Tension headaches are one of the most common types of headaches that I see in my office.
Symptoms range from mild to moderate pain in the head that feels like there’s tight vice strapped around your noggin. Mountains of stress, coupled with bad forward head posture, can easily trigger a tension headache.
Taking over-the-counter pain killers can sometimes stop a headache in its tracks, but more often than not, it will come back.
Posture exercises like chin tucks and neck stretches can reduce your forward head posture; however, it’s always good to call a professional when it comes to trigger points.
Trigger Points (TPs) are tight, ischemic, and hyper-irritable nodules or spots in a muscle that refer pain and tingling to other places in the body.
Massage For Tension Headache Relief
In the video below, I cover three unyielding trigger points that are guilty of causing tension headaches and then demonstrate self-massage techniques on how to get rid of them.
Trigger Point #1: The Suboccipitals
The suboccipitals are made up of 4 tiny muscles in the base of your skull that help tilt the head into extension and assist in performing other fine motor movements.
When a person looks down at their smartphone all day long or sits hunched over their computer for hours at a time, the tension in their suboccipitals increases.
This chronic shortening of the suboccipitals most likely will lead to trigger points.
Interestingly enough, trigger points in the suboccipitals have a pain referral pattern that resembles a band around the head.
Trigger Point #2: The Sternocleidomastoid (SCM)
One of the largest and most superficial cervical muscles, the sternocleidomastoid (SCM), helps you rotate your head to the opposite side and flex your neck.
When a person assumes a forward head posture, their SCM flexes and shortens.
Over time, this adaptive shortening can cause trigger points to form, leading to pain in the forehead, sinus, ear, and back of the head areas.
Trigger Point #3: Upper Trapezius (Traps)
The trapezius muscle is a sizeable kite-shaped muscle whose upper fibers bring the shoulders up and extend the neck.
Chronic slouching can cause tension and knots to build up in the upper traps leading to fearsome trigger points.
Trigger points in the upper traps commonly refer pain to:
- the back of the neck near the occiput
- the back of the ear
- the temples
- the back of the eyes.
Deep Tissue Massage To The Rescue!
Deep Tissue Massage can bring great relief for tension headache sufferers.
It does this by stretching and kneading of massage help soften and lengthen the tight, contracted muscles causing the headache pain.
Static pressure on those specific trigger points helps to dissipate the knots and increase blood and oxygen flow to the ischemic muscles.
Fast forward 30-60 minutes and those stubborn knots are less painful and have shrunk down to the size of Lilliputians, just not as cute.
When the knots go away, you can say goodbye to that tension headache pain.
Book a Tension Headache Relief Massage Today!
Don’t have time to schedule a massage, that’s fine; check out Press Here! 6 Potent Points For Headache Relief.
If you’re the Do-It-Yourself type, then here are my top trigger point tools to crush those stubborn knots in your neck and shoulders.
