Do you struggle with neck pain? If so this could be why

Understanding your different neck muscles

Creating space in your neck

Assessing neck movement

Creating or releasing inflammation

Releasing your neck joints

Where and how your neck and skull connect

Keeping your neck muscles hydrated

Nutrition for neck muscles

Do you struggle with neck pain? If so this could be why.........

Neck Pain Zones Is sitting at your desk, lying on your sofa, or trying to look behind you, nagging at your neck?

Or even if simply looking upward makes your neck ache, then I have written this Blog for you.

The Classic DIY Neck Fix that can make it worse!

Did you know that reaching to touch the area in your neck that hurts to give it a gentle squeeze or a rub, or moving your skull around in all directions, to relieve the pressure could actually be making it far worse? 

The pain may resolve itself for a few minutes but then returns, no different, possibly at a higher level than before.

  

You may move onto   some kind of deep heat treatment or medication.  

Then when it still persists you contact a practitioner......  or even worse, you believe you are stuck with it for life. (I have heard this many times, and then once we've released it, the client forgets they actually ever had it)

Going through this cycle of neck pain once in a while or daily.  You may catch yourself doing trigger actions like looking down at your phone or having your neck bent in a strange position whilst sleeping.

Whatever you are doing, your neck may feel stiffer on one side.  You may be able to turn it easily in one direction but not the other.

When I observe people with neck pain trying to self-treat, as a practitioner, it's often like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Why?  Because I am observing my client continuously trying to squirm out of pain, whilst irritating an already inflamed area making it even more painful. 

What they don't appreciate is that they simply need to calm down and align the joints in the area, rather than create more misaligned movement that is potentially harming muscles and tendons.



What is a practitioner observing and assessing?

Possibly your head position, leaning sideways, or a head lunging forward posture, not to mention hunched shoulders, where your neck is being continuously squashed, crunched, pulled, skewed and incorrectly stretched.  Finally a stuck ribcage that will not separate its movement from the neck and head.  (this sounds complicated until you recogonise it) The Skull and ribcage should be able to move in isolation from each other.

Most people with neck pain, can't isolate the movement of their neck from their head in at least one plane of movement.

What people do to release their neck pain...

You then prod it, pull it, and generally manhandle the area.

I am there just saying 'stop please, just leave it alone'.

Why is this?  Well, at the base of your skull deep in your neck you have teeny weeny muscles connecting  the base of your skull to your spinal vertabrae.

You also have tiny muscles connecting your 7 cervical vertebrae to each other.  Overlaying these you have a group of muscles called scalenes, and your Sterno-Clydo-mastoid goes from your ear and jaw to your rib cage.  The whole area between you skull and your ribcage is made up of some very tiny deep muscles, and some slightly larger superficial muscles.

Ontop of all of this your trapezius muscles, and some of your shoulder muscles also get involved.

When you start moving your head around, it is likely you are forcing some of these muscles to do movements they are not designed to do!

Hence making the situation worse.



Basically, you have an incredible amount of different muscles, designed to do different movements.  When they get stuck, or dehydrated, or simply low on nourishment.

 You end up with incredible tension between the different groups, and no capacity for release.

The neck and nutrition

The neck has muscles that are impacted by your digestion and your immune system.  So you need to make sure these parts of your health are in good shape.

Probiotics, antioxidants and prebiotics, as well as magnesium can help for releasing and restoring the area.

This is where I immediately ask clients to do a process like the 10 Minute Fix, where you can easily get your skull into alignment with the rest of your body.

Once the area calms down, we can begin to realign and reprogram your body and muscles to move differently, to create more space, and less pressure.

You can then learn how to mobilize the area, to give each separate group of muscles the exact range of movement required and needed to release pain.



This is where the real issue is, because actually apart from the teeny deep muscles around the base of your skull and your vertebrae, the rest of the muscles connect to your rib cage.

So you can learn really important aligned rib cage movements that will release your neck, without the need to actually trigger or use the irritated joints and muscles in your neck.

This may all sound quite confusing, but actually, when you learn the correct ranges of movement, and how your ribcage and skull are able to move correctly, you will be amazed at how easily you can create the space required to reduce your pain!

Please go and find out more about the neck in our Get Into Your Body Methodology

If you would like to know more, then you can always get in touch for a free consultation, or better still, get on a Get Into Your Body Course, and become your own practitioner.

So if you can stop forcing your neck muscles to do movements they are not designed for!

Give your neck a whole new experience, where your arms and ribcage (that are attached to part of your neck muscles) do the work, creating space, and encouraging your skull to remain in correct alignment.

The Get Into Your Body Methodology is going to teach you everything you need to know, so please get in touch and let us help you.

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