The Best Massage for Headaches Using MAT

The Best Massage for Headaches Using MAT

This blog topic and some wordage have been taken with permission from Erik Dalton’s website. Dalton is the founder of Freedom From Pain Institute in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, focusing on Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques (MAT).

While it is oftentimes tempting to just reach into the medicine cabinet and grab a headache pain reliever such as ibuprofen or Advil, it should be noted that doing so won’t fix the root of a person’s headache. People will temporarily stop themselves from feeling pain; however, once the pill wears off, there is no telling how they will feel. A lot of times, when people ask for a massage for headaches, they have dealt with that problem on many occasions and the problem is almost always accompanied by neck pain and such. In those cases, there is a good chance mechanical strain may be to blame for the headache pain. When it comes to these headaches, therapists should know how to give the most effective massage for headaches to target the source of the headache.

 

Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques (MAT)

Dalton, the inventor of MAT, has developed hands-on techniques that aim to actually address the root cause of headache pain, rather than simply focusing on symptom reduction. MAT, without a doubt, feels good for the client and offers relief from the pain that is the main symptom of a headache; though, these techniques tend to go further than that. MAT can continue to help the client feel better when he or she is off the therapy table and back out in the real world for long periods of time, often getting rid of the problem entirely.

 

Learn MAT Massage for Headaches

To learn how to efficiently address headache pain in your manual therapy practice, it is helpful to first understand the root causes of this pain, especially when it develops from a place of mechanical strain. For instance, a lot of headaches that people who regularly sleep on their stomach experience have their source in neurovascular tension or compression from mechanical strain. According to Dalton, these people often go to massage therapists complaining that they are having a hard time turning their neck without causing upper neck and head pain. With training in MAT massage for headaches, practitioners will gain deeper knowledge of how the obiquus capitis inferior (OCI) muscles, which arise from the spinous process of C2 (axis) and insert on the transverse process of C1 (atlas), plays a major role in this type of headache.

 

Basically, the OCI muscles, with a main function of rotating the head on the neck, can become overstretched on one side and neurologically shortened on the other, resulting in pain and limited range of motion. When this issue is not dealt with property by a well-trained manual therapist, this “atlas wedge” can produce chronic OCI spasm that fixates C1 on C2. Then, when the client tried to rotate his or her head to the left forcefully, the joint jamming spirals down the line to C2-3, a crucial neurological center. It is this kind of global understanding of the possible sources of mechanical strain that could be linked to a client’s headaches, or a range of other pain conditions, that allows MAT experts to be that much more effective in the delivery of Dalton’s strategic deep tissue and joint mobilization techniques.

 

Learn More about MAT for Removing Headaches

In Dalton’s video, he shows you how to perform a few Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques that will help remove headaches. To learn how to safely apply these techniques, you can enroll in a MAT home-study CE program like Upper Body or online e-learning class designed by Dalton himself.

 

 

Headaches can be a huge pain, but when you combine Myoskeletal Alignments Techniques with massage for headaches, pain can be a thing of the past.