Hi everybody. Dr. Cobb here.
I hope you’re having a great week.
We’re going to do something a little bit different than we’ve done so far in this blog. I’m going to show you a quick exercise using a band to help you with any kind of tension headaches that you might get.
A lot of people that spend time each day sitting in front of a computer – basically, this is what happens to their head. They turn into a turtle, and the muscles across the back of the neck, back of the head get really, really tight. That can cause headaches and a lot of other issues.
Now, there’s a really interesting exercise that you can do to start to release that, and it actually doesn’t involve so much the back of your head, but rather your jaw.
What we’re going to do, is we’re going to take our little band – and you can use different types of stretch bands, this one is a loop band – there are other things called Thera-Bands. In fact, you don’t even need this. You can just use your own hands for resistance, but I’m going to show you this bizarre looking little exercise.
I recommend that you not do it in front of other people because it looks a little weird; but what you should do is after you’ve done it, recheck any kind of tension that you have in the base of your neck. It should be much reduced.
So, here it goes. I’m going to take the band, place it underneath my jaw, and then I generally anchor it just like this; and I’m not going to provide a ton of resistance, but I’m going to pull up slightly. Then I’m going to open my jaw against the resistance.
I normally do that four or five times, and I’m gently opening as far as I comfortably can.
The reason that works so well is that there’s a muscle that attaches to your jaw, into a little bone in your throat, and then it goes all the way back to the base of your neck; and when we can mobilize that and get it functioning it more appropriately, very often, it creates a lot of freedom in the back of the neck.
There you have it; a simple little tip to help you with any kind of headache or neck strain that develops from sitting in front of a computer all day.
Give that a shot. Let us know how it works for you.
Thanks.
