Get to the Root of Neck Problems

Changing how your head sits on top of your spine can reduce back and neck pain, improve your posture, and revolutionize the way you breathe.

By Richard Rosen

Look around the next time you venture out to the movies or the grocery store, or any place crowds of people congregate. You don't need to be a trained yoga teacher to recognize that most of the heads around you don't seem to be screwed on quite right to their respective bodies. Though in the West, we spend a lot of time "in our heads," ironically, most of us don't know what to do with our heads—how to hold and move them properly—not only in asanas but in our daily lives. We tend to carry our heads to a greater or lesser degree forward of the spine, a symptom of the widespread afflictions of stress and poor posture. The ideal upright head is physically neutral, perched lightly atop the atlas (the aptly named first cervical vertebra) and supported by the underlying column of bones and minimal muscular effort in the back of the neck and shoulders. Along with this bare-bones support, the head is also sustained energetically by what I call the root of the neck. You won't find this root in any anatomy book. Like the roots of the arms and legs, the root of the neck is imaginary—but the image can be of immense practical use and can have profound therapeutic benefits.

You might suppose that the root of the neck is located where the base of the neck joins the top of the shoulders; in fact, it's farther down the spine, at the lower tips of the shoulder blades and behind the heart center, where you'll also find the roots of the arms. A neutral head is anchored deep in the upper back through this neck root, and all of its movements—whether forward (into flexion), backward (into extension), or to the side—are initiated from and flow out of this source.

A forward head, by contrast, hangs rootlessly off the front spine. This disrupts the spine's naturally sinuous curves and wreaks havoc with the muscles of the neck and shoulders as they struggle to keep the head's weight upright. This leads to a mixed bag of bothersome aches and pains in the head, neck, and back; reduced neck and shoulder mobility; and breathing limitations. Young children are usually cited by posture and movement experts as having a healthy, neutral head position, leaving us adults to ponder how we ever managed to end up as such slouches. However, we can be comforted by the knowledge that somewhere deep inside our bodies, the memory of this harmonious alignment of head and spine survives and can be recovered.

Your head may be the last thing you think about as you assume the various yoga postures, but it shouldn't be. For the successful practice of yoga—not only asana but also pranayama and meditation—it's crucial to cultivate awareness of the root of the neck. Misalignment of your head in a posture can result in unbalanced loading on the cervical spine and strain in the neck and shoulder muscles. You can protect your neck first by learning how to find its root and arrange your head in a neutral position. Once you've got your neck in neutral, then you can add movement—twisting and turning, flexing or extending your neck to complete a pose. (In this article, we'll discuss only extension and flexion; rotation is considerably trickier to describe and to perform from the neck root.)

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