Neck and shoulder pain – a punishment for neglecting office workplace ergonomics and desk exercises?
Many people, even schoolchildren, suffer from neck and shoulder pain throughout their lives. Most everyone is limited in their ability to turn their heads and lift their arms over the years. We often notice neck and shoulder injury when we get up from our work station, kitchen table, piano, or any other non-violent but repetitive activity that we engage in. Repetitive strain injuries greatly affect the quality of our lives, even if we don’t know it. Neck and shoulder pain should not be considered part of a package that comes with our computers. There are ways to protect against it and ways to alleviate it.
What do we often do when we discover that our neck and shoulders are stiff? We roll our heads from side to side, up and down over and over again, frantically rolling our shoulders back and forth, hoping to “untie the knots”, to free ourselves from the pain, to no avail. Instead, as we try to relieve tension and pain, we often hurt ourselves even more, making things worse. Then, trying to avoid painful movements in one area, we often tense other areas.
Most neck and shoulder pain are caused by poor posture and movement habits formed by faulty learning, which usually begins in childhood. When the movement of the back, neck and shoulders is disorganized, some of the forces generated by our muscles create friction that, over time, destroys body tissue and causes injury and pain. Even when neck and shoulder pain is the result of accidents or illness, unfortunately, when we try to protect ourselves from pain, we create new bad habits of movement that cause us even more pain and can lead to chronic pain. Regardless of the cause of pain, the speed at which pain can be resolved can be traced directly to the habits of movement learned in childhood and adulthood, and our ability to learn new patterns of movement, thinking, and awareness.
Instead of insisting on moving already tense and sore muscles, we must look for ways to avoid the injured area. In this way we can achieve what we set out to do and allow the injured part of our body to reorganize and heal.
Since it is the brain that organizes movement, effective techniques for shoulder and neck exercises must be developed to give your brain the information and experiences it needs to form new, pain-free patterns and solutions. Rather than creating friction where it hurts, we should seek methods that guide us through safe, gentle, and easy ways to avoid those painful areas. With new information from the body, mind, and new awareness, neck and shoulder pain should go away, often in just a few short sessions.
There are several methods that attempt to address pain and tension in this way, some more popular than others. There is Yoga, Pilatis and the Feldenkrais Method. The first two are very well known. The last and least known of the three, it resolves specific complaints using scientifically proven referrals that are of particular interest and efficacy for shoulder and neck pain.
Daniel was a first-class violinist in one of the great orchestras in the world. When he went to see Ms. Anat Baniel (former student and assistant of Dr. Feldenkrais), he was unable to play for nine months due to severe neck, shoulder and wrist pain. None of the traditional therapies helped. He was terrified that his career as a musician was over. Like most people, he had no idea what he was doing wrong and how the way he was moving was causing him to hurt himself. Ms. Baniel observed that various parts of Daniel’s body – the lower back, the upper spine, and the powerful pelvic muscles did not move at all when Daniel used his neck, shoulders, arms, and shoulders. hands to play. Ms. Baniel began by guiding Daniel through very gentle movements in those inactive areas that were new to him and felt easy and safe to do. These movements were awakening his brain to new possibilities. Daniel quickly learned to move in a better way that completely relieved his neck and shoulder pain, as well as his wrist pain.
Two months after Daniel started training, he started playing again.
This cutting-edge approach is based on understanding how the brain forms posture and movement patterns, good and bad. Examine all aspects of the person: body, mind, emotion and spirit and their relationship to pain. It addresses an “invisible” element that is of utmost importance in our ability to recover from neck and shoulder pain and prevent future pain: the QUALITY with which we move.
Thousands of computer users suffer from neck and shoulder pain as a result of poor office workplace ergonomics and repetitive strain injuries. To assist those who need neck and shoulder pain relief at their workstations, Desk-Trainer (www.desk-trainer.com) offers a 5-minute preset series of the Anat Baniel Method based on work-based desk exercises of Dr. Feldenkrais. The site also offers subscribers training series on fitness, desk exercises, and office stretches for protection against repetitive strain injuries, as well as ergonomic guidance in the office workplace for organizing the workstation.
