E.WagnerHolisticHealth

                     Blog #24: A Story for the Month of Valentines

     This may the only case study I ever share through these blogs.  I have changed information to protect this person’s confidentiality.  

      Some Buddhist and Taoist traditions view certain illnesses and conditions as karmic.  Patients’ headaches occasionally have complex, hidden roots that could be viewed in this way.  Certain sects of Taoism and Buddhism maintain that karmic conditions can sometimes be alleviated through a long course of treatment, including acupuncture and herbal medicine, through the discipline of meditation and physical exercises such as walking and medical qi gong, through ritual performed for the sufferer by someone with religious authority, and even through magic.  Western medicine might tend to view these types of conditions as deep psychological disturbances such as split personality, deep-seated guilt, or post-traumatic stress disorder and would probably treat the individual with counseling and medication.

     Sharon, a patient I treated about twenty years ago, had suffered from migraines for over a decade.  She used no medication, not even over-the-counter remedies, since they did not help.  As with all my patients, I did a thorough history and examination.  Since most patients are open and willing to share details about their lives and health in an effort to recover from an illness, I assumed that Sharon would also be this way.  Now in her mid-thirties, gradually worsening symptoms had kept her home from work at least half a day each week for the past year.  She told me she was concerned about losing her secretarial job, and was tired of suffering.  She was afraid of needles and insisted we avoid acupuncture. 

     I treated her with full-spine chiropractic adjusting for the first several visits.  Especially notable were subluxations of her low back, which took several adjusting sessions to resolve.  Her diet was heavy on sugar, dairy, corn, and wheat.  She also consumed red meat several times a week.  I recommended that she gradually switch to a more vegetable and fruit-based diet with little dairy, processed foods, or refined sugars, relying on fish and plain organic yoghurt as her only animal protein.  She also agreed to eliminate products made with flour from her diet, instead consuming organic grains that she cooked whole.   We identified several migraine triggers, such as watching television at night, which she said she would avoid.  After a few weeks, she experienced a modest diminution in headache severity but no change in frequency.  At this point, we spent three sessions working with hypnosis and self-hypnosis for stress reduction and pain relief. 

     Because no change occurred after these three sessions, we decided to explore flower essences as a therapy.  I prefer to select essences via muscle testing, and did so in this case, making sure, as always, that neither I nor the patient could read names of the essences for which we tested.  We found the flower essence, (blue) salvia, from the Perelandra garden essence set to be appropriate.  Salvia can help alleviate headaches, including migraines, and is also indicated when an individual has suffered severe early childhood trauma, usually physical or sexual in nature, which has lodged in the subconscious and in the body on a cellular level.  This kind of trauma is very difficult to release.  Sharon said that she had not suffered physical or sexual abuse during her childhood, but that her mother was a Nazi concentration camp survivor, and had been forced to service German officers in order to survive her two years at Auschwitz.  Sharon tested to use salvia for three months. 

     There was further improvement in her symptoms for two months; then her headaches increased in both severity and frequency.   After much questioning, Sharon told me that she had begun dating a man several weeks ago, and, as with each man she dated, if the relationship became sexual, she grew tense, fearful, and unresponsive.  She also became severely constipated during these times, and her headaches worsened.  She said, however, that this man was different from the others; he was both patient and sensitive.  During this time, we added dried fruit and flax seeds, and also ginger and dandelion root teas to help alleviate her constipation.   I treated Sharon weekly with chiropractic spinal adjusting, especially concentrating on her low back, which again had become subluxated.  By the time she had been taking the flower essence salvia for three months, she and her boyfriend had worked things out, and her migraines were gone.  She did not suffer another migraine headache during the approximately two years she kept in touch with me afterward. 

     We cannot know with complete certainty that the flower essence salvia was a major help for Sharon, but I believe that it was the key to her healing.  Flower essences are a type of energy medicine and can change the subconscious and emotional vibrations which people broadcast.  Sharon may have drawn a different kind of man to her, and also may have found herself attracted to a kinder, more sensitive kind of man than before.  Also, this may have been the first time that Sharon made the conscious connection between her mother’s experiences in Nazi Germany, Sharon’s relationship problems, and her migraine headaches. 

     This blog’s offer:  feel free to call or email me with questions about this particular blog.  Also, I teach people about the use of flower essences.  Mention the blog and I will give you a discount.