Your neck pain/tension has more to do with your ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders, than it does your neck.
Our load bearing joints, the ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders, when working properly, stack vertically on top of one another without thought, effort, or conscious control.
This natural vertical stacking allows our spine to form a dynamic “S” shape that allows our head (at the top of this S shape) to balance with relative ease.
When the position of your head rests on top of this S shaped spine, the neck muscles can do their job which is to move our head.
But, most of us can’t effortlessly vertically stack our joints due to dysfunction, imbalance, so this S shaped spine moves more towards a forward curved C shape.
The shape of our spine is now compromised due to the dysfunction of the rest of the body.
These neck muscles are now being forcibly pushed into the role of “heavy lifters” as they are now engaged in a tug of war game with gravity every moment you are vertical.
Muscles in your neck are now doing the most work with the least support from the rest of your body — they’ve given up their original job of movement and have now switched to tension for support.
This is why “neck exercises” seldom do the job because they aren’t helping the ankles, knees, hips, or shoulders function to restore our spines natural S shape – they just target these tight muscles..which can somewhat help, but it’s a band aid at best.
So where do you start if you have neck pain?
Well, as always, the entire body is a good place to start.
To help you with this, I encourage you to try this sequence below!
If you are ready for a structured program with more tools and Rebalancing Sequences, check out our Online Movement Therapy Program to take a deeper dive to help you solve for the root of these issues
Click the link in our bio to get started!