Why Does My Neck Hurt?
Lower neck pain is always common, but right now with everyone still working from home, we are seeing a lot of it in the clinic right now. In this short article I want to quickly discuss one of the postural reasons we get stress on the lower part of the neck and a quick summary of what you can do to combat that including the three starting exercises we use with most of our clients. Obviously, this isn’t direct medical advice, if you have neck pain, especially with numbness, tingling, weakness, or change in feeling in the arm or hand, please talk to someone qualified to help you (we have free phone consults lol).
Let’s define lower neck.
When I reference lower neck pain in this article I am talking about the bottom of the neck where it meets your upper back. Specially the area from about the fifth cervical vertebra through the seventh or C5-C7. When you hear a medical professional say C5-C6 or C6-C7 they are really just counting bones. We divide the spine into three regions; cervical (neck), thoracic (midback), and lumbar (low back). You can also include the sacrum here which are fused bones S1-S4 and then the coccyx or the tailbone. We have 7 cervical vertebra, 12 thoracic, and 5 Lumbar. So C5 means the 5th cervical bone down from the top. The junction where you neck meets your midback is the transition we call this C7-T1. C7 is the most prominent bone down there, near that hump, where so many of us have pain. This is the area we want to talk about today.
Lower Cervical Flexion / Upper Cervical Extension.
One of the potential causes or factors in lower neck pain can be a slouched posture. When you look at slouched posture 10, typically you see forward shoulders with a rounded midback. We call this forward rounding flexion. If you do that right now you’ll notice that your head wants to drop down and your eyes go towards the floor. We can’t really walk around all day with our eyes pointed at the floor so our brain auto corrects and extends the upper cervical spine up so that you can get your eyes flat with the horizon. We end up with the lower neck in flexion forward and the upper neck extension. This exaggerates compression at the junctions and pinch points between the neck and midback. If you really slouch and then look up you’ll feel pressure at the base of you and probably right under your skull. Careful, you don’t give yourself a headache.
Shutting Your Thumb in the Door
I use this analogy all of the time. If you shut your thumb in the door it hurts. Your thumb gets very sensitive to even light touch, but if you quit using your thumb and let it heal, it gets better. Neck pain is a lot like this. If you compress, irritate, inflame something, do a sustained posture or random stress it will get better. You just need to give it the opportunity to calm down and heal. However, if you hold the door on your thumb and just leave it there your thumb is going to keep hurting. The same is true of your neck pain. You have to take pressure off the lower neck, to “take the door off it”, quick smacking it, and let it go away. It’s just not as easy to envision what is causing the pressure.
Fixing it.
You need to stop shutting your thumb in the door. If lower cervical flexion and upper cervical extension are part of the cause, we need to flip it and create lower cervical extension and upper cervical flexion. We have to lengthen that junction zone at the back of the neck. I often tell my clients, “keep your neck long in the back, and tuck the chin in a little.”
To have a chance at getting the lower neck to clear you have to the thoracic and rib cage position in check. If your shoulder’s and mid back are rounded you are going to struggle to get pressure off the neck.
Try this. If you pretend to have a cylinder around your rib cage and another cylinder around your hips or pelvis you want those cylinders stacked on top of each other. This means pelvic position can sometimes be involved in treating neck pain. Before we go further, I want to clarify something, I’m not concerned that you always have the cylinders stacked. In fact, you should have the freedom to move the pelvis and rib cage in all directions freely, without pain. What I am concerned about is you have the ability and control to be able to find a stacked position without pain or difficulty. If you are so tight or guarded that you can’t get to neutral that needs addressed.
Once we get the pelvis and rib cage stacked, now we draw another cylinder around the head. We stack this one on top. We now have three cylinders. One around the head, one around the rib cage, and one around the pelvis all aligned over top of each other. If you can obtain this position comfortably and easily I think you will find a lot of relief from some of your neck pain.
Common Places to Look that can keep you from stacking the cylinders
1. Pectoral tightness. There are 4 muscle groups that can pull the shoulders forward but the pec is a big one. Try this release first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m53pfaqWA8w
2. Pack the Neck. Get the neck long in the back and create some space for those lower vertebrae.
3. Tuck the Chin. Strengthen the deep neck flexors without sternocleidomastoid activation to encourage upper cervical flexion and that long neck position we are striving for! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp-i19ltqEE&t=75s
This should help you get started in a number of situations. There could be many factors driving the pec tightness or deep cervical flexor weakness. For more information about your specific problem or needs set up a free phone consult with us at phyt.janeapp.com. Talk with one of our therapists and consider in an in-person or telehealth assessment to help clear the rest of your lower neck pain.
