Neck Pain

Part II - Exercise, Prevention and Alternative
Medicine Treatment Tips

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Top Treatments - Continued from Part I

7. I changed my sleeping position. I used to sleep curled to one side in a "C" shape with one leg bent upward all night long. Initially I didn't know why I did this, I just knew it felt better to sleep that way. A massage therapist explained to me that I slept curled up because my muscles were shorter on that side of my body, so it felt good to put less pressure on them as I slept. In the long run, however, this was adding to my neck pain by keep those muscles shortened and not stretching them out. Since he explained this all to me, I now try to sleep more with both legs extended during the night. As a result, I have noticed less neck pain upon awakening.

8. I use a flatter pillow. My old pillow was too high, which caused my front neck muscles to shorten and my back neck muscles to become stretched out, making them unbalanced. By having a flatter pillow, it keeps my front and back neck muscles more aligned.

9. I try to move around a lot during the day, limiting how much time I spend on the computer at one time. I try not to stay on the computer more than a few hours in a row. If I do because of a because of a looming deadline for some project, then I try to balance that with more yoga, trigger point therapy and general stretching afterwards. My neck pain had been it's worst when I was taking a computer programming class that had 40 hours of home work a week, plus reading and classroom time.

That's a lot of hours of just sitting motionless. My arms basically froze in a forward and down position in front of me during that semester. It took a lot of work to even be able to lay flat on the floor with my arms outstretched. My arms would pull on my neck then and it would really hurt. Now I'm much more careful to keep moving during the day.

My physical therapist suggested I not take any more classes with that much work or such stringent deadlines. I heeded his advice and took shorter classes and work at your own pace classes after that. It worked out much better for limiting my neck pain.

10. I do the tennis ball on the wall treatment. A physical therapist told me about this. I put a ball in a sock, hang it behind me and roll against the wall. It's great for loosening up my back muscles and keeping them from pulling on my neck. A yoga teacher also told me it was helpful to just put a tennis ball on the ground and roll on it. It somewhat of a quick and cheap way of doing the trigger point therapy. If I keep rolling around on the tennis ball long enough, eventually I run over most of my trigger points.

11. Besides yoga, there are a couple of general exercises I do to try to strengthen my weaker, lower shoulder which in turn helps to relieve tension on my neck. The main one is called side lying arm circles. These are similar to the arm circles most people are familiar with from high school gym class, but instead of standing, I do them lying on my side. By lying on my side when I do them, it puts less pressure on my neck, yet still strengthens and increases the flexibility in my right shoulder. I also do side lying shoulder circles. When I first started doing these exercises, I could feel that there was much more tension in my right shoulder than in my left. Over time this has evened out more as my muscles have become more balanced.

12. I bought a fanny pack to use instead of a shoulder strap purse that added weight to my shoulder. This took a lot of pressure off of my neck. For occasions when I could not use a fanny pack, I bought also bought a purse with two straps that I could wear like a backpack. This distributed the weight of the purse evenly across my shoulders caused less pain than a shoulder purse with a single strap.

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Related Links:

Yoga for Neck and Back Pain - selected poses from Health and Yoga.

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