Neck Pain Relieving Exercises

Neck exercises are a common part of almost any treatment program for neck pain. If you are doing a desk job and working at a computer for several, you would experienced a past neck injury.

With these simple neck stretches you can get relief from this neck pain within three to five minutes!

The typical neck exercises are a combination of stretching and strengthening exercises.

Causes that Increases Risk of Neck Pain

• Sitting for long periods and bending your head /neck forward.  (desk work, cooking, etc.)
• Participation in sports without warming up (stretches).
• Sharp increase in athletic activity (weekend athlete)
• Poor posture with sitting – sleeping.
• Frequent travel on planes.
• Falling asleep sitting up.(head hanging down)

Lateral Flexion

Bring your right ear to your right shoulder as far as you are able to. Do not rotate or turn your head when you are doing this neck stretch. Then bring your left ear to the left shoulder. Repeat this for 5 times.

Neck extension

This is the movement of allowing the head to go back until the face is looking directly at the ceiling. Don’t do this movement fast or forcefully as it forces all the small joints at the back of the neck into an extreme position. This won’t do them any harm but might increase your pain.

Allow your neck to ease back steadily as you do this, leaving your neck at the end of the movement for a few seconds.

Neck Retraction (Chicken Tuck)

This is one of the most useful neck movements as it counteracts the tendency we all have of allowing our heads to poke forwards in a poor posture. She’s showing the extreme position of “poking chin” here.

When we sit, which many of us do a lot of the time, we tend to slump and to keep our heads up so our eyes are horizontal we arch our necks backwards slightly

This gives a continual flexion (bending) posture to the lower neck and an extension (arching) posture to the upper neck. Over time the tissues can shorten and give us stiffness and pain. Typical pains are in the neck, upper shoulders, but this posture can also give you headaches.

Here’s the end point of the movement. Keep your face straight on during the whole movement, drawing the head back and the chin down slightly.

If you get it right, you will look funny, rather like a sergeant-major in an exaggerated military neck posture. If you do it in public people will either laugh or give you funny looks!

The whole movement is like the forward and back movement that chickens make. Hold the movement at the extreme of the backward posture for a few seconds.