Friday, September 18, 2009

Exercises for Neck Pain


There may not be a lot of people around the world who have not experienced neck pain at some point in their lives. Neck pain can be quite harmful and severe neck pain will encroach into our daily activities with telling impact. It will keep annoying you and gradually you will be unable to get actively involved in any activity. This article intends to familiarize you with the most effective neck pain exercises that will help you to cut down the occurrences or severity of neck pain.

Sternocleidomastoid and splenius are the two main muscles of the neck that assist you to move your head up, down, right, left and at other angles. We usually do not include exercises that involve these muscles in our fitness programs. We resort to dong exercises that involve these muscles only when we suffer from any neck injury or chronic neck pain.

Remaining glued to computer screens for long hours or reading with head bent can develop strain in our neck. The exercises mentioned below can be useful both in preventing and relieving neck pain.

Cervical Retraction starts with you sitting up straight. Then, with the chin kept levelled gently pull it straight in. This makes the back of your neck to feel long. Be careful not to raise your head up or bend it down. This prevents moving on to a forward bend posture.

In Upper Cervical Nodding, the individual sits straight and in this position slowly nods his or her head in up and down motion for 3-5 times.

In Neck Stretching the individual sits straight and in this position slowly turns his or her head left and after this slowly turns it to the right side. One can also do this exercise by tilting his or her head towards one shoulder and after this towards the other. Repeat this exercise for 3-5 times.

Neck Flexion can be practiced in a sitting or standing posture. With a straight look, position one hand on your forehead. Perform forward bending of your head and then, resist this shift in head position by pressing on the forehead with the palm. Hold this position for sometime and after that get back to the initial position.