Seated Neck Mobility & Stretches
Learn movements and stretches to keep the muscles the neck and upper back flexible, which can help resolve headaches, muscle pain, stiffness, and improve your posture.
Length: 2:06
Transcript
Unless there is a known medical reason for you not to perform these neck stretches, keeping the muscles of your neck and upper back flexible and feeling good is really important. It can help resolve headaches, muscle pain, stiffness, and improves your posture. Obviously if any of these stretches cause discomfort, hold off on them for now.
First, simply rotate your head from side to side, trying to get your chin in line with your shoulder as much as you can and keeping your head straight and nose forward as you turn to each side. Next, look down and then up, as far as you comfortably can in each direction, trying to get the chin to the chest, and the back of the neck to the back.
Now, bring your ear as close as you can towards your shoulder. Use the hand on that side to gently pull the ear closer to the shoulder. Your nose should still be pointing straight ahead. You’ll feel this on the side of your neck and upper shoulder. Hold for at least 15 to 30 seconds on each side, 2 to 4 times.
This next one can be tricky. Point your chin towards your armpit, and then look up and away. You can use your hand to add some additional stretch, and you’ll feel this in the front and side of your neck. Keeping that angle, you can turn your head a little to get different muscles and parts of muscles. And to increase the stretch, you can keep that other hand at your collarbone to hold the skin down as you find the best angle for you. Hold 15 to 30 seconds, and again, repeat 2 to 4 times.
Now point your chin towards your armpit again. Put the arm on that side diagonally across your head and gently pull towards your armpit. You can change the angle of the stretch by adjusting the position of your chin, and you might find a slightly different angle feels better or gets you a better stretch. As before, to get a true change in the length of the muscle, hold the stretch for 15 to 30 seconds and repeat 2 to 4 times, even though I didn’t do that in the video.
Related Videos
Introduction to Seated Exercises
Categories: Seated, Introductions
Exercise is an important part of COVID-19 recovery in order to regain your strength, endurance, flexibility, and ability to fully take part in all aspects of your daily life. Even if you cannot yet tolerate exercise standing up or moving more vigorously, it is still very important to keep yourself as active as possible.
Sit-to-Stand
Categories: Start Here, Seated, Standing, How To, Exercise
This highly practical and functional exercise strengthens the muscles we need to be able to safely get in and out of chairs, stand up from bed and get on and off the toilet.
Seated Stacked Breathing
Categories: Start Here, Breathing, Seated, Exercise
Stacked breathing is a technique to increase the size of the breath you are able take in. It can also improve the strength of your voice and your cough, so you can better clear out the lungs, as well as your lung flexibility.
Seated Pursed Lip Breathing
Categories: Start Here, Breathing, Seated, Exercise
Pursed lip breathing is a technique that makes breathing easier and more effective and can resolve shortness of breath caused by exercise or increased activity.
Seated Back Stretch
This back stretch helps mobilize along the whole length of the spine. It is a seated version of the 'cat/cow' yoga pose.
Seated Calf Raises & Marching
These exercises improve knee and hip flexibility as well as the circulation in your lower legs and can help prevent blood clots.
Seated "Figure Four" Hip Stretch
This stretch can help loosen up muscles in the hip that get tight from sitting for a long time.
Seated Mid & Upper Back Stretch (with a ball)
This stretch can improve the mobility all along the upper and midback, helping with breathing, posture and resolving mid and upper back pain or stiffness.