5 min Yoga for Neck Pain & Tension

Transcript

namaste hi everyone i'm gonna take you through another five minute yoga class these are my top three yoga poses to alleviate tension stiffness and pain in your neck you don't need any props for this and we're gonna start seated so the first type of seated neck release all you need to do is lift up nice and tall roll your shoulders back and you're just going to let your right ear drop towards your right shoulder so with this first kind of stretch see if you can keep your chin slightly parallel towards the floor and if you'd like to deepen the intensity you can crawl your left fingertips out and maybe use your right hand to pull your ear further away from your shoulder so i'm not pressing down on my head i'm really just trying to create a little bit of length here and we're trying to isolate our neck so try to stay lifted up through your spine so you're not tilting or rounding and then just roll your chin down so you're gazing towards right shoulder right armpit and you'll notice that this stretches a little bit more towards the back side of your neck and finally tilt your chin up as if you're pointing it up towards that top left corner and you'll notice this time it goes more towards the front side of your neck if you had your hand over your head you can use the arm to lift your head all the way up back up to center and we'll just go to the other side so this time drop the other ear towards your shoulder so left ear down keep your chin slightly neutral for this first one and maybe you can crawl the right fingertips out to deepen the intensity maybe also adding the left hand to pull the right ear further away from your shoulder you really don't need to be applying a lot of pressure here be very gentle with your neck always slow steady breaths and you can tuck in so draw the chin down towards left shoulder left armpit keep your jaw relaxed so you're not clenching and roll your chin so it's pointing up towards the top right corner this time this one is especially good for those of you who get tension migraines and we'll come all the way back up to center so the second kind of neck stretch i like to do you're going to interlace your fingers behind your back and try to bring both hands and your knuckles as far onto your right hip as you possibly can push your left shoulder down and then you're just gonna turn and look over your right shoulder big deep stretch here and facing forward we'll switch sides bring your knuckles over towards your left hip push your right shoulder down and then turn to gaze over your left shoulder as far as you can get your head big breath in and out through your nose come all the way back to center and finally one of the favorite ways that i like to relieve compression especially in my neck is with a forward fold so you can bring your feet pretty much as wide as your mat keep your knees generously bent and let yourself fully dangle here so the emphasis is on your neck which means you want to let your head be very heavy and for some it feels good to just kind of do a little no with your head and if you'd like to intensify this one thing you can do is interlace your fingers and place it right in between kind of where your neck and your head meet and then your elbows are kind of inching and reaching towards your chin so it's just adding a little bit of extra weight a little bit of extra traction for your neck and if that feels like too much just go back to having your arms down maybe a tiny little sway here and let's bend the knees release come all the way back down to seated so i don't know about you but my neck feels a whole lot better this is a simple five minute sequence you can do pretty much every single day whenever you are experiencing tension and this is also something you can do at your desk maybe not the forward fold but definitely the little neck stretches and neck releases are easy to do at any time i hope you find this helpful i have more of these five minute quick tutorials for upper back pain lower back pain morning yoga poses evening stretches all that good stuff so you can check those out on my channel i put out new content every single week thank you so much namaste