Do you want to know the best stretch for neck and upper back pain? You’ve come to the right place!

(Upper Back Pain?…stretch this instead of your upper back to feel better…this is a transcript to the video originally at: https://youtu.be/jaEAMxoC0dQ)

 

Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Dave! What kind of experience are you creating for yourself out there today?

You know, we all lead busy lives and many of us go to work, or we stay at work here at our homes, and we’re always doing things. And a lot of the things we do every day, involve us working with something in front of us, very rarely doing work behind us, right?

Whether we’re at a computer or we’re driving or we’re using tools or we’re a hygienist or a hairstylist or an auto mechanic, chiropractor, a massage therapist, many of the things we do every day, even around the home with vacuuming and carrying things and doing dishes, ironing, many of these things are in front of us.

We end up engaging in that work and sometimes by the end of the day into the evening we start to notice some soreness, we get tight and tense in that upper back between the shoulder blades and sometimes even up into the neck.

What do we do? A lot of us stretch, we pull that out some more, we pull where we’re feeling the discomfort. We try to stretch it out. But the interesting thing is, that those parts of our body may be over stretched from what we’ve been doing all day.

It’s counter-intuitive…but stretching your chest may be better than stretching your “over-stretched” upper back!

Instead, a good thing to do is to stand in a door-frame and put your arms up on the door-frame like you’re surrendering. You can put your shoulder at 90 degrees, the elbow is at 90 degrees, you stand in the door-frame and you push your chest forward. Not the head and neck, just the chest. Keep the head over the body, until you feel that pulling through the top of the chest and into the shoulder.

You count till 10, 15, or 20 and you relax, shake it off a bit and then do it a second time. The first time will kind of warm it up, the second time will allow you to go a little bit further and just breathe. Let that stretch out a bit, and what that’s going to do is open this area that’s maybe shortened during the day and is pulling or causing the stretch in the back.

Watch the video HERE.

When we open that back up again, it’s going to take the tension and pressure off the back. When we do this day after day and we get into the habit of resetting that, we’re going to notice less of that discomfort into our upper back and neck. That’s a great tool for you guys to use, to keep having those great experiences every day. Keep yourself loose and supple and we’ll share some more tricks with you in the future, so keep your eyes open.