I became interested in headaches in a round-about way. In my teens I developed a condition called ankylosing spondylitis which set the course of my life. Although it started when I was a junior in high school it didn’t show up as a problem until my senior year. I hurt my back playing football and started having intermittent shooting pain down my legs. I went on to a football and academic scholarship at U.S.C. but after one year the pain became more intense and more often. The team physicians diagnosed it as not standing straight enough and gave me exercises to stand straight. The pain was so bad I quit my football scholarship to concentrate on my academics. I found that whenever I studied for any length of time that the pain returned. The pain caused me to leave school and since doctors couldn’t determine what was wrong (I went to 18 different ones over several years) I entered psychotherapy to see if it was something there. After 10 years of traumatic pain and struggles I determined it must be a pinched nerve and had surgery. Three years later I had a second surgery and with still more pain I finally had someone say "OH you must have ankylosing spondylitis." They said that is why you have had so much pain in the last 15 years and there is nothing we can do for you except you must learn to live with the pain.

Since the regular medical community hadn’t helped and I knew I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life living with pain I set out to find some options. I spent 5 years on a healing quest wandering around the country from one alternative healer (40 different systems) to another and learning how to heal myself. The most important tool I learned that guided me through this journey was to listen to my heart or the still small voice within. After a while each decision about my healing was determined by that small voice within. During that time I began to listen more and more for health questions and more and more aspects of my life. The adventures one can have on a quest following that higher guidance in every decision of your life is truly amazing. In another place I will be writing about that particular part of my trip. Here I am focusing mostly on how pain dominated my life and how I found answers that relate to many other types of pain not just the pain associated with spondylitis.

After five years that small voice said "ok, now it’s time to put all this to practice, back in the real world". I had not healed myself completely but I was able to handle most problems with my back and knees. I got married and moved back into the life of working and supporting a family (the real world). One of the methods I had studied was called Touch for Health which recommended working on points called neuro-lymphatic release points to release toxins stored up in the muscles that causes pain. I got relief from muscle spasms but it was hard to get to the points on the back. One year after I came back I saw a small wooden hand massager in a health food store but didn’t purchase it because it seemed too expensive. A few weeks later I was stuck in a traffic jam in an altered state (when I have to sit for long periods of time I usually go into different forms of meditation that I learned while on my quest) and that little voice said "you can make a massager with the spare parts you have out in the garage". I had some old wine racks Safeway had discarded that I used as handles and a bunch of plastic balls that I had collected from Burger King that I used as rollers. This tool allowed me to get to the parts of my back where the neuro-lymphatic paints were that related to the problems I was having most. This included upper back spasms and pain when I exerted myself too much on any type of project or exercise. They worked great and I found many other people liked to be rubbed with them and so on the weekends I began selling them for $1 at the local flea market. I had enough for 2000 of them but they sold faster than I could make them. I borrowed money to purchase a Shopsmith and began making these rollers out of wood from my garage. I called the massager ‘The Stressaway’ because it felt so good and it seemed to just take the stress out of people when I rubbed their back.

Now as I was thinking of how I might sell them we knew when you roll the rollers on the head it would improve circulation. If you improved circulation then wouldn’t it make hair grow? This could be a great seller. I was demonstrating in a health food store when I saw my first chance to demonstrate on someone whose hair was thinning. The lady I was working on had a hair problem  but as I started rolling her head I was trying to figure out how to say diplomatically that this might help her hair grow. Then she said "Wait a minute! What are you doing to me? I have had a headache for 3 days and nothing I have done eased it at all and it has just disappeared. How did you do that?" I told her I didn’t know but I was going to find out.

Two other things began happening on a regular basis also. Whenever I would roll on a persons shoulders and the back of their neck up next to the skull people would say "My headache disappeared". This happened on a regular enough basis that I started looking into it. I began reading everything I could find on acupressure and different types of massage. I picked up a book on acupressure for headaches called "Quick Headache Relief Without Drugs" by Howard D. Kurland. He reported that two of the most important acupressure points for headache relief were points that I was rolling over when I did my demonstration on people with the Stressaway. I realized that this was an effective tool for stimulating acupressure points. Not only were people telling me about headache relief but there were reports of all kinds of pain disappearing. One of my staff went home for Christmas and her cousin had a migraine headache that they were ready to go to the hospital for. This was the only way they had gotten any help before. She rolled on her cousins head and put pressure on some of the points that I had been showing people and the pain went away. They awoke the next morning and the headache was still gone. Since I was still making my own tools out of my garage I redesigned my handle slightly so that it would be effective for putting deep pressure on specific acupressure points. A small knob on the end allowed deep pressure and made it easier to hold when you rolled on yourself by leaning against the Stressaway and a wall. (Show end of the handle here)*****

I took some acupressure courses and began studying acupressure so that I could understand better how to use this tool. I sent requests to several acupuncturist asking for help to understand what was happening and to develop a comprehensive program for people to use in conjunction with the Stressaway. One acupuncturist, Ralph Allen Dale, corresponded more than others and I eventually went to a course he offered to train people to get certification in acupuncture. While at that course he recommended that I develop a tool for stimulating acupressure points. There were good massage tools available but nothing that gave deep penetration to the acupressure points made out of natural wood.

When I returned from the course I decided that I would make a foot massager that had the points on the end for stimulating the acupressure points. Since it was hard to turn the massager on the lathe the same way as I was making the larger piece I just turned a small piece until I had the ends the way I wanted. When I showed the first sample to my wife she liked the small piece better than the larger piece. I called this unique new tool the Acu-Ki. Acu stands for pointed and Ki stands for the energy that flows through the body that we must balance to get healing. I began developing list of points for all kinds of symptoms that people could use on themselves. This evolved into a computer program that allowed a person to get a printout of the points for their symptoms. I developed another tool (Back-eze) for use on your back against a wall and for using on your feet (Happy-feet) to stimulate the points on the foot.

I was getting such good results that I thought it warranted someone studying what was happening. I spent a whole day with my business partner at Duke University going around to different professors asking them to study the results we were getting and I found out that the way new products are evaluated is by the manufacture to come up with the money. No matter how good of results we were getting no-one had the time to evaluate them. Finally at the end of the day one of the professors said that if we could come up with $100,000 they could probably get some research done. I was discouraged but I knew something would happen to let other people know what was happening here. At that time (1984) there were eighteen other new businesses competitors that were making a similar product like mine since the time I started. (Reword) It seemed like the market was saturated and my business went under like a lot of others.

After a few years I again started selling my left over inventory at the local flea market in the mountains of North Carolina. This was the first time that I spent a lot of time at the markets working directly with individuals. When I first made the Stressaway massager I was mostly demonstrating it and showing how good it felt. Now I was focusing on selling all the different tools. For several years I spent three days every weekend of the season demonstrating and selling all four of my tools. There were several things that I had to do to be successful at selling in this type of market. First I had to get people to stop. I had to roll people first with the Stressaway because it felt so good. Most everyone likes a free massage. I also got some good visuals (4 large charts, picture here flea market setting) and a new manakin I found at the flea market that I gave the acupressure dots and lines with all the meridians. These were not only good visual representations of unique information but I also used these as educational aids to explain what was going on. Once I stopped a person I had to give them a quick, clear explanation of what was happening with each tool and a general theory of acupressure and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Now as I began using these aids not only did they make it clearer for other people I began to understand things much better myself. When I first developed the acupressure materials I emphasized mostly the regular acupressure points (the same points are used for acupuncture) but I didn’t realize how important it is to mix all the different ways we work with the response we are trying to get. I began rubbing more feet, hands and ears and not just using the acupressure points on the meridians. I also found that I never knew which tool was going to work for which condition so instead of trying to guess I started selling the three tools together as a Kit.

The last key to getting a person to start using acupressure was giving them an experience of relief of their pain or whatever was bothering them. Once I had done that I had to convince them that they could do it themselves and that they didn’t need me. One of the most often phrases I got from people was "this is great but I need you to go along with it", or "it won’t work. I can’t do this myself." My last important development was putting everything I know down on paper so they could get the results they got with me by themselves.

This is some of the information that gives you a background on how this system started. My own pain led me to look for answers which I then found others could use for their pain relief.

Headaches are one of the areas that I get the best results. As I said earlier at first I had people report that their headaches went away by accident. This serendipitous response was the key factor that let me into studying acupuncture and developing the other tools to stimulate the acupressure points. I found for treating myself with acupressure I couldn’t put enough pressure on my own acupressure points and my fingers would get sore when I did it for any length of time. People have told me numerous times that they tried acupressure with other books using their fingers and they got no results but when they use my books and tools it works. Many say they won’t go anywhere without their Acu-Ki because they know that is what gives them control over their pain.

As I looked for people with headaches it became the symptom I knew with most certainty that I could get relief in just a matter of minutes.

There were several reasons that we got relief. The first led me to understand acupressure differently than it had ever been explained to me and in the way I made acupressure clear to others. Most of the acupuncture and acupressure text speak of balancing energies or the yin and yang, or of blocked meridians that had to cleared before the underlying causes of pain and disease can be healed. Although these concepts are true they become clearer when you understand the principle thing we are trying to do when we apply pressure on a point.

Acupuncture and acupressure tricks the body into thinking it has been damaged by creating a small injury. In principle, this is very similar to our western tradition of vaccinations. When acupuncturists insert a needle, the body responds as if it has been cut. Most of the methods used by acupuncturists (including acupressure) simulate some kind of damage. Acupuncturists have tools to simulate damage by cutting, pressure (acupressure), electricity, heat, ice, lasers, lights, magnets, scratching, and chemicals.

Acupressure is the application of pressure on specific points (using the fingers or acupressure tools) to trick the body to begin its Healing Response. Healing responses for a particular pain do not occur all over the body. We get the Healing Response just on the area of damage and along specific paths related to nerves and electrical lines called meridians. For example, endorphins (natural painkillers in the body) produce a numbing effect along these meridians. When you create pain by putting pressure on points, you are artificially starting all your body's healing mechanisms for that specific point and various symptoms related to that point. While the body is trying to heal the point of pain, it also heals specific symptoms. The more sensitive the points, and the more pain you create, the stronger the healing response (the body thinks it has been hurt more) and the better your results. When I press a point on my hand that is sore, the body is deadening the pain at the point at my hand, and along the meridian, going from my hand into the elbow, shoulder, neck, and head. It is also producing the Healing Response all along that meridian.

It wasn’t until I made "Dotty", (my manakin with the acupressure points and meridians), that I began to see all the acupressure points on the head that were related to headaches. About this same time I saw all the points related to headaches in 1991 in Ralph Alan Dales’ Acupuncture Comprehensive Prescription Index. Comparing these two sources I could see how just rolling the Stressaway on the head would get rid of headaches. (Insert dottie here good picture of head). I could see all the major meridian lines on the head that we were rolling on to get relief and when I looked at the points used for headaches there are 86 points acupuncturist use for headaches found on the head. So when I was rolling on a persons head every time I rolled across a sore point the body was producing a Healing Response for headaches. Rolling on sore points of the head is a method of tricking the body that the head has been damaged and it is subsequently activating all its’ powerful healing mechanisms. It increases the blood flow to the head which opens up all the compressed (restate) capillaries which is known to be the mechanism of headaches. It also raises the pain threshold with endorphines which eases the pain and facilitates the body to heal itself. The Stressaway is a tool for stimulating the acupressure points and making it easy for a person to do this themselves.

If you look at the points that were giving me the unexpected relief of headaches on the shoulder and the back of the head GB20 and GB21 (Dottie here) you can see that when I rolled on a persons shoulder or on the back of the head at the base of the skull I was activating the healing response on those points and all up along the side of the head and down into the front of the head. Because of the way the meridian flows you get an amazing amount of coverage of the head with just these two points. This meridian can be stimulated with any of its 44 points but some have proved to be more effective than others so those are the ones that are traditionally used more often than others.(reword twice others) This meridian and the Urinary Bladder (UB) have the most points used for headaches.

One study on headaches used one point only GB41 and got very good results (find quote of study). You can see when you follow the meridian that the GB41 point on the foot goes up the leg and the side of the body and then up into the head. Although the person feels that the spot on their foot is very sore the body produces a healing response all along the meridian into the head. We don’t know very much about how this works but it is a field that should be studied more intensely in the years to come. For example why do we get a healing mainly along that meridian and not all over the body? Many people say "yea, this works but why can’t I just hit myself with a hammer and get a similar response." The body has several pain nervous pathways reword later) that regulate where pain messages get sent and which ones get acted upon. If I have a headache that is caused by some internal imbalance, stress or problem in the body and there is an emergency in my outside environment that could threaten the safety of my being it is important for my survival to respont to the external stimulas. So what the body does is turn the internal pain off to focus on the external one. When we can trick it into doing this we have an effective tool to ending our pain. The neatest part of this is that when we do this trick over a period of time the body turns off the internal pain for longer and longer periods of time so that it eventually stays away. In other words it has a cumulative effect so after a while you don’t have to do it at all.

One important thing you must do is find the points that work best for you. Dale lists 163 different points for headaches that have been used by different practitioners. Whenever you work with a practitioner they are experimenting with a number of points that give you a good response for your particular headache. They look for the sorest points and also see what works. Once they find the right combination then they repeat the sequence a number of times to get a longer lasting effect. Sometimes people will get results in just 15 or 20 seconds on the first point but usually I have to work several before they feel any change. Sometimes the pain will go away slowly with the work on each point and sometimes the pain will stay intense until you find the right point and then it will disappear. When the pain goes away as you are working different points make sure you note which point gives you relief. This may be the only one you have to work. So be aware as you are stimulating the sequence of points.

Describe all the other points used....ub02,ub50 li4,11 gb01b

This works to get rid of headaches but it most importantly works with the underlying cause of the headaches. (Find quote that headaches have underlying causes of neck shoulder and back problems). I have emphasized this to each person and have found this again and again.

We can get rid of hangover headache using acupressure but if you drink again you will get another hangover headache–same with many of the other causes of headaches. You must seek to eliminate the external cause but if you do not deal with the underlying energy problem you will have more and more things cause the headaches so your life will revolve around staying away from all kinds of things that you still may be able to enjoy every once in a while. When I have a headache it throws the energy balance off which shows up as sore points along certain energy meridians. If I get rid of the headache and the points are still sore it means the energy system is still out of balance and susceptible to easily getting a another headache. It is like standing on one leg. The slightest pressure from someone can make me fall because I am off balance. When I put both feet on the ground in a balanced manner, it is hard to push me over. The same thing happens with the internal energy systems in our body. The minute a small stress comes along I will get my headache again. If I use acupressure on the sore points that were related to the old headache the body will activate my healing response to fix the imbalance of my system. Then I will be standing on both feet again, balanced, better able to handle pressures that before caused internal pain or disease. Imbalances in the body is one thing that the body is always trying to heal. Mostly we refer to it homeostasis and it is a primary medical diagnostic tool. Whenever something in our body is not within a normal range we try to get it back into the proper range. Now when that small stress comes along that used to give me a headache it will no longer give me a headache.

So what is the underlying cause that the TCM Traditional Chinese Medicine always referring to? They refer to it as this Yin and Yan or balance of the entire system. I describe this underlying cause in this way. First we recognize that we have a closed system with no outside permanent connection to an outside source of power like a house. Everything we have working for us is inside us very similar to a car. The way energy flows through us is very balanced and everywhere in the system. If I have a problem in one part of the system I put my attention there to try to fix it. This attention, awareness or energy is taken from other parts of the system because I only have a limited amount of energy. I either shut down an energy system (let’s call this a meridian) or expand the amount of energy going into another. We are all familiar what happens when you put too much energy through a wire in a regular electrical system. If I have a toaster that is shorting out, the wire that is going to the toaster pumps more and more electricity through it and the wire becomes very hot. We have built into the home and different mechanical systems fuses to monitor how hot we let the wire get before the system shuts down altogether. We know there is a problem if the wires are hot. When we fix the toaster usually that is all we have to do. Sometimes we have to fix the wiring also.

In our bodies we know we have a problem with a particular system by looking at the energy system or meridian system. These energy systems that go throughout the body are said to be all connected in one continuous circuit. Where they come close to the surface are the points that have been identified as acupuncture, acupressure or trigger points. When we have a problem, disease, pain or emotional disturbance these meridians pump more energy through some or slow down the energy in others. When either of these conditions exist the points where the meridians come close to the surface become sore. Sore points then tell us the system is out of balance. If the system is out of balance then we are more likely to have some type of difficulty or dis-ease. If I have a headache there are specific points that will be sore. Pressure on those points will produce stimuli alone those lines that will give us a healing response where the problems is, e.g. the headache will go away. If I get headaches frequently it tells me that the energy in that part of the system is not flowing well or is out of balance. If I find that the points that relate to these headaches are sore even when I don’t have a headache then I can use that soreness to activate the healing response. The body will then use the energy or pressure on the points to heal the energy imbalance. Closed energy systems will open up and systems that are overactive will slow down as we work with the right combinations of points. Sometimes immediately but most often over time stimulating these sore points balances the system enough that the headaches stop happening. We no longer are looking for a way to fix the headaches when they come, we are trying to balance the whole system so we don’t get the headaches. This is what acupuncturist refer to as fixing the underlying cause of the problems.

An interesting example of how emotions affect these meridians was a lady that came by a Jin Shu Jitzsu workshop that I was assisting in. Jin Shin works to balance the meridians with the energy from a light touch along critical points of the path of the meridian. We balanced all her systems the evening of the workshop and she came back the next day after being in a fight with her husband. When we looked at the flow (which you can do by measuring the pulses on the wrist with Chinese pulse diagnoses) we found all the meridians that were close to the surface were shut down but many of the deeper ones were too strong. What this represented was her body pulling back from danger or fear and shutting down to protect the deeper feelings. It was very similar to when it is very cold outside we find the body automatically takes the blood deeper within to protect the vital systems necessary for survival.

When I worked with individuals at fairs and flea markets they usually only had a little time to spend with me. Usually there were other things partners or friends wanted to see so there was pressure to get results quickly. Husbands were not as inclined to want to spend time at this type of booth, so many times if things don’t happen fast the rest of their group will put pressure on the person to move on to the other booths. Since there was a shortage of time to work with a person I usually wanted to just spend a few minutes to verify that they could see some change in their condition. All of the research indicates best results are reached with multiple treatments over a period of time. So if I could get results in a few minutes I knew that the person could expect and probably get good results as they worked on the points themselves. I think this kind of pressure led me to get better and quicker results than I have seen in any acupressure survey type of research that has been reported in the literature.

One of the most frustrating part of working in this setting has been when individuals come by that have had severe problems for many years that can’t find help from the medical profession. I usually can get them some type of relief if not complete relief in just a few minutes but for some reason they say they will think about trying this system and walk off. If I had been trying for years to get help with a problem and someone gave me relief in just a few minutes and guaranteed that it would help I get as much information and tools so that I could do it myself. But some people don’t. Just during this last season I had two examples of this. One lady came by in Yuma, Arizona saying that she had a terrible headache that had been bothering her for weeks. She had been to several different doctors and three chiropractors. The doctors had done cat scans and found nothing and the last chiropractor she say would not even touch her the problem with her headache and neck were so bad. She had spent $1400 and all they could do was give her knockout drugs. She was sick to her stomach from the pain and the group she was with was getting ready to leave because she felt so bad. Could I do anything? Well the first thing I had her do was start working on the Key Four points Li4,11 GB21,20. I find it is necessary to get the person involved because they then know they doing the healing and not just me, they can do it themselves. I always tell each person that I am not diagnosing or treating them let’s just see if they can learn how to fix themselves. As she worked on these I rolled her head, neck and shoulders with the Stressaway and found some sore points especially on the lower back part of her neck. Since this is one of the three areas that could be the underlying cause of the headache I focused some attention there using the micro points on the hand and ear for the neck. She said this was one of the reasons her last chiropractor didn’t want to touch her because of the extreme pain in the back of her neck. Since I was not manipulating this area in any way there was no way that there would be any damage and she could feel very secure knowing she could not hurt herself. At the end of four minutes (I usually have the person work for 30 seconds on each point which is a very short treatment but enough time to determine if they will get results with longer treatment) she said the pain was about 50% gone. I had her do another round of the Key Four and I put pressure on GB1,41 UB2,60 and the micro points on her feet that related to her neck. In another 5 minutes she reported that her headache was completely gone and that the nausea from the pain was gone also. That was the first relief she had experienced since the headaches started. I explained that she would need to do this several times over a week or two to get lasting relief and that this could just be temporary unless she kept up the treatments until all the soreness left from the points. She said she would think about this and walked away. If you had spent $1400 with no relief over a period of weeks and then got immediate relief for a system that cost as little as $12 (Acu-Ki Set which includes the basic book and Acu-ki) wouldn’t you get something?

At another Preparedness show in Dallas a lady came by upon the recommendation of another customer with a terrible migraine headache. She said she had experienced migraines for fifteen years and the only thing that would give her relief was to go to the hospital and get knocked out with a shot. It usually bothered he so much that she would do this 4-5 times a year. She was at the point of getting ready to close her booth and looking for the hospital but wanted to try this first. The regular Key Four points were extremely sore for her and I could barely touch them so I had to very lightly place my fingers on the points. You only put as much pressure on the point as you can stand, trying to get as much Healing Response as you can but never so much that a person doesn’t want to continue the treatment. (the more pressure the more Healing Response because the body thinks it has been hurt more or you can use lighter pressure for longer periods of time). The tools are meant for the deepest pressure but at first sometimes the fingers are enough pressure to get relief. Her migraine was on one side so we focused only on that side. If you have time you may work the points on both sides but you will usually find the points on the side where the head is most painful will hurt the most when touched and those are the ones to focus most of your energy on. Besides working on her head with the Stressaway I also worked on the acupressure points f or her head on the ear on the side where she was experiencing pain. In six or seven minutes all the pain was gone and she was able to go back to her booth. She said she would be back but I never saw her again. So I know it works but I also recognize that there is something else involved in getting a person to take responsibility and do something to begin healing themselves.

As I explained earlier I sought to find the best explanation that would simplify things enough that a person could understand in just a few minutes. I have been rewarded in this effort because people are saying all the time "Oh, that’s how acupressure works". I am constantly improving how the material is presented so it easy for a person to pick up the material and get the came kind of results I get. That is one of the reasons for this book. Usually people get information for headaches included with other materials but I think it is better if you get everything related to headaches in the easiest format possible.

When a person who has headaches or any other kind of painful condition the first time someone touches the points that relate to the condition they will usually be very sore. After a while this sensitivity goes away. Women are usually more sensitive than men but they are also usually more responsive to acupressure than men. At first the fingers can be used to get results but people have reported frequently enough that the tools were the factors that made the difference for them that I think there is a different kind of response you get with a sharper tool than your finger. I am looking at research designs to verify this feeling.

Over the last twelve years I estimate that I have worked with 2500 people with headaches at the different places that I have demonstrated my products. There have been so many testimonials that I stopped collecting them. Some of them are listed in testimonials at our web site The type of response I like the best came from a lady in North Carolina who worked in another building and was walking by one day and said she had migraine headaches on a regular basis and would try the Acu-Ki Set without a demonstration or anything. I saw her a few months later and she said her headaches had stopped after a couple of weeks of working on the points and hadn’t come back. Her doctor told her she had the worst migraine headaches he had ever seen in a person and nothing had ever helped much. Three years after she started using acupressure she had not had any more headaches and she only worked on the points every once in a while as explained in the introductory book.

Working with this many headaches I taught people how to use these methods for all kinds of headaches. Usually the more severe cases you have to do the points longer and repeat a number of times to get results. There is about three percent of the people I work with that don’t get any type of immediate relief. I have not been in a situation where I could follow up with them so I only can say perhaps. What has always been consistent is that the points that relate to headaches have been sore even if I haven’t gotten any immediate relief. This tells me that if the person would work with the points over a period of time they would see relief. This is again an area where more research will be needed to demonstrate this. A few people have reported that they got results at first but when they stopped working the points on a preventative basis the headaches came back. This is to be expected because unless you do enough work on the meridian imbalances to stabilize them and them keep that balance maintained the original imbalance and symptom may reappear.

Some interesting headache cases show some other principles that can be applied. At a show in Columbus, Ohio a lady came by that had been injured in an industrial accident. A large swinging metal bar had hit her across the back of the head and she had headaches ever since. None of the doctors had been able to find anything wrong. We gave her some relief which she hadn’t gotten from her other treatments in over two years. We also found the micro point on her ear that corresponded to the place on her head and the side of the head where she was hit was extremely sore even after two years. I suggested she might want to consider working that point also because pain on the point on her ear produced a healing response for the ear and for the place that she had been hit. I don’t have any research evidence to support this but everyone that has had injury to the head that has long range problems I have been able to find a sore point that related to the injury. There have been at least a dozen people where this has shown up. Another area for some interesting research.

One lady had a very unique type of headache that I questioned as I was trying if acupressure would help. She had spino bifodia which is a condition which causes pressure on the brain from too much spinal fluid being produced in the spinal cord. She was taking medications for the condition to reduce the amount of fluid being produced but they hadn’t been able to help with the terrible headaches she was having. I was surprised that in a few minutes she said the headache were gone. Four days later she said the headaches had not returned and she hadn’t done anything else for them. She was very thankful because she didn’t think she was going to be able to stay for the show when she first got there her headache was so bad.

Caution on headache..expand(do not treat brain tumor or temporal arteritis with acupressure.. And quote from qhr.. Sinus headache)

It is always amazing how often headaches will go away in less than a minute. That’s when people say amazing, and I don’t believe it and things like that. It emphasizes what we are trying to do. I can give you a number of points and if you pay attention to how you feel with each you may find that there is one point that will always gives you relief. This then becomes the point that you always start with when you feel a headache coming or that you always use in your prevention plan. Finding the right few points for you and stimulating them when you have a free moment will give you the results you want.

With some people who have had a lot of problems and are very sensitive you can have a reaction that is similar to a light shock. This is probably less than .0025 % of the people but important to know what it is if it happens to you. A person will break out in sweating on their brow, feel hot all over or dizzy or nauseous. It is similar to when a person is injured and they get a shock response but usually not as intense. It sometimes happens when you first start working with acupressure but it is nothing serious and soon wears off. Once the body gets used to the messages you are sending to it with acupressure for healing it will stop having this response. Just be sure the first time you use this technique that there is a chair nearby and don’t do it the first time while you may be driving. Simple pressure on G26 or ST36 will relieve this response. These points are listed under shock if you do get this response. Also some people will feel very sleepy after a treatment so be careful that you don’t drive if you are effected this way.

Sometimes when I put pressure on a point it makes the headache worse. I am told be other therapist that this is a positive sign and an indication that you will get results with that point for that symptom. I don’t understand how that happens so it is something that I still have to understand better. When I can’t explain why something is happening I am curious but very hesitant. The point on the hand Li4 has produced a worsening of headaches on several occasions. I usually move on to other points that do not increase the pain. One lady had headaches related to epilepsy and surgery that she had had on that side of her head. Immediately her headache got worse. We stopped stimulating that point at that time. Since I didn’t know what was going on at that time I felt it was best to say this may not be right for your condition especially knowing that she had epilepsy. There are specific acupressure recipes for epilepsy but in the setting I was working in I didn’t want to take any chances of problems. Another time a lady was willing to continue getting the treatment for pain that she had (even though the pain got worse as we put pressure on the points) because nothing else was working, the pain had lasted for a long time and it was extensively all over her lower body. She was in a wheel chair because her legs were also very weak and she couldn’t walk any distance. I did the points very softly and held them longer than normal. After about ten minutes we decided that was enough even though she had no relief. I also had many other customers come by so I don’t have time normally to work for a long time with one person, Usually I give the person the tools and points and check back with them after working with someone else. This person left with no lessening of pain but with some increase. She notice an hour later that for the first time in years the general pain she carried was gone. She was actually driving out of the parking lot when she realized the pain was gone and was so excited that she came back into the show to tell me how much better she felt. Since that time I now tell people that it is an indication we are on the points that relate to their condition and that they should proceed very slowly knowing that they will get some relief as the body heals itself. For a lot of people this is hard to understand how making the pain worse can fix the problem. With the limited amount of time I usually have to spend or that they have to spend it is difficult to explain their unique situation. People can understand that if the pain goes away or lessens it is an indication that they can expect improvement. The opposite is harder to understand. This happens with very few people, probably less than 20 that I have worked with.

With most of the regular symptoms that people were having over time I found we got the best results when we combined the regular acupressure points with the points on the ear, hands or feet. Since the regular points worked so well for headaches I haven’t developed this combination as extensively. I have the points for the combinations and have them listed here so that I can start seeing if we can get better results. If we do get better results it will be amazing because we already get rid of 87% of the headache pain within three to five minutes. It is an area that is important for dealing with underlying causes of headaches like neck, shoulder, and back problems. So if you have any of these conditions try to work with as many different systems (ear, hand, foot and regular acupressure points) as you can. The points are listed here for those three conditions so if one of them is bothering you make sure you spend some time on that condition also because it may be causing your headaches.

When a person is not getting good immediate results I recommend they work with the Happy-feet on the reflex points on the bottom of their feet. Gentle rolling on with this tool may show up sore points that relate to the headache. If you look at the picture of the foot that shows the possible places that could be related to headaches you find as many as twenty eight different systems. These can tell you the possible causes that you could look at. For example, headaches could be caused by intestinal problems which will show up as soreness on the foot in a place corresponding to the intestines. This would tell you that you need to focus on this area of treatment either with your diet or additional acupressure points for that area of the body. Most people will have gotten results using the regular points but the possible points of the foot that relate to headaches is on page_____.