Hey in this video I'm going to show you how to get neck pain and stiffness relief
in just 30 seconds using a pillow case. First thing you want to do is grab your pillow case,
you could use a towel if you like. Something That Can that won't stretch something that's not super
flexible, and it's soft sill so you can put it around your neck, and you're gonna fold it over
and half the long way. I like to fold it over again the long way and then twist in just a bit.
Just to make it kind of ropey like this, but still soft, you don't want to make it super firm,
it has to have some cushion to it, because it's going to be pressing against your neck,
you're going to put it around your head. And right at the base of the skull
right here on both sides. If you feel the bone behind your ear, kind of under that,
you're going to put the pillowcase under that grab the ends of the pillowcase and even it out
so that your hands are even, then you're going to tip your head back so that you're looking up.
And then angle your arms up and hands up and you're pulling up, not straight up towards
the ceiling with your hands. But a little more forward and up at the same time not this way
forward, but kind of boots between the two directions. So it looks like this tip your
head up over the pillow. So you have a shelf with your head, your skull, and then you're pulling up
and hold that right there and should feel a nice stretch at the top of your neck. And then what
you can do from there is balance a bit. So I'm doing this was my hands, pumping them up and down.
Nice and light. And then I like to do this one here in a tip your head
and pull your hands over to one way, tip your head and pull your hands over the other way.
And this is nicely decompressing just one side of your neck at a time.
I feel a little bit of stiffness on the right side moreso than my left. So I'm gonna hang out
going in this direction stretching out the right side just a bit more decompressing it
and bouncing right there at the end of the motion, find the right angle to give you the best stretch.
Let me show you an alternative version of this that does not require a pillowcase, you can use
your bare hands to push on that same area that pillowcases resting on the back of your head,
what you need to do is use the meat of your hand just below your thumb right here on both sides,
and shove that up under the edge of the bone right here. Just make sure you're not right on
your ear even right directly behind your ear you need to go further back into your hair.
Or if you don't have hair we should have here and you're gonna push upwards in that same direction.
And you can do the same thing you can bend over to the sides to give you the the
behind view pushing up right there, over the sides pushing up in this direction.
Generating whatever force I can without slipping off my head, I'm
still gripping the side of my head with my with my hand. And I am bringing my thumb like this
to make it a little harder and just create a bit of a shelf right there to catch
the edge of my head. So I'm bringing my thumb's together, pushing over and pushing over this way.
This nicely decompresses the spine. I love doing this especially if you're a desk worker,
or if you've been at the computer for a while you get that stiffness that goes to your neck
or runs down into the upper shoulder area here. A lot of times it's painful burning sensations that
you get. I'm a specialist physical therapists I've used this technique with patients over the years
and it's had tremendous success so that they can on their own get some decompression through
their spine to their neck so they can live day to day with while taking less pain medication
and having to rely on doctors giving them injections less. And this helps them to strengthen
because strengthening is necessary on the side of this so that they can get long term relief
of their neck pain and stiffness. Now if you're looking for strengthening exercises, we've got
tons on our channel, you might consider subscribing to our channel. And by the way,
my name is Dr. David I'm a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso manual physical therapy
and the focus of our channel is to help people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding
medications, injections and unnecessary surgeries. So if that interests you at all,
check out more of our videos. I'm going to link a video down here in the description that has some
strengthening exercises that you need to start doing for your neck. If you've got neck pain
and stiffness problems, please give us a thumbs up so that YouTube can share this video with
other people that might need our help. Thanks so much guys. And we'll see in the next video. Bye