Stretches for Neck Pain Relief | Chiropractor for Neck Pain in Fishers, IN
When we’re talking about neck pain and headaches, it’s very simple to do some things at home to really address and help your healing in the clinic. So we’re going to demonstrate some simple exercises to help you with the neck and the headaches. Jen, if you’ll have a seat here, please.
Flexion Exercises for Neck Pain Relief
We’re going to start off with simple flexion, where she’ll have her shoulder blades rolled back, shoulders rounded, and simply slowly flex the neck forward, you’re going to want to go as far as you can, and you want to hold this for 30 seconds, then she’ll go into extension where she brings her neck back. And again, the key here is 30 seconds. Back to neutral, we want to do it right rotation. And then we want to go to the left and do a left rotation, then we want to do right lateral flexion. And then left lateral flexion.
Advanced Flexion Stretch
A more advanced stretch would be where you take your hand one at a time to the left hand behind your back, place your right hand on top of your head. And rather than looking down we want to slowly break this down into motions, you want to slowly go forward and be gentle to the right or opposite of the hand behind your back and slightly pull down to where you feel that stretch in that shoulder and neck. And you would simply repeat that stretch on the other side. Now in conjunction with this at home, we would want to get into proper ergonomic position or in the car.
Stretches for Driving or Sitting at the Computer
So let’s pretend Jen is in the car. She’ll have her shoulder ways rolled back. She’ll have her chin slightly tucked, we like to engage the abs. And we like to keep the button muscle relax. If it’s in the car, we’re going to want to get in that position and set a rearview mirror up to where you can see the car behind you. And then as you’re driving down the road and you start to slouch, which we all do, you won’t be able to see the car behind you. That’s a golden nugget. Now the other one is a computer. If you’ll do the same thing in the computer position. You have the shoulder blades for a roll back. You have the chin slightly tucked. The abs have been engaged but relaxed. The key here is the computer monitor needs to be at least eye level or above. If you get too low then you start to get into that position where you take the net curve and you stress it which will trigger not just neck pain, but also those headaches.
