A study at Chicago’s Diamond Headache Clinic in 1983 reportedly showed that biofeedback helped 70 percent of headache sufferers after other treatments had failed. And a sampling of reports from a variety of headache and pain clinics reveals that after biofeedback training, patients with common migraine have averaged a 75-80 percent reduction in pain, while those with classic migraine achieved a reduction of 85-90 percent. Children as young as eight have been successfully taught to use biofeedback.
Biofeedback works by using your imagination to warm your hands. Tests have revealed that during migraine attacks, hand temperature drops by several degrees. As soon as the attack ends, hand temperature rises again. The temperature drop results from diminished blood supply due to artery constriction. In turn, the constriction is due to a stress mechanism, one of a series involved in the migraine sequence. If hand temperature can be prevented from dropping, the migraine process is unable to continue.
For decades, doctors have regarded hand temperature as an involuntary function over which we have no personal control. But in the 1960s, while studying the benefits of yoga, researchers discovered that we could indeed raise our hand temperature by simply imagining that our hands were heavy and warm.
By making mental pictures, and by giving ourselves silent verbal suggestions, researchers learned that almost anyone can gain voluntary control over hand temperature. That’s because the unconscious mind regards all incoming visual and verbal messages as orders to be carried out. A mental picture and a thought are identical, which explains why we must be so careful to think only positive thoughts, and to speak to ourselves only in a positive way. The unconscious makes sure that we get exactly what we “see” and what we “say.”
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