Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Zach here with Gonstead Family Chiropractic in San Diego. How many of us sit throughout the day with our head being forward and our head being down? I’d say the majority of us do. So, what that does is it creates a lot of tension into our lower cervical spine and it aggravates muscles. It also changes the structure of our spine. What we want to talk about today is how can we put ourselves in a better position for longevity and a happier life with better neck structure and musculature. What we’re going to do is we’ll go through a series of exercises to help not only fix or correct some of that pain and discomfort but provide you with some stretches as well. Then, we will also cover how to put ourselves in the proper position. Let’s start with one first.
When we’re sitting in a chair we want to be upright and we want our chin tucked. We want our ear to be in a position with our shoulders. So when we do that you can simply do chin tucks and that will help strengthen the neck muscles. The other one that we want to do is where we stretch what is called the levator scapulae. It runs from the top of your shoulder blade all the way up to the base of your skull. What you’re going to do is you’re going to turn one way and grab with that same hand and you’re going to pull down. What that’s going to do is stretch all the way through there. Then you’re going to turn and you’re going to go the other way and pull. Again it’s going to stretch all the way through. So there are some tips on how you can help decrease aggravation in your neck, decrease neck pain, and just live a happier life. Especially while we’re working on computers. Even studying or anything that requires us to look down can be bad for the neck. Hope this helps, hope you guys are doing great, and we’ll talk to you guys very soon.