What the Heck Is Up With My Neck?

Today we will explore the world of tight necks and maybe even shoulders - can anyone relate? or maybe I should put it this way - can everyone relate?

Hi and Welcome to your Journey into Yoga! I’m Avery Rich and am so happy to have you along for the ride 

When I sit down to write these episodes, something that often inspires me is things I hear from friends, family and yoga students.  Aches and pains that we deal with are no joking matter, but sometimes there are explanations as to why we tend to experience similar tensions in the body.  In Episode 2 I touched on why many of us have back and hip pain and that was due to prolonged sitting in chairs, couches and the like.  One of the other areas that many many people complain about as a tension hotbed is the neck and shoulders.  Now don’t get me wrong, even though todays episode will focus on the neck and shoulder areas, it is well worth noting that I could easily spend 50 or more podcasts discussing and unravelling these two tension hotbeds - but we gotta start somewhere!

We use our body - a lot.  If you were to break down a typical day in your life I could pretty much guarantee that your body moves and works in many different ways.  And yes, all of the activities of our day can bring stress and tension into the muscles and joints.  Whether it be exercise routines or just the movements in life, our shoulders and necks are moving and working.  Driving, lifting, walking, running, working - everything works the body, and for these reasons alone, neck and shoulder openers can be very relieving to the body and the mind.  But what about how your body experiences sleep? Have you ever fallen asleep on a mountain of pillows and woken up feeling battered and bruised? My bad joke is that sometimes if we fall asleep while watching tv we may experience NeckFlix - my very own made up term that defines that awful feeling in our necks resulting from a bad fall asleep position (no offence Netflix!)

Another thing to keep in mind, is that the neck has the all important job of literally holding our heads up, if you look at the size differential between the head and neck it is quite apparent that the neck is much much smaller than the head - it is overworked! In additional everything we carry in our shoulders can also find its way up to the neck, contributing even more tension here.

On an emotional level, it’s true that the inside can reflect on the outside.  Put another way, how we feel can affect how we carry ourselves.  Think of a very cold day - being from Manitoba I can very much relate to this - when we are outside in frigid temps, the natural thing to do is to draw our shoulders up to our ears - a natural response to cold weather but also very tough on the shoulders and the neck.  When we experience different events in our lives, emotional responses can also cause the body to tighten up..Gripping into the hands and maybe even jaw when something occurs that we dont like can result in the neck and shoulders also clenching.  When I am teaching I often tell my students that life will happen, shit happens too - we can’t control that but we can try and control our responses to it and how we absorb it.  When we do have tensions come into the body, we do have the control to try and deal with them as best we can.

On that note, let’s try and reduce some of that “Neck and shoulder” tension.

For our posture today, I would recommend coming to a cross leg seated pose - you are welcome to sit onto a pillow or two also.  If you are more comfortable sitting on a chair that that will work well too today! You can close your eyes or just have a soft gaze in a downward direction.  Now, take your right arm and reach it over your head, ending up with the fingers of your right hand resting just above your left ear.  It will feel like your right forearm is kind of hugging the top of your head.  Now, with the fingers just resting over that left ear, gently guide your head over to the right.  Do this slowly and gently not forcing just allowing your head to gently tip over to the right.  Somewhere along the way you will start to feel a stretch on the left side of the neck.  When you start to feel sensation pause there - breathe - you can remain here or if there is space and it makes sense you can guide the head a little bit further over to the right.  But remember - never force the head, there is no place it needs to be.  Let’s pause for 8 breaths.  Gently begin to release and allow the head to come back up to neutral.

Now, let’s work into the second side - Now, take your left arm and reach it over your head, ending up with the fingers of your left hand resting just above your right ear.  It will feel like your left forearm is kind of hugging the top of your head.  Now, with the fingers just resting over that right ear, gently guide your head over to the left.  Do this slowly and gently not forcing just allowing your head to gently tip over to the left.  Somewhere along the way you will start to feel a stretch on the right side of the neck.  When you start to feel sensation pause there - breathe - you can remain here or if there is space and it makes sense you can guide the head a little bit further over to the left.  But remember - never force the head, there is no place it needs to be.  Let’s pause for 8 breaths.  Gently begin to release and allow the head to come back up to neutral.

Pause for a moment just sitting upright and take a few nice deep breaths with the inhale up the front body and the exhale down the back body

As usual, if a shavasana is calling to you move into that now.  Otherwise, thank you so much for including me on your Journey Into Yoga and I look so forward to continuing the journey next time.  thank you for journeying with me into yoga and I look forward to seeing you next time!  For more yoga fun, visit averyrich.com