Having just been up for a few hours with my son experiencing a sore ear I want to share with you ways that you can work to help heal ear problems or work with your child to help them relax and release pain if working with ear problems.
Earaches happen to thousands of children each day and can be totally debilitating, causing discomfort at best but extreme pain at worst. It is important to state at the beginning of this article, that the information in this article is not designed to replace your work with your doctor. Some ear infections could need medical treatment, and to not work with your doctor could exacerbate the child’s ear problems. My policy with ears is to visit the doctor to get the ear checked out and see whether there is an infection. Then there can be a discussion regarding treatment options, with full information of what is going on physically and energetically.
My personal approach for working with health imbalances is to embrace information-gathering from both the bio-medical and energy spheres to be fully empowered in my choices. So, in this article, there are tips for what you can do to help your child if they are experiencing an ear ache, and also ways in which you can work with your child so that you are helping balance the energy systems that relate to ear problems, thus helping to prevent further problems.
There are some energy anatomy facts that are useful to know...
The ears are governed by the Kidney meridian. Problems in the ears are usually reflecting problems with the kidney meridian. Kidney energy holds our fundamental life force energy.
Infections suggest that the spleen energy is compromised. Spleen and Triple Warmer govern the parasympathetic and sympathetic arms of the immune system respectively. Generally children who work with recurrent ear problems are also needing greater balance in the immune system.
Physiology facts
Ear infections generally occur in either the ear canal (otitis externa) or in the small space behind the eardrum (the middle ear). This space is usually filled with air and is connected to the back of the throat by the Eustachian tube.
The Eustachian tube in the ear shifts its alignment from birth to mid teens. When we are born the tube is closer to horizontal than vertical. By adults it is closer to vertical. When closer to its horizontal plane the tube can get congested with mucous and when this happens most children experience hearing loss, which although temporary, this can greatly affect their speech development and ability to engage with others.
More boys experience ear problems than girls due to their hormones generally producing more mucous and oil in the body.
I remember one phase that my son was going through in which his hearing was greatly impaired. He loved riding his bike around the very safe residential area that we lived in. But he couldn’t hear anything. He got none of the aural clues that cars were close, or that one of us was calling his name to warn him that we were about to be overtaken. Scary times as a parent!
Always effective in reducing the stress of the pain is holding the main neurovascular points on the forehead. These points help balance fluid in the body, which can certainly help shift congestion in the ear, but even more importantly they held relieve stress. When your child is experiencing pain then they (and you) are experiencing stress. Holding the neurovasculars can remove this so that the ability to manage the pain is much greater.
My number one rule when working with a child with ear pain is that they are comfy. If they want to be lying on their side, or on their back, curled up in a ball, under a blanket, cuddling their teddy…then that is the most important. In trying to get themselves comfortable they are already working with their own energies and just because I want to be holding points, it doesn’t give me right to move them from their place of self-empowerment. So number 1 rule is to let them be just how they need to be for their greatest comfort. Which of course means you having to move around them and sometimes this just makes it difficult to hold a postion. Ideally at this time you can place one hand over their forehead and the other hand just above the occipital ridge on the back of the head. But if that is too difficult a position then try to hold just the forehead. Most children will almost instantly calm and relax more, even when experiencing pain. And practically, this is something that you can do even if you are on the bus to the doctors, or sitting with them lying on your lap in a waiting room.
Another way of helping a child in pain is to show them how to rub their ears. This is especially good for them to know how to do on a daily basis to help prevent the build up of fluid and energy in and around the ears. But it is also something that some children are deeply relieved to be able to do when they do have an earache. For many children it feels really good to be able to affect the movement of the pain. Ear aches are often overwhelming as they seem inaccessible, we just can’t affect them or relieve them in any way. Well, ear-rubbing does. Often the initial movement of fluid and energy can be quite sore which is why I suggest that if you have a child that has to work with ear aches then they learn how to do it when they aren’t experiencing pain. It is very simple. You place your hands against the sides of your face, with two fingers in front of the ears (on the face) and two fingers behind the ears (on the side of the head). Then, with as much pressure as is comfortable you deeply massage where the ear meets the scalp. Massage for several seconds or minutes. You can finish this by massaging the whole of the ear itself with little circular movements and pull the ear in any directions that feel good to you. Kids have great fun with this exercise and will make all sorts of faces while doing it! With many children there seems to be a direct link between the ears and the tongue…they pull their ears out and their tongue sticks out automatically!
Click on the relevant exercise to watch me doing the ear pull and the Neurovascular hold.
With love, Prune