Neck Stretches For Neck Pain

Hello I'm Dr. Ekberg and today I want to show you a very useful neck stretch. It's

really simple you stand up straight you imagine yourself kind of flattening

yourself against the wall then you put one hand straight over your head or cup

the ear and then you tug gently on the head and at the same time you put push

this hand down toward the floor. if you have a dumbbell or something a

light weight you might want to hold on to that for a little extra traction so

you hold that stretch for about 10-15 seconds then you push the head into the

hand so you push the head going that way but you resist with a hand so it's a

static contraction so we push and hold and hold for about ten seconds then you

relax the muscle contraction and you stretch another fraction of an inch just

a tiny little bit so be very patient with these stretches don't try to force

it all at once then you do both sides same thing on this side and I'm not

going to go through the whole thing right now then for a second version of

that stretch you turn your head into the arm that's pulling you're turning about

45 degrees so now your hand ends up on the back of the head and now you

pulled sideways and forward so it's like you're looking down into your armpit and

now you get the muscles more on the back of the neck and then you do the same

thing there always stretch for 10 to 15 seconds contract for 10 seconds and then

stretch again for 10 15 seconds so that's the whole stretch now remember

you this is for a general mobilization you do it for general stiffness it's a

long-term maintenance thing you don't do it when you have a severe neck pain if

your muscle is in spasm then the brain thinks that there's a good reason to

keep it in spasm and you don't want to try to force anything on that muscle

because it's just gonna get angrier that's when you want to see your

chiropractor instead so for general stretching for stiffness it's a great

exercise have fun with it