Rubbing the back of your neck or reaching across your chest to grab the rock-like muscle above your shoulder blades. These are the telltale signs of some of the most common, but annoying pains folks deal with on a daily basis. Many people notice the pain after sitting incorrectly at a desk in non-ergonomic chairs, or driving for long periods–or for many in Atlanta, sitting in traffic while tensely grabbing your steering wheels. Like me, you may even feel the tension the mosts after sleeping on your side or stomach, all the while grabbing or hugging your pillow. Whatever the case, those who regularly feel this pain–the vast majority of my massage clients–know all too well that it can be a pain in the neck! Okay that was bad, but you get the picture.

Did you know that that nagging pain in your posterior neck and upper shoulders could be the result of under-used, shortened muscles in you chest and overworked anterior (front) neck muscles? Well, it’s true. Many people are feeling the effects of their heads being forward and their shoulders being rounded and raised. Those positions are so common that you may not have even noticed it in yourself before even though they can describe your standing posture. The good thing is that these poor and pain-inducing postures can be rectified with some good massage therapy on your back and your front.

If I had a dollar for every time a client describes this pain and then request that I apply deep pressure to his or her posterior neck and shoulders, I’d have to raise my rates! They usually have a particular spot between the shoulder blades that has become increasingly nagging. I explain that I could spend the entire session working on these areas and they’d feel better but would be back to square one–or worse–without some specific work done on the chest and front of the neck. Often the pain is a trigger point, a specific area of tenderness that will refer pain to another area when pressure is applied.
In NMT,
we find the source of that referral pain pattern and treat that area to relieve the tension overall. In this case, it usually means applying some friction and pressure to the front of the areas that are in pain.

Simply put, most people let their posterior neck and upper back muscles do all the work of holding and directing the head when it should be the job of the front muscles as well. The result? The chest muscles are shortened due to underuse and the anterior neck muscle are elongated and tensed due to overstretching. Though there are many other muscles that are involved here, most people don’t even realize that there is tenderness and soreness in the just mentioned areas until they are palpated. They may even feel pain in their back, posterior neck or back of the head when these area are being treated.

The best remedy for the annoying, posterior neck, upper back tension (besides a series of massages from a qualified therapist) is to engage in some stretching to elongate the chest and back and increase the range of motion in the neck. The idea is to keep your head and shoulders in alignment. Shoulders are not earrings so keep them down where they belong. Most importantly, become of aware of how you hold yourself throughout the day at work, driving or at rest. Start to remedy old habits of bad posture now and you will thank yourself later.


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