Neck pain can be self-inflicted. If you spend a lot of time tensing up around an attack, neglecting to practice relaxation exercises in the neck and upper shoulder area will result in at least tension, if not outright pain.
When you bring your car to the garage because it’s not performing as well as it should, it probably isn’t your whole car – engine, coils, batteries, wires, mechanical and electronic parts – that is responsible for the problem. It’s usually one or two parts that need attention.
If this is your case, your Achilles’ heel may be at the other end – in your neck. And that one malfunctioning area then has an impact all around it. If you see to all the components of that body area, you will feel much better.
You will be trying to eliminate neck pain because pain is your body’s early warning system that something needs correcting. There needs to be no pain or tension, but instead flexibility, relaxation, full mobility and comfort in the neck and upper shoulder area because these are located right next to the nervous system – especially the trigeminal nerve – that lies right where the migraines cause the most excruciating pain.
Keeping tension and pain away from the neck and upper shoulder area will go a long way to eliminating bottlenecks – you’ll forgive the expression – right next to where the blood in the head needs to be able to circulate freely and stop pressuring the nerves that run alongside the arteries and veins, thus causing pain. That intersection in your body where the head meets the neck is a major traffic artery where fluids and energy must flow smoothly.
Shiatsu – acupressure applying pressure using fingers, hands, palms, elbows, knees and feet on the hundreds of acupuncture points on the human body – teaches us that if one arm is too painful to the touch, then the therapist needs to treat the other arm instead. There is a transfer of energy and believe it or not – the painful area benefits!
It could also be that you have an undetected, undiagnosed and therefore neglected neck injury. In such a case, while a prescription medication will dull the pain, a problem of a mechanical origin is best treated with a mechanical solution, even to the point of corrective surgery.
Here’s where my nagging about first seeing a competent, licensed doctor is such an essential first step. Aside from my inherited tendency toward migraines, I suffered from an undiscovered (and therefore undiagnosed and untreated) childhood injury to two of my cervical vertebrae. One X-ray of my spine at the chiropractor’s office and the injury was evident even to an amateur like me.
I relied on a combination of various therapies, all followed at the same time:
- chiropractic to correct the misalignment. The day after the adjustment, I sat on my living room couch for hours, just thankful at the degree of pain relief I was experiencing. When the joint went out of alignment again because the soft tissues that held the vertebrae in place were too short on one side, and too long on the other, the pain returned.
The chiropractor recommended a series of exercises 5 times a day to correct the soft tissues: ligaments, tendons, arteries, veins and nerves. Exercises to stretch the soft tissues, pulling too tight, too short soft tissues on one side, and firming up the soft tissues on the other side that needed to regain their proper length until there was balance between the two.
Five times a day? I reasoned that if 5 times per day was good, 20 times would be even better! The reality, however, was that exercising tissues that weren’t used to so much activity would cause muscle cramping at worst and soreness at best – both of which would cause me to dial back on exercises and delay my recovery. So, I added:
- acupuncture to eliminate the pain of adjusting these soft tissues
- massage therapy to relieve muscle soreness so I could complete the prescribed exercises
- warm baths and warm shower spray to relax the whole body and more precisely the neck and shoulders
- applying heat-producing creams
- breathing exercises to counteract if I suddenly caught my breath due to a painful movement
- silent meditation to calm my thoughts and relax my nervous system and
- resting on a neck roll to reshape the proper neck alignment
The neck injury was much improved, and the pain in my neck disappeared, although it still needs a bit of TLC to stay relaxed and pain-free.
