Pain in the Neck? - Virginia

Many people begin a yoga practice, or some other kind of therapeutic movement practice, is to alleviate pain or stiffness. In a culture where many of us spend a huge chunk of our days sitting down and looking down at some kind of device, neck pain is an incredibly common complaint that a lot of yoga practitioners have. As you know if you've practiced at Fearless Heart, we love tailoring our classes to what practitioners need on any given day, and most of us have a repertoire of stretches and movements for loosening up neck tension. However, if you've ever dealt with chronic neck pain, whether from a single injury or from repetitive stress and postural patterns, you know that sometimes, everything makes your neck hurt. Maybe you've heard yoga teachers give you the cue to "relax" or "soften" your neck in a posture, and you think "if I could relax my neck on command, I'd do it." From my own experience as a practitioner and a teacher, I find that when it comes to neck pain, sometimes there's a little more going on. Here are a few things to consider.

• As Lindsay mentioned in one of her recent poses, more is not necessarily more. This idea holds especially true when it comes to an area of the body that seems like overrecruited and always speaking to you. When I first started doing yoga, I was beginning with a fair amount of neck and upper back tension, and my neck and back hurt pretty much all the time. What I wanted from my practice was big movements and stretches that would give me a dramatic release. However, what I've learned the more I manage my neck pain is that you don't always need to go very far to get some release in your neck. Aggressively stretching the neck, though it might feel satisfying for a few moments, can often create more tension, and even inflammation, in the neck. Start with small movements, and see what you observe. Rather than trying to pull your right ear all the way down to your right shoulder to stretch the left side of your neck, what would it feel like to softly allow your head to drop in that direction, without trying to get anywhere? Once I stopped approaching my neck pain as a project I needed to fix as soon as possible, and started thinking about it as a living part of my body that needed some gentle attention, I became more content with loosening my neck tension by degrees.

More is not more in this pose! Gently bring your ear towards your shoulder

Pull your toes back towards your upper body. Yes, this is a neck stretch!

Scrunch your toes and take a few deep breaths.

Use a block (or hardcover book) and a bolster to create this gentle backbend

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• Everything's connected; work around your neck, not just "on" it. Your whole back line of connective tissue is connected, from the tissue in your forehead to the tissue in the bottom of your foot. On days when your neck is really speaking to you--maybe the sensation feels more painful or tense than usual--think about leaving the neck alone entirely, and work on creating space in other places in your back line. Creating space in the backs of your legs or the bottoms of your feet can have an effect on the way your neck feels. When I started to focus on creating expansion and space throughout my whole body, that helped me to change my approach to my neck. Rather than thinking about how I was going to "fix" it (which can be an overwhelming and frustrating way to think), I tried to think about it more holistically. If I was creating some gradual release in my low back, my glutes, my hamstrings, then I was doing something beneficial for my neck. 

• Get help! If it's possible and accessible for you, consider getting assistance from some kind of body worker (an RMT, a physiotherapist, osteopath, chiropractor, etc.). At FHY, many of us see some kind of body worker on a regular basis, and we can usually provide recommendations! Good body workers can help us get "unstuck," particularly if we're dealing with tension from deeply ingrained postural patterns or repetitive stress patterns. Sometimes, attempting to unwind this tension on your own can be difficult, and using the assistance of a talented, compassionate body worker can help us move and melt our tissue in useful ways. 

• What's stressing you out? Maybe you're taking it slow, you're moving your body around in novel ways to get your tissues unstuck, and you're seeing an amazing body worker--why does your neck still hurt? This question has often plagued me. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do, and yet I still wake up everyday with a sore neck. The connection between stress and muscle tension is a huge and complex topic, and that's a post for another day. But if you feel like you've been dealing with neck pain for a long time and aren't seeing change, see if you can start to notice any correlation between sensation and stress. Is your pain or tension more intense on some days than others? What's going on in your life on those more intense days? When I started to pay attention to this relationship between muscle tension and stress, I started to notice how much negative self-talk was swirling around in my head in any given moment, and how palpably that affected the physical experience of being in my body. When thoughts like "Why am I so lazy?" or "I'm so pathetic" were taking up space in my head, I clenched my jaw, I hunched my shoulders, my neck ached all the way into my skull. While I certainly haven't found a magic solution for turning down my resident self critic, I did notice that after I pinpointed and changed certain circumstances in my life that were causing me a lot of stress, my whole body (including my neck) started to feel a little looser. 
• To connect with some more body professionals in UpTown Waterloo, check out our colleagues at The Coach House