Hi. I'm Natalie, and today Veritas Health is going to bring you three gentle stretches to help prevent neck pain. Being in repetitive or habitual postures can encourage a forward head posture and cause more strain through the neck and the chest. To prevent these, doing some regular exercises that promote muscle flexibility and more upright posture can be beneficial. The first exercise I'm going to show you guys, it's a chin tuck. To do this, you'll place your finger on your chin. You will then move your head straight backwards so there's space between your chin and your finger. If you're doing this correctly, you should get a little bit of a double chin. Let's go through 10 of those.
While doing the chin tuck, you might feel some muscle activation or some stretching through the back of your head. This is a great exercise to help encourage a more upright head posture, and it can be done in multiple sets of 10 throughout the day. The next stretch I'm going to show you guys to help prevent neck pain is the levator scapular stretch. This will help stretch out a muscle that runs along the side of your neck. To do this, you can head over to a doorway or a wall. So you're going to stand by a wall or a doorway and put your forearm against the wall so your elbow and your shoulder are at about a 90-degree bend. You then are going to look towards your opposite collarbone and pull your head down until you feel a gentle stretch through the side of your neck. Hold this for about 10 seconds.
If you Don't feel much of a stretch with that, you can use your opposite hand to provide a little bit of gentle overpressure into the stretch.
You can go through this three times on each side.
And remember, if any of these exercises increase your symptoms or cause more pain, please consult with your provider. The third stretch will do is a doorway stretch or a corner stretch to help stretch the muscles of your chest. We'll head over to a corner for this. I'm going to show you guys a corner stretch to help address muscle tightness through the front of the chest and encourage a more upright posture. To do this, you'll stand in a corner a doorway with your forearms against a wall and elbows a little bit lower than your shoulders. You can stagger your feet for a little extra balance, and then lean into it until you feel a gentle stretch to the front of your chest. Hold this for 10 seconds.
Good. You can stuck back in between stretches to give your muscles a break. And let's go into two more stretches.
To learn more about how you can prevent neck pain, please visit us at Spine Health and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this. Thank you for watching.
