At home exercises for neck pain
In the sixties and seventies, Halifax had one women’s health club located in one of it’s first high-rise apartments called the Park Victoria. It smelled of cedar from the sauna. The small gym had one mirror and a few machines that were completely different than you’d find in a gym today.
Here you would stand on the machine, place a conveyer type belt around your hips and push a button. The belt would jiggle your booty.
“Exercise” for women back in the day
Back then they thought that was good for you. This was exercise for women.
You've come a long way, baby!
Hey guys do you remember this?
For men, it was the Royal Canadian Airforce Program developed by Dr. Bill Orban. Essentially five exercises which one did with maximal effort. Actress Helen Mirren claims it’s what keeps her in tip-top shape.
Oh my, I wish I could find one exercise system that delivered magical results! PS…it doesn’t exist.
Then there was Jane and Richard
We’ve watched Jane Fonda helicopter her legs around her torso. Richard Simmons bounce around in tight white shorts.
Fitness trends came and went. Fitness became a spectator sport.
You see, exercise is not normal. Human beings were not meant to exercise. I know you are taking a big sigh. Confirming what you thought all along.
“Exercise is nuts.”
Wait a minute. Our human lifestyle is nuts and completely counter to our human design.
You see, we were designed to be hunter gatherers. Doing things like picking fruit off trees, bending down to pick things off the ground, running after prey. Cutting things up. Making fires. Running away from Wooly Mammoths.
We were designed to move!
The past couple of hundred years in the rise of sedentary living is something the human organism has just not adapted to..YET
Therefore the need for exercise.
Because we live in a movement starved world.
Exercise is an invention to solve the problem of the difficulties of the human body’s ability to adapt to a movement impoverished existence.
Our bodies were designed to move. Not sit in front of computer screens all day.
Don’t blame your aches and pains on getting older!
So, if you are a certain age and you find yourself attributing your body woes to getting older, then you’d be perpetuating a myth that has most people blaming the dislocation of living in their bodies on the hands of time.
The front line of this disassociation is the rapid increase in joint replacement surgeries.
If our doctors sent us for movement screens like they do for our blood tests we’d be able to alter the course of joints that wear and tear instead of wear and repair.
All I know is it hurts
We really don’t know much about our joints apart from if they hurt. We don’t know how they can move and if they don’t move what to do about it.
As a result we’ve lost range of motion in our joints. We lose it because we don’t use it.
Let me ask you, do you move your joints every day?
How about your teeth? Do you brush and floss every day? Did you know the spaces between your teeth are joints?
So how come you don’t take care of your other joints?
More than likely you don’t know how. That’s absolutely normal because most people don’t know, even if they go to yoga, Pilates and whatever other exercise program they do. They move some joints but not others. They make shapes not movements.
Let's focus on a specific set of joints...
Our poor necks
One set of joints that gets poorly moved are the joints that attach the skull to the torso. The neck. Add to that all the screen stuff we do and you’ve got an epidemic of neck issues.
If you’ve got a sore or stiff neck it’s a message from your body that the lack of adequate movement in your neck is causing problems.
So here’s something you can do about it:
Five neck exercises from The Heather Dennis Method.
Neck Cars (Small Step version)
This is a movement pattern I learned in a training called Kinstretch. I've been playing around with it and figuring out how to help people learn it safely.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
xo
H