Migraine time again......

Sometimes we tick along happily in our lives taking our health for granted, I certainly do anyway.  But then something will happen and make you stop and take stock.  For me it is migraines, these weird episodes can take on many forms and most people assume it is a 'bad' headache.  For me there is no headache and for that I am blessed, but I go dizzy and I am violently sick - this is usually preceded by a few weeks (sometimes months) of hearing loss and tinnitus.

My latest episode came as a bit of a surprise - I had not had a migraine for 2 years (almost to the day) and have been taking a small amount of medication to keep them under control, and it seemed to be working.  But I had been experiencing hearing loss and tinnitus for a few weeks and then suddenly yesterday - on a beautiful early spring afternoon I was struck down with a real hum dinger of a migraine.  The fact I was walking my boys home from school was slightly inconvenient but I managed to get us all safely back home.  My head was spinning and I could feel a heavy, cold feeling in the pit of my stomach - all I wanted to do was to lie down.....Then the vomiting begins, it's quite violent and my whole body feels like it's turning inside out (sorry if that is too graphic!)  So I lay down and proceeded to turn ice cold - my eyes burning with even the dimmest of lights.

My poor kids just left me to it - all the time I was worrying about my early evening yoga class which I was due to teach in less than 2 hours......a quick and slightly incoherent phone call to my Mum (also a yoga teacher) resulted in her coming to my rescue again and covering for me.  Another garbled phone call to my husband who valiantly dropped everything at work and came home and took charge.  I just kept thinking how lucky I am to have such a great support network to help me out.

Well true to form after 2 and half hours of lying completely still with my eyes closed I started to come out of it - feeling like I had run a marathon (migraines can leave you feeling incredibly tired)  Also feeling guilty about letting my class members down - although they were in the hands of an amazing teacher...

Then I remembered something I had read in a Yin Yoga book - it said something about our lives can sometimes become too Yang in nature and then something happens and the example they gave was that we may be sent the 'gift of a migraine'.  When I read that I thought "Ha - bloody gift - that has to be a joke".  But actually it was saying that these things may happen to us as a warning to slow down, to create more Yin in our lives.  It also made me reflect on the fact that I have had 2 whole years of being migraine free and how much I took that time for granted.  Not to mention being grateful for this amazing network of people I have around me to help me out, because when you run your own business it's simply not possible to ring in sick and I absolutely hate letting people down.

So while I struggle a bit to think of a migraine as a 'gift' - I can see it as a timely reminder to take time out, to slow down (both my actions and my thinking) 

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