Crick Fixes

Tension can be a pain in the neck. Master these gentle moves to create lasting ease.

By Barbara Benagh

By the time Tatiana Makoukhina came to my workshop last spring on easing tension in the neck, shoulders, and upper back, she'd been suffering from chronic pain for more than a decade. In the early '90s, as a single mom newly arrived from Russia, Tatiana worried constantly about whether she could make a new life in America with her daughter. She put in long hours as a hotel cleaner—the only job she could find—and felt she could never relax, never stop working and planning. Her back and neck were constantly rigid with tension, she suffered severe migraines, and then she herniated a disk in her lower back lifting a heavy mattress.

Despite her persistent discomfort, Tatiana worked hard to manage her pain and improve her health. Athletic in her childhood—she had loved gymnastics, volleyball, and dancing—she began running and exercising again. Surgery for her disk injury helped with her lower back pain, and her migraines eased once she began practicing yoga regularly in 2002. Still, nothing seemed to banish the tightness, aches, and occasional stabbing pain in her shoulders and neck.

Tatiana certainly isn't unique: We all live in a world filled with anxiety. We race through hectic days and fall into bed exhausted; we fret over our bills, our kids, our jobs and the state of the planet, too. It doesn't help that many of us have lives skewed toward the sedentary, with too many hours spent hunkered down behind a computer or steering wheel. Our stress often winds up stored in clenched necks, shoulders, and backs-which eventually weakens our muscles, strains our joints, and limits our range of motion. The tension hangs heavy on our necks and shoulders, as unwelcome as a winter coat on a summer day.

It doesn't have to be this way, of course. The shoulder girdle is designed so your arms, neck, and shoulders can move freely and easily. Even if you have a history of injuries or have suffered from chronic tension for years, the approach I've developed can help you learn to soften your neck and shoulder muscles and restore ease and freedom.

When I ran into Tatiana a few weeks after the workshop, she was thrilled with her progress. Not only had the workshop taken away her pain but, even better, she'd been able to stay pain-free by including 5 to 10 minutes of my exercises in her daily hour of yoga. Her back, shoulders, and neck were feeling more relaxed than she'd ever imagined possible.

Do by Undoing

I developed my approach to relieving neck and shoulder tension the hard way. At 17, I was a passenger in a dramatic car wreck. My sister had cajoled and pleaded until I agreed to go on a double date with a boy I had absolutely no interest in. So I was pouting when I got in the car, and my date responded by speeding down the gravel road and missing a curve. I was thrown out of the car and vividly remember clinging to the Volkswagen's window frame as we flipped through the air. Fortunately, I lost my grip on the car and a bush broke my fall.

I recovered from the concussion, lacerations, and broken bones within a few months, but I ended up with a shortened left collarbone. Over time, that structural imbalance pulled my left shoulder forward, compressing my neck and eventually causing two of my neck vertebrae to fuse.

In my early 20s I began studying yoga, hoping to regain some of the fitness I'd enjoyed before my accident. I loved yoga immediately, but as my expertise grew and I progressed toward more demanding poses, my neck and shoulder problems restricted me and made me vulnerable to injury. My teachers noticed my imbalances, and with their help my alignment improved. But I still got hurt frequently, and much of the time my neck and upper back muscles were tense, achy, and tired.

I soon realized that my chronically tight muscles felt at their best right after a massage—relaxed and free of their accustomed tension. I began to think that if massage could release my patterns of chronic contraction, I should be able to find a way to practice yoga that could give me the same relief.

Fortunately, my search quickly led me to Angela Farmer, a teacher whose approach to yoga was much more internally focused, intuitive, and patient than what I'd been taught. I came to think of her style as "the undoing process"—"undoing" not just because it undid tension, but also because it focused less on actively changing your body than on establishing a compassionate dialogue with it, inviting health and ease into it and then watching, waiting, and allowing change to come.

Savoring how light and calm I felt after this kind of practice, I decided to experiment with ways to refine the undoing process. I discovered that long holds of passive reclining poses, often with blankets, bolsters, or other props, were key to releasing my tension. As I learned to relax in these poses, I began making the exercises more active, using muscular action to increase traction on one stiff area while maintaining an overall focus on release and relaxation. Finally, I worked to integrate these feelings of freedom and ease into my whole yoga practice; in every pose, I focused on practicing with the least tension and effort and the greatest comfort possible. This three-step approach is the core of my program for releasing tension in the neck, shoulders, and upper back.

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