Easing a stiff neck
Still not sure how to release a stiff neck? Try this: make a fist - and let it go. Tense your bicep (the ‘Popeye pose’) - and let it go. Don't bother tightening your neck - it probably already is - just think 'neck to let go' or 'neck free'. And again, and again, whenever you remember. What you are doing here is asking your neck to loosen off its habitual tight grip of your head. Your body-mind is writing a new program, which for some people takes a while, but you can be sure that it is changing, just as it does when you let go of tension in your fist or arm.
So why does it not seem as easy to release a tense neck as it does a fist, for example? Well, for one thing we cannot see our necks, so we lose one source of feedback. The other main source of feedback comes from muscle spindles deep within every muscle – the ‘feeling’ of tightness or release is registered and sent to our brain from these. Muscle spindle density is extremely high in the deep muscles of the human neck – for good reason, as the condition of our head / neck area affects many other things, especially our overall balance and co-ordination. These spindles have probably spent years sending out signals that the neck muscles were overworking and over-tightening, but these may have been ignored or overridden by our brains. So the signals no longer register – the brain needs to economise in what it chooses to process from the vast amounts of data it receives, and anything which appears to make no difference will fade into the background. Our habits, for better or worse, become ‘comfortable’ – we genuinely do not feel how much unnecessary work neck muscles are doing all the time. (This can happen in any part of the body - some people walk around with fists somewhat clenched, if that has become their habit). This ‘blissful ignorance’ continues until damage of one sort or another begins to happen, in which case the signals will increase in volume, causing discomfort or pain. Our body-mind will always try to do its best for us.
This is where an Alexander Technique teacher can help. By receiving gentle hands-on help in freeing the neck, and verbal feedback when it happens, the student learns what this means, and is more likely to be able to repeat the experience. Lying down in the Alexander position of constructive rest is also a training ground – the position, the firm support of the books under the head, and the teacher's hands and words when available all help the process of release and give feedback when it does happen. This provides not only a respite for the neck muscles, but also helps to build new neuro-muscular connections. We gradually begin to know the difference between a tight and a free neck. But even before this happens, we can be assured that changes will be taking place, even though we may not be able to feel them because of the lack of sensitivity which has built up over time. This is why we cannot, to begin with at least, rely on our ‘feelings’.
A visual image may help - I have a 'nodding dog' in my teaching room, and seeing the free movement of its head sometimes helps students to find freedom in their own! I remind them that we are not aiming for floppiness or constant movement, but rather for a state of potential movement at the place where where our heads balance on our necks.
Necks will revert to tightening, unfortunately – it is part of our inbuilt reflex reaction to danger. Nowadays, although we are not often in immediate physical danger, these reflexes have spread into our own learned habitual reactions to all those things we might call ‘stress’: physical, mental and emotional, and if we don’t let it go, then living with a tense neck and shoulders can become an almost permanent state. And poking our faces towards the screen of a computer for hours on end doesn't help. But once you begin to notice these things, and to know that you can release your neck, you can choose to do so over and over again, which will give it periods of respite, and the default level of tension will gradually decrease. Eventually, using Alexander Technique strategies, we can ‘raise the bar’ for the level of stress or stimulus which causes us to tense our necks in the first place, and we can enjoy the delights and benefits of a free neck more often and for longer periods of time.