others.
So just send a wave of self-compassion to the pain,
And understand that the research behind compassion for pain is really there.
So see that you can feel that in your heart,
Your mind,
Your whole body,
Amygdala decreasing,
Oxytocin improving,
Vagal tone improving,
Compassion expanding.
May you be happy,
May you be healthy,
May you be filled with the deepest compassion,
And may you be at peace.
