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@themindfulmigraine
My top 7 tips to heal
To conclude Migraine Awareness Month, I want to do a shout-out for my top 7 tips to heal. There are MANY activities on this blog that you can try, any or all of which can move you along the illness-wellness spectrum to help get better – BUT – I’m starting to realize that to increase your chance of success, there are 7 key things that you need to do BEFORE you go too far changing your diet,…
"Becoming bulletproof"
OK – so the title of this post is a lot more… macho (maybe)… than my usual posts – and it’s why I countered it with the “no violence” words in the cover image. “Being bulletproof” is not my phrase; it’s the book title of US Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras. The idea for reading this book came in a comment to my blogpost “Prepper-Mindfulness” about how I wanted to toughen up my ability to…
Why women get more migraines than men
If you read migraine literature, you keep brushing up against the statistic that women are much more likely to get migraines than men. Very rarely is it ever explained WHY. I have always assumed it was hormonal, and vaguely remember hearing that the wise men of medicine in the past believed it was due to women’s naughty wondering wombs, or our uterus radiating hysteria… ugh. I decided to go…
Carl Jung’s “Active Imagination”
In a recent post, I mentioned subconscious visualization. Rob, a fellow blogger from Things I have thought of… in case you haven’t mentioned that the approach sounded a lot like Carl Jung’s Active Imagination… Well, I hadn’t thought of that, so I just had to find out more. First stop: Wikipedia. They note that the approach was developed by Jung between 1913 and 1916 as “a meditation technique…
Migraines and the MTHFR gene
OK, heads up – swear word coming up. When I first saw the term “MTHFR gene” in a wellness book, my mind instantly (and unnecessarily) filled in the blanks with vowels and came up with the rude phrase “mother-f*ckr gene”. Sorry. [I blame it on the self-help shelf at the library which is FULL of books with titles that are all a variety of “f*ck this sh!t” – which seemed rebellious and…
Make a dream-board
You’ve probably heard of the phrase “mood-board” plenty of times before (I know I have, and I’ve written about it here). The idea is that you collect magazine images, postcards, affirmations, fabric swatches etc etc and place them all on a vertical pinboard, lay them in a tray, or use an online tool to copy-paste what you like. Most mood-boards are typically inspired by ‘something’ – for…
When your healing journey hits a roadblock
I’ve written before that I have had to change my healing-metaphor from time to time. There’s the shift I made from thinking of myself as a “migraine warrior” to becoming more of a “gentle gardener” in order to make peace with my pain. Then there’s the shift from thinking of healing as “an uphill battle” to something more “tidal” rather than linear, more of a tooing-and-froing process than a…
Happy B'day
June is Migraine Awareness Month, the anniversary of my chronic migraine pain, my birth-month, pride-month, AND (as my blog-bestie Dayle pointed out) the start of Hurricane Season. Today is a super short post to celebrate “Burple Day” in Australia. It’s a relatively new initiative by Migraine Australia which encourages you to wear BURgundy-and-purPLE to show that you support those of us with…
Migraine Awareness Month (& blog news)
Hello! If today is your first day visiting The Mindful Migraine Blog; welcome! If you’re a regular popper-inner, welcome back my lovely friend! June is Migraine Awareness Month. In the past, I haven’t made too much of a fuss about it, because I’ve been struggling too much with my health to promote much more than ‘breathe better and be kind to your mother’ as a rallying call. The start of June…
Time flies regardless of the fun-factor
Short post today, because time is tight. Seriously – where has this year gone?!? It feels like only yesterday I was having my New Year’s Revelation that we can be more than one version of ourselves… and now… 4 months have swept by in the blink of an eye… When I was younger, people used to say, “time goes faster when you’re older”. It felt like such a silly thing to say. Time is time. We all get…
“Chronic pain management”
Today’s post is a (long, but totally worth it) book review of pain psychologist David Walton’s “Chronic Pain Management” (2021). It hooked me in, because the cover seemed to be calling to me from the library shelf, and the opening words made me say a vigorous “yes!” in my head: “Pain is not pleasant. It hurts. But many chronic pain patients attending pain clinics say the real problem isn’t…
The bird pilgrimage
Some time ago I read a post on the “Holistic Fibro Fighter” blog [which seems to have gone silent] which the author, Jane Taylor, titled “A pilgrimage of self-care”. The title gave me a zingy “wow- yes!” moment, because the word ‘pilgrimage’ instantly resonated with my healing journey. It explains the adventure that is healing, and encapsulates a sense of faith and hope mixed with the expectation…
Do animals get migraines?
The answer is, apparently, yes. But of course, an animal can’t articulate their suffering, so we can only make assumptions based on their behavior. The reason I thought to ask came out of a conversation with my blog-buddy Thomas who writes on his site Super Facts. He mentioned that AI claimed the diagnosis of ‘migraine’ is 600 years old, and I quipped back that this was just the name, head pain…
Everybody panic… or NOT!
To get into the city of Sydney from where I live, you can drive in, but parking is limited and can cost up to $50 for a couple of hours. So instead, I catch the train. It takes about the same amount of time (one hour) but costs a fraction of the money, and is more relaxing, because I can read, meditate, or look out the window and eavesdrop, instead of watching the brake-light of the car in front…
Pet rocks and pebbling people
Many, many months ago, I wrote a post about ‘penguin-pebbling’ (here). It’s a lovely little bit of romance-rizz where a penguin creates an attractive pile of rocks to woo his intended love interest… or any love interest… I’m not sure if penguins mate for life… or how flirty they are… More recently, I wrote a post Doodle your pain away. My blog-friend, the lovely Barbara (aka ghostmmnc) replied…
The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
Over on Instagram, I have recently been seeing a lot of millennials panicking about the ‘junk’ that they have inherited from their Baby Boomer relatives. It sounds mean and ungrateful, but the videos have a point: Grandma’s collection of 101 ceramic doves was so special to HER… but where would you put them all if you’re only renting a studio flat? And what about Uncle Bob’s collection of…
Migraines and the weather
People who get migraines are human barometers. That’s my truth and I’m sticking to it no matter what the science says – when the barometric pressure drops (as it often does when a storm is coming) – I can feel it in my head… sometimes I get a migraine, sometimes I just feel iffy… but I DO feel it. And if you say, “yeah but you can often see a storm coming through the window by the arrival of…
