Cold Stone Migraine Headache Relief Testimonial
By: Crista Taylor
While I have only been a licensed massage therapist since November 2009, I have been a headache sufferer since I was nine years old. It was January 1996 and I was nine years old when I had a horrific bike accident that changed my life forever. Not only did I suffer from a concussion, knocked out my four permanent front teeth, spent 3 and half hours in the operating room resulting in over 300 hundred stitches and acquired minor brain damage, but from that day forth I would live with a constant headache. At times the headache was minor and more of a lingering dull pain that could be ignored. But at other times, it would be depilating. These times the headache would escalate into a migraine that could not be relieved with any sort of medication. My doctors, neurologists, and even my mother tried everything to ease my pain when the headaches got to this point of severity. Regardless of what we tried, I woke up every day with at least a dull minor headache and had the sever migraine style headaches anywhere between 5 to 10 times a month. This went on for 15 years! Finally, I had given up trying the conventional headache treatments and after becoming a LMT myself, I signed up for the cold stone migraine headache workshop at the National Massage Conference in 2010. After learning all the specialized facial strokes and where and how to place each of the cold marble stones, I practiced performing the treatment as a whole on my massage partner. At the time, my partner could not handle the intensely cold stones on her face for too long and I began to doubt whether or not I would be able to handle them and if they would truly help or not. Then it was my turn to receive. I was nervous since I was having a fairly severe headache that day. It wasn’t one of my worst headaches but it was severe enough that the pain was hindering my ability to stay focused, grounded, and on task. As I laid down to receive, I said to myself, have an open mind and relax, reminding myself that the treatment couldn’t make me feel any worse and modern medicine hadn’t helped my headaches anyway. As my massage partner began the treatment on me, it felt amazing. The stones could have even been colder. The quickness of the pain relief actually started to make me ill and I nearly lost my lunch. But as the treatment continued my body’s response was less intense and more and more pain release. After the course was over, I shared my headache past misery with some of the class and decided that the treatment had felt so amazing that I would keep it up by using the stones and techniques on myself. Since then I have used the cold stones and facial strokes on myself about once every other or every 2 days and I have been headache free for over 2 months! I have only had to take pain killers once and it was to bring a fever down not for a headache. Even if I recently used the stones, the moment I start to feel a headache coming on, I get them out and use them and stop the headache in its tracks! My life has been changed by a few cold marble stones, some easy facial/neck strokes, and a woman who cared enough to find a way to relieve headache pain without medication. For that, I am immensely grateful and always in debt to Kelly Lott and her cold stone techniques!