Pressing Matters: Let Your Fingers Do the Work

Wrangling kids, squinting at spreadsheets, hosting parents: Tension headaches are practically endemic to the school system. Bad posture, caffeine, and sugar can all make it worse. Acupressure can help.

According to the theory behind acupressure, tension causes blockages in the body's meridians, or energy pathways. Hello, headache. Acupressure is a practice that originated in Asia more than 5,000 years ago and entails applying pressure to points on the meridians. Ease the nergy blockage, ease the pain. "Ninety percent of headaches are tension headaches,"says Dana Ullman, author of The One Minute (Or So) Healer (North Atlantic Books, 2004). "The tightening of the neck and back muscles usually creates the head pain."

If you can steal a few minutes for yourself, try these basic acupressure techniques:

• Press the tensest points of each shoulder using the index or middle finger of the opposite hand. Then ease up. Repeat several times.
• Breathe deeply while pressing directly between your eyebrows, using the middle or index finger.
• Put your thumbs on the base of the skull, near the spine, and press hard.

Press each point for a minute or more. When you feel a flush of heat or a pulsing sensation, you'll know that tension is being released.

Sometimes it takes a little pressure to help relieve the pressure.