Publisher Description

Jan Mundo's mind-body program teaches headache and migraine sufferers how to relieve and prevent their symptoms naturally — without drugs and their side effects. Here she shares her powerful personalized, comprehensive program for the first time. In step-by-step instructions, she helps readers discover and prevent the triggers that perpetuate their headaches — and stop their pain on the spot with her unique hands-on therapy. In a caring and compassionate voice, she makes her techniques accessible to both occasional headache sufferers and those who have long felt misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Brimming with inspirational narratives, questionnaires, guidelines, tracking tools, and author-illustrated instructions, The Headache Healer's Handbook answers the headache sufferer's plea for help and offers hope for a headache-free future.

Author Biography

Jan Mundo, CMSC, CMT, has held headache programs at medical centers, universities, and corporations including Kaiser Permanente, Stanford University, and Apple. She is a certified Master Somatic Coach and massage therapist with advanced training in multiple healing modalities. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction (or Preface and Introduction) Part One. Entering In Chapter 1. Putting Relief In Your Hands Chapter 2. What's Your Headache Type? Chapter 3. Your Personal Headache Profile Chapter 4. The Mind-Body-Headache Connection Part Two. Handling Headache Triggers Chapter 5. The Chinese Menu Theory Chapter 6. Dietary Triggers Chapter 7. Environmental, Lifestyle, and Physical Triggers Chapter 8. Medication and Hormonal Triggers Chapter 9. Diet for Migraine Prevention Chapter 10. Tracking Your Triggers Part Three. Creating Balance Through Awareness Chapter 11. Breathing In, Breathing Out Chapter 12. Being Still: Mindfulness and Headaches Chapter 13. Posture, Ergonomics, and Sleep Chapter 14. The Zen of Exercise and Headaches Part Four. Hands-on: The Healing Power of Touch Chapter 15. Touch Prep: Listening With Your Hands Chapter 16. Backing Down Headaches with Self-Massage Chapter 17. Relax Your Head and Face Chapter 18. Headaches in the Language of Touch Chapter 19. Mundo Method Therapy Self-care Instructions Part Five. The Deeper Realms of Headache Chapter 20. Headaches, Somatic Shaping, and Trauma Chapter 21. Embodied Wisdom: Your Feeling Self Part Six. Embodying Your New Life Chapter 22. Completion and Appreciation Index About the Author

Review

"Just follow Jan's advice, and watch your headaches go away."
-- from the foreword by Alexander Mauskop, MD, Director of the New York Headache Center

"I have followed Jan Mundo's work for many years and have found it not only useful but profound. Although the focus of this book is on headaches, it speaks to a much bigger subject: the quality of our relationship with our feelings, our minds, and our bodies. I hope The Headache Healer's Handbook will find its way into the hands of millions of professionals and headache sufferers who wish to empower themselves with superb healing strategies."
-- Gay Hendricks, PhD, author of The Big Leap and Five Wishes

"Help is here for headache sufferers who feel they've been given a life sentence without hope. If you want to relieve headaches and migraines naturally and quickly without medication, the Mundo Program is a powerful choice. It will not only relieve you of your pain but also enable you to prevent future headaches and migraines."
-- Michelle S. Fondin, author of The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda and Chakra Healing for Vibrant Energy

"Jan Mundo has long been a masterful practitioner in the somatic art of healing headaches. Now her new book will bring her tested methodology and techniques to many more who are suffering from migraines and their causes."
-- Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, author of The Art of Somatic Coaching and The Leadership Dojo

Long Description

Jan Mundo's mind-body program teaches headache and migraine sufferers how to relieve and prevent their symptoms naturally -- without drugs and their side effects. Here she shares her powerful personalized, comprehensive program for the first time. In step-by-step instructions, she helps readers discover and prevent the triggers that perpetuate their headaches -- and stop their pain on the spot with her unique hands-on therapy. In a caring and compassionate voice, she makes her techniques accessible to both occasional headache sufferers and those who have long felt misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Brimming with inspirational narratives, questionnaires, guidelines, tracking tools, and author-illustrated instructions, The Headache Healer's Handbook answers the headache sufferer's plea for help and offers hope for a headache-free future.

Review Quote

"Just follow Jan's advice, and watch your headaches go away." -- from the foreword by Alexander Mauskop, MD "I have followed Jan Mundo's work for many years and have found it not only useful but profound. Although the focus of this book is on headaches, it speaks to a much bigger subject: the quality of our relationship with our feelings, our minds, and our bodies. I hope The Headache Healer's Handbook will find its way into the hands of millions of professionals and headache sufferers who wish to empower themselves with superb healing strategies." -- Gay Hendricks, PhD, author of The Big Leap and Five Wishes "Help is here for headache sufferers who feel they've been given a life sentence without hope. If you want to relieve headaches and migraines naturally and quickly without medication, the Mundo Program is a powerful choice. It will not only relieve you of your pain but also enable you to prevent future headaches and migraines." -- Michelle S. Fondin, author of The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda and Chakra Healing for Vibrant Energy "Jan Mundo has long been a masterful practitioner in the somatic art of healing headaches. Now her new book will bring her tested methodology and techniques to many more who are suffering from migraines and their causes." -- Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, author of The Art of Somatic Coaching and The Leadership Dojo

Excerpt from Book

Introduction You could say I''m an accidental healer. My clients say I have magical hands because I can relieve their headaches and migraines on-the-spot--and halt the horrible symptoms that accompany their pain. In 1970, I intuitively developed a hands-on method of headache and migraine relief. Placing my hands on someone''s head (including my own), I would feel the headache (or palpate it, in medical terminology), work with its sensations, and stop it cold. I''ve relieved thousands of headaches with my protocol, but my work goes beyond that: I teach people how to heal themselves. Although I didn''t set out to do it, the process was so compelling that it became my passion and life''s work. My mom used to have severe migraines. As a child, I would massage away the "knots and spurs" from her shoulders and upper back. "Right there. Oh, that''s good," she''d say. But mostly she''d retreat to her darkened bedroom, cool washcloth on her forehead, and take a strong pain medication, which barely seemed to help. I didn''t fully understand the severity of her pain until I developed migraines as a young adult. My journey with headache healing started when I heard of a claim that you could relieve a headache by putting your hands on the front and back of the head. I gave it a try and, to my surprise, found I could stop a headache in its tracks. I began to experiment informally on people who had them, including myself, although I didn''t get them often because I had begun living a more natural lifestyle. After four years of college, I had dropped out of UC Berkeley and traveled in a caravan of school buses with hippie guru Stephen Gaskin and 250 other idealists to the rolling fields of rural Tennessee, where we founded The Farm intentional community. Dedicated to building a better world by "walking our talk," we bought 1,700 acres of land and built a town in the middle of nowhere, which grew to 1,500 residents. We raised, prepared, and preserved our food, ate a soy-based vegan diet with few sweets, no preservatives, and no alcohol. We had home births assisted by midwives and, in the process, learned to trust the inherent wisdom of our bodies and the power of intention. We practiced meditation and followed Eastern and Western spiritual principles, yet collective living had its share of stressors. Thus, I got lots of practice helping others with their headaches, although my own were rare. After leaving the community and returning to Los Angeles in 1985, however, I began getting frequent, debilitating migraines. Life was stressful. I was a newly-divorced mom of three kids, who were experiencing big city life for the first time, and was out on my own starting a career in corporate America at thirty-eight years old. Several years later, I began waking up in puddles of water, having hot flashes and mood swings, and soon realized: I was perimenopausal. I sought solutions to handle all of it--read mind-body books by Herbert Benson, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, Christiane Northrup, Oliver Sacks, MDs, and others, attended lectures, and monitored my body and habits. I realized that in the months when I was consistently eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising, and stress-aware, I didn''t get a blazing migraine so predictable that I could time my periods by it. I also noticed that my hot flashes would often be preceded by negative emotions. The connections between my mind, body, and health became increasingly clear. To my surprise, I had become a magnet for people with headaches. Wherever I went--work or job interview, party or family gathering, boutique or make-up counter--someone would complain to me, "Ugh, I''ve got such a headache! I have to [fill in the blank] take a break, go home, leave the party, lie down, take a pill." So I would offer to help. Slipping into the privacy of a nearby office, dressing room, the corner of a store or home, I would relieve his or her pain. Afterward, delighted and amazed, each one would thank me and resume whatever activities, now pain-free. This occurred hundreds and hundreds of times without my knowing the process or the pervasive problem of headaches. After twenty-one years, my path took an unexpected turn, and I made the decision to devote myself to a life in healing. In 1991, then a magazine advertising sales manager, finally at the top of my game, I got laid off, was devastated, and an hour later stopped a client''s migraine at our industry''s annual show, in the noisy Las Vegas Convention Center packed with 40,000 people. I decided right then that I would teach others how to relieve their own pain. To do so, I realized I would need to become a keen observer of my method and learn all about headaches. I immersed myself in the literature, poured over consumer and medical books, peer-reviewed journals, articles, and research--and began to understand the scope of the problem. There were millions of headache sufferers in the United States. In 1992, there were an estimated 40 million people with chronic headaches and 25 million with debilitating migraines, two-thirds of whom were women. The numbers were staggering but only told half the story. Headache and migraine patients suffered for years, even decades, but not for lack of seeking a cure. Desperate for answers, most sought help over time from a variety of specialists, consulting with neurologists, pain clinics, anesthesiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, dentists, orthodontists, optometrists, ear, nose and throat doctors, allergists, osteopaths, naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, homeopaths, nutritionists, yoga teachers, and mind-body practitioners including biofeedback, physical, occupational, cranial sacral, Reiki, and massage therapists. And yet, after rounds of prescribed and over-the-counter medications and other therapies, millions of people were still having millions of migraines. A particular drug might work at first but then lose its effectiveness. Patients who experienced negative side-effects would discontinue or switch to another therapy, thus beginning their search again. Longtime reliance on one or a combination of medications resulted in increasingly frequent and intense episodes--and with their pain escalating, patients would move on to another practitioner. This miserable merry-go-round took an emotional toll. Hope would rise with the promise of each new, cutting-edge therapy, only to be dashed when it didn''t work. After years of suffering, headache patients became increasingly isolated, disillusioned, frustrated, and angry. They began to buy into their doctors'' previously unacceptable prognoses of "You''ll just have to live with it." Worn down and resigned to their fates, with hopes of a cure gone, many patients responded by giving up, doing nothing, falling into despair, or becoming drug-dependent, which still left them with cycles of chronic headaches and pain. These insights into the desperate world of headache sufferers made me more determined to teach my therapy. I thought: "There''s all this suffering, and yet I can relieve a headache in minutes with my hands. I need to move this forward." First, I had to determine if anyone could do it or if it was just my touch. I transcribed into words what I had been experiencing on the head and in my hands and created simple step-by-step instructions to describe the process. I tested the instructions on several people with history of migraine, and my willing test subjects reported being able to "stop a headache in its tracks" or "back one down from escalating into a full-blown migraine." This was exciting! In iterating the specifics of my method, I identified a fascinating cycle of sensations that occurred each time. That is, all headaches had a predictable course that could be felt, altered, and released; and at each stage there were subtle, yet identifiable cues that, when complete, signaled relief. I used all the cues to codify my method into a protocol that included the focused concentration, or mental push, which shortened the treatment time. Here''s the really exciting part: The resolution of associated symptoms--such as nausea, disorientation, and sensitivity to light, sound, and odors--signified a bigger story: Touch and concentration were producing neurological and physiological changes that were instantly affecting the brain, pain, and body''s systems. I met with medical, mind-body, and research professionals--brilliant and generous leaders in their respective fields--to introduce my work and find a path forward. In 1992 I graduated from Massage School of Santa Monica as a certified massage therapist, trained in myofascial and energy work, and opened my practice in California. My first patients were referred by UCLA Associate Clinical Professor and neurologist Susan L. Perlman, MD. Based on her follow-up comments that the patients were able to successfully relieve but not prevent their headaches, I was inspired to design a program for prevention. I attended medical research and scientific conferences. To participate in early U.S. efforts to study complementary medicine, I went to the first the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Alternative Medicine Conference in Bethesda, Maryland, and their Clinical Research Training in San Francisco, California (1992). I attended four-day medical professional meetings, including "The Practicing Physician''s Approach to the Difficult Headache Patient," sponsored by University of Chicago School of Medicine/Diamond Headache Clinic (1992) and Annual Scientific Meetings of the American Headache Society (1998, 1999, 2001). Attending my first medical conference was a fortunate coincidence. My dad, orthopedic surgeon Louis Spigelman, MD, had received

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