Episode 228: Intuition, Self-Trust and Healing Chronic Migraines with Melinda Staehling
Returning to the show is friend-of-the-program and clinical nutritionist, Melinda Staehling.
Melinda recently joined me in Episode 220: Developing Self-Trust and Leadership through Human Design and Intuitive Eating.
(She was also a guest in Episode 041: How to Start A Meditation Practice and Episode 046: Gray-Area Drinking and Sobriety).
In this episode, we continue our conversation on trusting our intuition and stepping into a self-leadership role in our healing journeys.
Melinda shares her 17+ year struggle with migraine and how her approach to treating them has evolved over the years.
She shares:
Why migraine is a women’s health issue
Why and how she takes an integrative approach
Why only focusing on the physical aspects of pain is an incomplete conversation
How she’s chosen to reframe her relationship with pain and the tools that have helped her do so
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 041: How to Start A Meditation Practice with Melinda Mrachek Staehling
Episode 046: Gray-Area Drinking and Sobriety with Melinda Mrachek Staehling
Episode 176: Exploring Brain Rewiring to Manage Anxiety, Overwhelm & Exhaustion
with Carly LockmanEpisode 015: Powerful Strategies to Cope with Stress with Dr. David Lin
FREE GUIDE: Your Human Design, Discovered
Connect with Melinda Staehling:
Share the Episode:
“I never thought that I would be in a place where I was out in public and I could be starting to have a migraine attack and I could actually just take a few minutes and use my own tools to help myself without medication, but just making sure that I felt comfortable and safe and knowing that I can use my brain to rewire itself.”
Read the Transcript:
Naomi Nakamura: Hello there, and welcome back to the Live FAB Life podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura, and returning to the show, joining me in this episode is my friend, Melinda Staehling. This is Melinda's fourth appearance on the show.
She first joined me a few years ago in Episode 041 on meditation, and she shared what her meditation practice was like. And then in Episode 046, which is an interesting episode and continues to be one of my most popular episodes, continues to get so many downloads even all these years later, because that episode was on gray area drinking and Melinda shared her journey from actually having her full-time job be in the alcohol industry to transitioning and becoming sober.
So, Melinda last joined me in Episode 220. She shared what her career evolution has been like since and what she's doing now. And Episode 220 was about how she's learned to develop self-trust and self-leadership through intuitive eating, and we brought in some aspects of her Human Design into that conversation.
We intended to record this episode shortly after that one. Through our preparation for that episode, Melinda came to share with me how she had been dealing with some chronic pain and how she was approaching it, truly embodying a mind body spirit approach in a way that we like to speak about those things. But actually putting them into practical practice, I think is another conversation. And she wanted to share her evolution on that.
Her chronic pain flared up, and so we couldn’t record when we originally planned. But we were able to get that episode recorded, and that's what we're showing today.
So, in today's episode, Melinda shares her history of dealing specifically with migraine and how migraine has been something that has been a part of her life for 17 years. And she shares her evolution of what she did to treat it from way back then to what's happened in the past couple of years and how she's adopted different tools and expanded her learning to different things, to how she truly embodies an integrative approach in how she's treating migraine now. And it is a really interesting conversation to have. Not just if you deal with migraine, but if you also just deal with chronic pain or any type of chronic illness altogether. So, I'm going to leave it at that and let's get to the show.
Hello, Melinda, welcome back to the show.
Melinda Staehling: Hello, Naomi. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.
Naomi Nakamura: You are like, this is ... You're an old pro because this is your fourth time here.
Melinda Staehling: Fourth time. Oh my gosh.
Naomi Nakamura: I was thinking about it. You've been coming on in cluster. So you were back on, gosh, it like what? Three years ago, maybe four years ago. Episode 041 on meditation and Episode 046, where you talked about gray area drinking, and that is one of the most popular episodes to this day. It gets a ton of hits still. And so those were kind of close together. And then we hand you on a few weeks ago, talking about the role of intuition, self-leadership, and self-trust when it comes to intuitive eating, and you shared how you made a career pivot now as a clinical nutrition and how this is the approach you take working with your clients.
So, for those listening, if you haven't listened to any of those episodes yet, please go and do so, especially Episode 220, because we're kind of carrying on with these themes. As Melinda and I were planning out and having a conversation about what we wanted to share in Episode 220, she shared some other things with me about how she was bringing the same themes of intuition, self-leadership, and self-trust as she deals with chronic pain. And we all have chronic pain, we all have chronic symptoms, and I thought this would be an interesting episode to kind of explore what was going on there and so she could share some of the things that she's been experiencing and the approach she's taking as she deals with that.
So, my friend, tell us what is going on?
Melinda Staehling: What is up? It's interesting, hello. I'm still doing the intuitive eating book club, which I know ... I'm just looking back and I'm thinking how that was a few weeks ago and we're still meeting weekly in our book club, which is so cool.
Naomi Nakamura: So, has everyone like read the book, but they just want to continue the conversation, so you're just continuing to meet?
Melinda Staehling: No, we're slow and we just ... If you listen to the episode, you'll know I talked about how I needed some accountability partners to get through this workbook because it was one of those things that just wasn't happening completely, or I felt like I should give it some more attention.
So, we are still on principle four of 10 and each week-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, so you're going to be there for a while.
Melinda Staehling: Yes. I thought when I started book club that we would be totally done and disbanded by now, but we're on four, so we're going slow and it's nice. It's nice to have that time and not to rush it. Sometimes you think things have to happen on your own timeline and then they just take on a timeline of their own.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, that's the whole part of the Human Design experience, right? Is letting go of all the expectations that we've come to put on us through societal influences or whatever conditioning we have and just really trying to find what is the timing for ourselves and follow our own timing.
I'm curious, how do you decide when you're ready to move on to the next section?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. We just wrap things up for the evening and then we all sort of say ... Sometimes meetings have fewer participants and sometimes there's more. So I feel if there's only a few people there, then maybe we hang out in the same space for another week until we all regroup and we'll-
Naomi Nakamura: So, you meet weekly?
Melinda Staehling: We meet weekly and sometimes we're like, "Yes, we're done with this principal. We need to move ahead. We've done as much as we can do."
Naomi Nakamura: That's awesome.
Melinda Staehling: It's very democratic. I love it. I love it.
Naomi Nakamura: Now, you've also shared that you've been on another journey as well, dealing with some chronic issues. What's going on there?
Melinda Staehling: Well, I've had migraines for many, many years. I don't have a very great history as far as how back it goes. I'm thinking probably 2005-ish, which is when it started. And then my mom also had migraines for a very long time. So I've experienced it since I was really, really young just through her, her eyes and her situation. And then as we know, it's very, very genetic. We link.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, I didn't know that. So I thankfully do not experience migraines. Now that you say it's genetic, I'm like, "At least not yet." And I do have family members who do, so I have ... My experience with migraine has only come through observing other people suffer with it.
So, what is it like? And if you're listening and you get migraines, you're probably rolling your eyes. But for those of us who don't, we really don't know what it's like. I know it's debilitating, but when that comes on, what happens?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. Maybe I'll just back up a little and I'm just going to offer up a tiny bit of education because I think it's so important. And some people have migraine, and they only get it every now and then, and some people live with migraine as a very chronic condition that affects them every single day.
So, it's really a spectrum disease. And one thing that's really helpful is to call it migraine as a disease and not maybe migraines, like it's something that just happens to you. Just because so many people on the far end of the spectrum suffer with it every single day and it takes over so many areas of your life. Of course, there's this shooting head pain. It's usually for a lot of people on one side of your head. That's very good characteristic, that it's one-sided pain on your head. And then there's so many other symptoms that, such as how-
Naomi Nakamura: Is there any type of meaning if it's on one side or the other side?
Melinda Staehling: Not that I know of.
Naomi Nakamura: Okay. Just curious.
Melinda Staehling: Some people's switches. Mine does not switch. But some people will have it on either or side. So it just does affect one side of the brain more than the other. But there's so many symptoms that can occur with it concurrently. Mine would probably be nausea, tired, brain fog, but there's just ...
And then mental health symptoms, of course, like anxiety and depression. A lot of people that have things like IBS, digestive stuff, histamine intolerance, ADHD, as far as mental health stuff also have migraines. So it just kind of comes with the territory with a lot of things-
Naomi Nakamura: That's so interesting because a lot of things you just shared are unfortunately common things that a lot of people suffer from that maybe if they also have migraines, I don't know if people would know to connect those things together.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. Yeah. And just-
Naomi Nakamura: I don't know, is that a common conversation that most doctors approach that have they've taken, like looking at all these other things?
Melinda Staehling: I think if you talked to somebody that was a little more advanced, if you got talk to a neurologist or a headache specialist, they might make those connections, but I'm not sure if ... Our primary cares physicians have the task of doing so many things. I'm not sure if they would totally make that connection.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. And I think that's the case with most chronic illnesses, and that's why it takes so long to tease out what's going on because you have to go through all these different steps and layers, and a lot of it really is experimentation, trial and error and seeing how these things work.
I'm going through the same thing with my skin, but it's a common thing with people who suffer from chronic conditions, unfortunately.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. And both here in the US and globally migraine is probably affects, I think they say anywhere from 10% to 20% of the population. But within that group, it's about 80% women.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, interesting.
Melinda Staehling: So that's another thing that I think is important and just because it is by and large a women's health issue, I think sometimes we don't get this great of care or as much research or historically, I think things are really changing, but historically people have been like, "Oh, women are acting crazy. Women are." You know what I mean?
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, yeah.
Melinda Staehling: So, I think because of those statistics, so many more women are affected, and it's probably due in part ... There is really no cure for migraine and we still don't have it completely figured out as far as what's going on physically, physiologically, but I'm sure the hormonal shift play a lot.
Naomi Nakamura: That was the first thing that came to my mind as you just share that. So this started happening to you about ... Is 2005 17 years ago? I think it was.
Melinda Staehling: Oh, yeah. [inaudible 00:11:11]
Naomi Nakamura: This past weekend was my 30th high school reunion and I literally had to pull out the calculators to figure things out. So you've been dealing with this for almost two decades. Do you recall or can think of anything that might have been a triggering event to bring this on? Or do you think it's just the natural course of life being that it's genetic? And just not from a professional perspective, just from your own experience.
Melinda Staehling: Oh yeah. I have hormonal migraine. At the core, it's menstrual migraine. So I'm pretty much guaranteed every and every time I have my period and ovulation to have some sort of weird migraine attack. And it comes and goes over the years and sometimes it's better and sometimes it's been really, really bad. At its core, I have menstrual migraine.
There's many, many types of migraine. There's even people can get migraine only in their stomach, in their digestive system, which is really hard to diagnose. People have vestibular migraine, where they just experience a lot of dizziness.
When I was going through all that digestion histamine stuff, oh my gosh. They were never worse than when my stomach was a real, a real hot mess.
Naomi Nakamura: Wow. So you've been pretty focused on this, especially in the past few years. How did it impact or how does it impact your daily life when they come on?
Melinda Staehling: I think I have medication, so I always carry my meds wherever I go. But sometimes there's been times when I can think back and I've been able to power through, and that's been my M.O., is just to shove it down and power through with medication. And there's been other times where it's just completely debilitating and I just have to take a day and go into the dark.
Because the pain gets so intense sometimes that you just, there's nothing else you can do. I get a lot of nausea and vomiting and that sort of thing. Yeah, it's not great.
But I think for me personally, I saw a big uptick in my headache days, my migraine days during the pandemic. And I'm not sure if it was because so much more screen time because I was in an online grad school program and everything, of course, was 100% online and a lot of reading on the screen. Or if it was just the pandemic stress.
Naomi Nakamura: Could be all of it.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. All of the above. In the last couple years, things definitely intensified.
Naomi Nakamura: So, have you always been on medication for it? And how has how you treat it or help yourself deal with the pain, how has that evolved over the past 17 years?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. I've always had medication. I have a class of drugs that I've used, and I've tried maybe four or five different types within the ... They're called Triptans, and they're the same drugs that my mom was using. So they're-
Naomi Nakamura: Imitrex? I remember that. Yeah.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. Yeah, Imitrex, totally. Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, I only know that, because again, I have people close to me who have had it and when it comes on, they take their Imitrex, and again, like you said, they go dark. They literally darken their home and put their phone on airplane mode and they're like, "Don't bother me.
Melinda Staehling: Everybody be quiet. Don't talk, no light. Yes. And that was, Imitrex was what my mom took, and there's other Triptans. I've tried all of those. They all have side effects for me. So, I'll take that.
They work on the serotonin system. And then 48 to 72 hours later, I'll just be so dizzy. It will just come on super fast. I get really bad balance issues with the Triptans. So they're great, they're fast acting in the time. But then they have these other side effects that are not great. And I would still work as a personal trainer in-person with people, and that is just not a fun thing to have happen to you when you're in a gym setting and you're trying to help-
Naomi Nakamura: With carrying weights and helping people move around,
Melinda Staehling: Yeah, it's not safe. It's not safe.
Naomi Nakamura: Jump around.
Melinda Staehling: It's not. So just in the last couple years, we've had so many new options as far as drug treatment come out. So that's been super helpful for me. So I have new acute medication that thankfully works really, really well, and that's exciting. But I didn't learn about that until January of last year.
My headache days, I keep a journal about it just so I can monitor. Because one thing with migraine, you don't want your days creeping up towards a chronic migraine. So if there's episodic migraine, which is less than half of the days of the month that you would have attacks, and then going into chronic migraine. Chronic migraine with migraine means that you get your attacks more than half the days of the month.
Naomi Nakamura: And you get both? You experience both?
Melinda Staehling: No. I it's interesting, even though I've had migraine chronically for so many years, I don't have chronic migraine. But I just saw the days getting, like 12 days a month, 14 days a month, and seeing towards that. And I found this program online with a neurologist, so I-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, so wait, hold on. Before we get that.
Melinda Staehling: Oh, cool. Back it up.
Naomi Nakamura: I, just out of curiosity, because I talk a lot on the podcast about journaling and tracking our symptoms and whatnot. So to what depth or level do you track? And is it something that you track even on days where you don't have episodes just to see patterns?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. I used to track and just write in a journal, maybe like bullet journal style. That's what I do. And now I'm really into Notion. I'm not sure-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, I know it is Notion.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. So now I'm like-
Naomi Nakamura: I'm really in to Airtable, so I pick up, yeah.
Melinda Staehling: And now I'm super into Notion, so I've made myself a Notion database, which I'm sure you would love to see because this is right up your alley. So now I can filter every single symptom and everything I do. I have a drop down menu with check marks for everything. So I'm tracking now in Notion.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, I might need to see that.
Melinda Staehling: It's kind of like, yeah, it's totally up your alley.
Naomi Nakamura: No, but so you also track on days where maybe you don't have symptoms. So do you just track symptoms or do you track like, "Oh, I had a good day today. I went out and spent time with friends." Or, "It was a heads down day where I was studying for an exam." Do you track activities in addition to symptoms? Or do you just look at your calendar and be like, "Oh this is happening on this day when this symptom happens." To what depth do you track?
Melinda Staehling: There's been a really big evolution in the way that I track and what I track, which is probably what the meat of this conversation is all about. But I used to track the obvious migraine things, which would be, are there food triggers? I was all about the food triggers, as we used to be. Water, hydration. Did I work out or not? A lot of people have a lot of barometric pressure, like weather-type issues. Was I just overworking myself? That sort of thing. And then of course for me, tracking my period is a big part of it.
So last year, January of 2021, all of these years are blurring together with the pandemic.
Naomi Nakamura: They are. My life is now pre-pandemic and pandemic, and I don't know, are we in post-pandemic yet? I don't know. It depends on who talk to.
Melinda Staehling: Well, we're definitely not in post-pandemic by the numbers. But I think we all are in a-
Naomi Nakamura: No, but by the way people include their life.
Melinda Staehling: Yes. We're in permanent pandemic purgatory, is what we're right now. But, so any who. Yes. So I found this-
Naomi Nakamura: Mid-pandemic.
Melinda Staehling: Mid-pandemic, things were getting bad. And so I found this program with a neurologist who had a, she ... A traditional conventional neurologist, but also had all of these holistic tools that I hadn't tried. And so she had a 12-week program that I joined-
Naomi Nakamura: So a very integrative approach.
Melinda Staehling: Very integrative approach. She was also a registered yoga teacher. She had nutrition, she had ... Part of the program was a live coaching and she could help you strategize your medications to go to your personal doctor.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, that's amazing.
Melinda Staehling: It was amazing. It was one of those kind of scary, like, "Am I really doing this thing? Do I need to do this thing." Kind of decisions. But in retrospect, it really got me started on a path that has helped me so much.
So, I did that. I actually, I work for her now and I do cooking classes and cooking demos for her, which is a really cool full circle thing. So that's fun. So, I did her program and I learned so much.
I didn't know about these new medications before the program. I just didn't know anything about the migraine community. I didn't know that yoga has this decades-long history of being very impactful. And I have a long time yoga practice, but I'd never really thought of connecting the two. And there was a lot of meditation and this idea of retraining your brain away from chronic pain, which I hadn't had a lot of pain neuroscience education at all at that point, so-
Naomi Nakamura: Is that kind of like brain rewiring? So a mutual friend of ours has used that approach in helping her deal with some postpartum things. I had on the show earlier this year. But I don't know, is it kind of the same idea?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah, I think so. I think it's just that idea that you've trained your brain into a state of chronic pain and there is this possibility of the neurons that fire together, wire together. You can make changes to your brain and train yourself away from those chronic pain processes. So there were some practices like that in the program.
And I did that, and things got a lot better. I'm very, very grateful for the medication, even though it was just a huge pain in the butt with my insurance and just many, many hours.
Naomi Nakamura: But you need to ... When you're in the state of where you're just debilitated and you can't function in day-to-day life, you need to get those acute symptoms handled so that you can take these other approaches.
Same thing with my skin. I literally could not function because it was just so painful and uncomfortable, where you can't even sleep as well. And so what does that do to the whole rest of your day? Right?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. And I think it's just, it is one part medication, is to be amazing and-
Naomi Nakamura: Yes, it is just one part of the conversation, but there's so much more to it.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah, for sure. And so things improved a lot. And then went on somehow something changed again in the fall of last year in September and I started ... I don't know if it was the weather, if it was school. I was in my last few months of my grad program and then the headache started ticking up again.
So, I read in a Facebook group somebody's report. It wasn't a migraine group. It was just a chronic illness Facebook group. Somebody's report of this brain retraining system called DNRS. Have you ever-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, that's the same program that ... Who I just shared about was Carly, our mutual friend.
Melinda Staehling: I think it is Carly. I think Carly did DNRS. Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Yes. And so she actually came on the show and shared how she used it for postpartum. And I actually looked into maybe doing it, picking a program on it myself and I ... Just one of those things that went in the parking lot. But so you did that program?
Melinda Staehling: No.
Naomi Nakamura: Right. [inaudible 00:22:43]
Melinda Staehling: So I read this amazing story about this woman that had done DNRS. And sometimes if you've been in chronic illness land for long enough, like these Facebook groups, you know people's names and you're like, "Oh my God, that's an incredible story."
So I looked up DNRS and it's beginning part is very involved. It's hours and hours. You need to invest hours and hours to watching these videos and doing all this stuff and I was like, I'm like-
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, exactly. Which is why I looked into it, but I actually haven't done it yet.
Melinda Staehling: I was like, "Eek, I don't have time for this."
Naomi Nakamura: It's a time commitment thing, yeah.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah, yeah. Again, finishing up grad school. I was like, "I can't take this on." And I'm not sure if it was because of ... It was a very popular post in this Facebook group and people said, "Oh, I use Curable to do the same thing. And so I know I'd heard-
Naomi Nakamura: What is Curable?
Melinda Staehling: I'd heard of Curable, people doing that in the migraine group that I was in. And so I looked that up and Curable is an app that you can simply download on your phone with short exercises. There's pain-
Naomi Nakamura: I'm looking it up on my phone right now.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. There's pain education. It's kind of a choose your own adventure. If you want a meditation, if you need to hit the panic button and need something that's going to help you in the moment. But they have this incredible constellation of doctors and providers, of therapists that are all mind, body experts in the field who have been contributing-
Naomi Nakamura: I love that word, constellation.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. They've been all contributing to this app and they have a podcast. So anyway, this was all in one little car, Facebook, internet rabbit hole that. Then I found the DNRS. Then I found the Curable app, downloaded the Curable, started right then and there in the car because I just needed something to help me right away. And I have been working with that app ever since. I love it.
Naomi Nakamura: So I'm going to share something, which is fully not confirmed, but my personal therapist, he works with a tech company that was doing something like this. I don't know if this is the app or not. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
Anyway, sorry. That was just a side note. You downloaded this in your car and you've been using this ever since. And what specifically do you use in the app?
Melinda Staehling: I use the app. So there's a couple therapists in there that are ... They're licensed therapists and they've developed this treatment process called pain reprocessing therapy, and there's one exercise in particular and it's called somatic tracking. So somatic meaning of the body. And instead of just mindfulness, we've all heard of mindfulness meditation or mindfulness-based stress reduction.
Somatic tracking is actually coming into the moment, and then you're actually noticing and paying attention and really just observing the pain as sort of a impartial, as a bystander and just watching what happens to the pain and trying to do that from a safe neutral perspective. And then there's one little part at the end where you try to add a little bit of like levity, like smile or make it less intense and just retraining your brain away from a danger, danger, danger signal into a lens of safety. And I've probably done that same somatic tracking exercise.
It's available free online, so we could like link it for people, because I've found it to be so helpful. And so that is one of my key tools. And then there's just ... Once you kind of find that this stuff is working for you, I never thought that I would be in a place where I was out in public and I could be starting to have a migraine attack and I could actually just take a few minutes and use my own tools-
Naomi Nakamura: Noodle.
Melinda Staehling: Use my own tools to help myself without medication, without anything. But just making sure that I felt comfortable and safe and I knew that I could just use my brain to rewire itself.
Naomi Nakamura: So a bunch of questions. So just to clarify for people, you still do use medication to treat your acute symptoms, but maybe not-
Melinda Staehling: Oh yeah. I used medication yesterday. Yeah, for sure.
Naomi Nakamura: Okay. So then secondly, when you are out in public ... And the first thing that came to my mind was the last time I saw you in person, we were having sushi in Portland, the summer before the pandemic, pre-pandemic days. So I'm picturing you standing outside, waiting for your table and this thing comes on and you start to get symptoms.
So when you start to use the tools in your toolbox, is it because you've done this exercise so long, you just mindfully put yourself through the exercise? Or did you put on earphones and take out the app and listen to it kind of like a guided meditation style?
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. No. And that's the coolest thing about it. If it started to happen and we were standing outside having sushi, I would just start doing it and talking to you and I probably wouldn't even tell you that I was doing it.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, okay that's so curious.
Melinda Staehling: I know, isn't it?
Naomi Nakamura: So it sounds like an emotionally detached observation of the event as you're going through it.
Melinda Staehling: I think that's a great assessment.
Naomi Nakamura: Self-observation with nonjudgment.
Melinda Staehling: Yes. Self-observation through the lens of safety, not danger, because I think that's one thing that happens. As soon as the pain starts, and whether it's in your head or your low back and have-
Naomi Nakamura: You start to panic and you have these reactions, and yes. Yeah.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. And all of a sudden our brain has gone there so many times before to that-
Naomi Nakamura: An the you go into fight or flight with trying to feel safe.
Melinda Staehling: Yes, you catastrophize. "Oh my God, this is going to ruin my whole time. I'm going to have to get an Uber home, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And so to find that area of safety. And sometimes I might go to the bathroom and do a few more deep breaths. But it's something that's worked really, really well for me. Just those tools in the pain reprocessing therapy toolbox.
Naomi Nakamura: All from a Facebook group post.
Melinda Staehling: All from a Facebook group post. We always knock on Facebook, but sometimes it's just the thing-
Naomi Nakamura: It's the way it's used.
Melinda Staehling: It is.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, it's the way it's used. So going back to your tracking now, how has this factored into the evolution of how you track things in Notion?
Melinda Staehling: Well, I have a therapist now that focuses on this type of chronic pain therapy, specifically on mind, body pain therapy. There's so many resources and websites to find these people, because it's pretty great.
So what I used to do is track things like what food did I eat? Did I drink enough water? But now I think I track a lot more about my emotions and where my stress level is and what's going on with me. The real sticky migraine attacks that I haven't been able to just work with so much are always at night. I think that's super typical for a lot of people, just something happens in sleep.
So whether that's physiological or whether that's our subconscious doing stuff, a lot of people get migraine when they're sleeping. So if I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm at high pain level, it's really hard to back away from that. So that's when I still use medication. And these tools work too, but that's just like, that's the thing that I've been working with in my tracking in Notion a little bit more than those more, I would say physical things that I used to track.
Naomi Nakamura: It's so interesting that you bring this point of view because as you share about how the symptoms comes on at night, we've been talking about emotions and mind, body. But also at night, your hormone levels do fluctuate too and so there is ... We can't talk about, "Oh, these are my hormones, this is the food I'm eating. This is how I'm exercising." And then talk about, "These are the emotions."
You can't have two separate conversations about that. You still have to look at them together, because your emotions and your hormones are also pretty closely tied together as well.
Melinda Staehling: Totally, totally. And it's really interesting. In some of these chronic pain Facebook groups, the ones that are very mind, body-oriented, they don't want you to talk at all about physical things like hormones or trying your new CBD lotion or medication. And I get it, I get wanting to keep it really, really pure because then it just turns into everybody selling some random product.
But also when I'm away from that space and it's nice to have other people to process this with, it's like, yes, there's something physiological going on. There's also the emotional piece. I just started a couple days ago. I started on this medical device called gammaCore. It's a vagus nerve stimulator.
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, interesting.
Melinda Staehling: For migraines. So you put it on your neck and you do just a series of stimulations three times a day. So I just started that. But it's really interesting because the people that it's help, not only does it help, as in preventative for migraine, but it helps with anxiety. The Department of Defense is using it right now to train some of their people.
Naomi Nakamura: That's really interesting you say that because the episode that came out last week prior to this was on yoga nidra and we talked about how yoga nidra has been used in the military to help soldiers with PTSD. But they had to change the name of it because yoga nidra was a little bit too far out there, but all they did was switch the name and the practice is exactly the same and they've had really great results in helping soldiers with PTSD.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. This device is actually ... For veterans, I think you can actually get this device for free because it's great for, it helps with both PTSD and migraine. And so just learning stuff like that about the vagus nerve, that would not be great to talk about it in a mind, body group. That you're using a medical device. You know what I mean? But I just think it's all connected.
So I am just a non-dogmatic mind, body person. [inaudible 00:32:56]-
Naomi Nakamura: It's an integrative approach. But coming full circle back here again, the themes that I see taken into place through the journey you just shared is intuition and following what your body and your mind and your emotions are telling you. But also having the self-trust and I guess the courage to step into that leadership role for yourself and try these things.
Because in my observation, and this is not true for a lot of people, but a lot of people tend to stick to the physical parts of it because it's too scary and it feels too unsafe to step into the emotional part of it and to deal with maybe unresolved emotions or painful things that they just aren't willing to face yet. But at the same time, I think it's worth having a conversation to just explore, are those things related to the chronic pain that you're experiencing?
Melinda Staehling: I think you really hit it there, but also if you've had chronic pain, you've probably had so many people gaslight. You've probably had people tell you that you're crazy. It's very hard for other people to understand what you're going through. Even your closest loved ones look at you and you know that they want to help, but there's no way to help. And this whole history of women, especially with migraine, just primarily being the ones that get it. And then when somebody says, "Oh, maybe you should go see a therapist." I don't want to-
Naomi Nakamura: You're like, "I'm already doing that. Maybe you should too."
Melinda Staehling: Yeah, like strangle them. You're like, "That is the last thing I need." but if you come to that place, I feel like I had to come to that place myself, and it took seeing other people having success with it. It took me seeing. And I still play that game with myself, like, "Oh, I have a different kind of migraine that's not treatable through mind, body."
I must somehow be different or special or something. Then I find myself getting into that. And of course there's always this line because there's just ... Some things happen to people's bodies that are not explainable and it's like they're-
Naomi Nakamura: Well, I almost think too in order to get to this part where you're able to take an integrative approach, for many of us, we need to start with focusing on the physical part because that's the part that we feel like we do have some control over it because ... It's funny, my niece is taking health for a summer school and it just started. So I haven't asked her what the curriculum is or anything.
But thinking back to when I took health in high school, which was ... Now that I know that my 30th anniversary from my high school graduation was this year, so that was probably like 32 years ago. There was nothing on mind or emotional health, mental, emotional health. So when are we ever given tools or taught on how to deal with that?
We're given tools and taught how to take care of our physical health, but not our emotional or mental health, and so these are things that we have to figure out as adults on our own. And which is why I think it's really commendable that youth can take a self-leadership role and really practice self-trust and guiding yourself through this. And thankfully now, there's doctors, like the program that you took and who are recognizing this and ...
Oh, this is probably something she does on her own separate from her medical practice just because she probably saw a need for it and it's not something that's necessarily embraced yet by conventional medicine.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. Very true. And the same with therapists that have found these tools and discovered and tried these tools, they-
Naomi Nakamura: Who created Curable and ...
Melinda Staehling: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's pretty cool. There are actually some really interesting studies that where they're using these techniques that are coming out now. And we do have a little bit of research to look at. But so much of it, I think you have to be the one to instigate it because nobody else is going to do that for you.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. I had a comment from a podcast listener and I addressed it in a couple episodes prior, but she commented that she really enjoyed the first 150 episodes of my podcast because they're really on gut health and sugar detox and all those things.
And I, first of all, totally appreciate that she listened to the first 150 episodes, but at the same time I've evolved, we've evolved. I feel like the health world has also evolved, where we do now have people taking these integrative approaches and having integrative conversations.
And in my approach, that's where Human Design came in because it is a framework that helps me take ... Understand myself so that I can then start to learn how to practice self-trust and step into a self-leadership role, and there's many ways of doing that. This happens to be what works for me. And so it's an incomplete conversation not to talk about these things and to only talk about the things I talked about in the 150 episodes of my show. And I kind of feel like you've also had the same evolution in your journey that's not a total mirror to mine, but the same themes are there.
Melinda Staehling: I was thinking about Dr. Sarno. Dr. John Sarno is one of these people that started this whole mind, body medicine thing and chronic pain thing. And I remember hearing Liz on the Balanced Bites podcast, however many years ago, talk about back pain and Dr. Sarno. And I just remember it being such an interesting episode and then forgot about it completely. And then when I started getting into all of this stuff, that episode came back into my mind.
And it's so interesting because at the time I never ever would've thought that would have worked for migraine because it was so different and back pain to that thing, and then ... But my brain is like, "That's completely different." And then to think now how all of these things can be so connected.
And I see in these groups people use these same tools for so many different chronic health issues, including long-COVID. People-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, interesting. Interesting. I would never have thought of that. So I actually, my chiropractor from 10 years ago introduced me to Dr. John Sarno, because that was when all of my chronic injuries in my marathon training days really started to take over and I was more injured than I was healthy and able to train. And I was in her office all the time and she was like, "Oh, I think you should read this book, Dr. John Sarno."
So I read it, and this is like 10 years ago, which it wasn't even a new book at that time. So he was so far ahead of his time. But it is actually, it's probably not what he meant to do, but that's what made me start taking Bikram yoga.
Melinda Staehling: Because you just needed to do something different or you saw it was a mind, body practice-
Naomi Nakamura: Something different, but also ... Well, because at the time I didn't know how to make the connection with my body and friction. Back then, to me, it was, "Oh, yoga." And then it was when you are injured, the heat helps to relax the body to be able to get into a better ... I don't know. For me, it was a better yoga practice for a while. Since I did Bikram for a full year, and now I cannot do Bikram anymore. Because you're not familiar with Bikram, it's the same 26 exercises in the same order. And the yoga instructor says the same dialogue and pull-
Melinda Staehling: It's very hot. Very hot.
Naomi Nakamura: It is very hot. And they pack bodies in and if people know me, they know I don't like hot. I don't like other people's sweat near me and it was just ... I don't go anymore, but I did for a year, and that was when I was reading Dr. John Sarno's book. Anyways, that was the connection that came to my mind. But back to your point, yeah, I would never have made the connection to think of it for treating long-COVID, so interesting. He was way ahead of his time.
Melinda Staehling: He was. Some of his actual physiology, now we have MRIs and all of that stuff, we know that there's some different processes working. But the idea still holds.
Naomi Nakamura: Awesome.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. Yeah. When I started in my nutrition grad program, I never would've thought I would've ended up writing my research project on mind, body medicine. And so that's how things ended up.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, it's interesting because when people in the holistic world, that's really the themes that they talked about, there's ... No, what was that website, mind, body, whatever connection? The super popular website that they have all those blogs and social.
Melinda Staehling: Mind, body guru. Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. Exactly. And I understand the approach they're taking, but I think there needs to be like the conversation has evolved to be a lot more integrative in terms of connecting those things together in a really consumable way that's not so abstract ideas out there.
I think we have more tools these days to help us do that, because I think we all have a desire to do that. For me, I was like, "Oh, practice affirmations." And I would say these affirmations and I'm like, "I literally don't know what these are supposed to do for me." And they work great for other people, but they didn't necessarily work for me. And so I think you have to find what's going to work and resonate for you.
Melinda Staehling: Yeah. It's almost like me going through that initial program that I did and they talked about, neural rewiring and brain retraining and all of these things. And I got it, but it didn't really do anything for me. I got the concept and I could meditate and keep going with that. But then it wasn't until I found this one sematic tracking exercise that really, really worked for me and I could actually embody what was supposed to be happening. I was like, "Oh yes. Now we have the tool." And there's so many different things out there. You just have to keep going until you find that one that works for you.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, exactly. Find the framework, find the tools that will help these things resonate and click for you. But the same themes are still there. Self-trust, self-confidence, self-love to help you step into a role of self-leadership. And then what does that do for your confidence and your emotions and your mental health that then translates into your physical health? I'm not saying that is all you take to heal yourself, but these are definitely, they're part of the conversation.
Melinda Staehling: For sure.
Naomi Nakamura: So my friend, I'm glad you finally got have this conversation because you were supposed to have it right after we recorded 220, but then you had some migraine.
Melinda Staehling: I got COVID.
Naomi Nakamura: [inaudible 00:42:53] Oh, I forgot all that too. You got COVID too. And then you went on vacation.
Melinda Staehling: And then I went to Hawaii. Yeah, no it was like a lot. Yeah. I'm glad we got to have this talk, for sure.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. And for those who maybe have not yet listened to your first three episodes, where can people connect with you, find you, learn more from you?
Melinda Staehling: You can connect with me on my website at melindastaehling.com or on Instagram @melindastaehling.
Naomi Nakamura: Awesome. I'll link to those in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming. Perhaps we'll have you back again for episode number five sometime.
Melinda Staehling: Thank you. It's always so good to talk to you.
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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