Get To Know … Your Neck Muscles

Do you often feel tightness in your neck and shoulders? Here are surprising ways it might impact your body–and how yoga can help.

- Ray Long

Take a minute to sit in Dandasana (Staff Pose): Come to a seated position on the floor with your legs extended in front of you, or sit in a chair with your spine stacked over your hips and your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Now, place both hands next to your hips, press your palms down into the ground or chair, take a deep inhale, and notice how you feel. Then, let your shoulders cave in toward your chest and allow your head to come forward and chest to collapse. How do you feel now?

When I ask my patients to do this simple exercise, they report a marked difference in their mood when comparing sitting upright (they use adjectives like “alert,” “happy,” and “bright”) versus hunched over (which prompts reactions like “sad,” “tired,” and “negative”). So while it’s no surprise slumping can cause biomechanical issues that trigger pain, it can also lead to energetic problems. Worse yet, most of us tend to adopt this shoulders-hunched, neckcraned-forward posture regularly throughout the day, thanks to our desk-bound jobs and affinity for mobile electronic devices.