A massage on Friday evening. By Monday noon your shoulders are back up by your ears, and turning your head feels stiff again.
Under stress, and even while you are only anticipating something unpleasant, the muscles of the neck and shoulders work harder, as if bracing to protect the neck. Repeated often enough, this becomes part of the way you habitually organize effort, which is why neck and shoulder tension tends to return even after massage, yoga or stretching. What lasts longer is learning through movement: small, slow movements in which you discover that the same action can be done with less effort. Below you’ll find what’s going on in your neck and shoulders, how the Feldenkrais Method sees it, and one exercise to start with.
Most people with a tense neck try one thing after another: massage, yoga, a stretching video on YouTube, a microwavable heat pack, a new pillow, exercises to strengthen the neck. All of it helps, and that is worth saying. But it helps only for a while, and after some time you start to wonder whether your neck will hurt forever.
What Feldenkrais adds
Massage, stretching, strength work and yoga can all be useful. What Feldenkrais adds is a particular emphasis on noticing how you organize effort in the moment, and on experimenting with alternatives.
What happens when neck and shoulder tension builds
A 5 kg (11 lb) head
An adult head weighs roughly five kilograms (about 11 pounds), and it is balanced on a fairly slender neck. The shoulders are connected to the neck by muscles that can lift the shoulder blade and pull the head forward or back. The best known of them is the upper trapezius, the one you feel when someone squeezes the top of your shoulder. When your shoulders rise, these are the muscles doing the work.
When the head moves forward
When your head moves forward, for example while you look at your phone, the muscles at the back of the neck have to hold it, a bit like holding a heavy book with your arm stretched out instead of close to your body. One often quoted estimate says that the load on the neck grows from about five kilograms with the head upright to more than twenty kilograms (about 45 pounds) when it tilts forward (Hansraj, 2014).
That figure comes from a computer model of the spine, and one study of young adults found no link between head position over the phone and neck pain (Damasceno et al., 2018). For most people, the hours spent in the same position matter more than the exact angle of the head.
Shoulders that wait
This is where stress comes in. In one study, activity in the trapezius muscle rose while people were still waiting for an unpleasant stimulus, before anything had happened (Luijcks et al., 2014). Your shoulders also rise in anticipation, often before any real effort is needed: before a message you don’t know how to answer, before a meeting or a difficult conversation, or while you wait for someone to give you important news.
Breath and jaw
The breath often changes too. When the upper body becomes more rigid, breathing tends to become shallower, and the accessory breathing muscles in the neck take on more work. Many people clench their jaw in the same moments, because the jaw, neck and shoulders often take part in the same pattern of effort.
Where the habit comes from
The startle reflex
When someone suddenly slams a door behind you, your head pulls in and your shoulders jump. This is the startle reflex, and its job is to protect the neck. In his book Body and Mature Behavior, Moshe Feldenkrais described how a milder version of the same pattern accompanies fear and worry: the body curls forward, as if taking cover. Thomas Hanna, who trained with Feldenkrais, later used the term Red Light Reflex as a somatic model for this protective pattern: head forward, shoulders up, chest drawn in (Hanna, 1988).
When the pattern becomes part of you
Days of worry, deadlines and thoughts that keep circling keep this mild pattern switched on far longer than a single startle. Over time, a slightly raised, braced position begins to feel normal and you stop noticing it. Feldenkrais wrote that we move, feel and think in accordance with the image we have of ourselves. Raised shoulders become part of that image, and after every massage they return to the position that feels familiar.
How the Feldenkrais Method looks at tension
A physicist with a black belt
Moshe Feldenkrais was a physicist and one of the first Europeans to earn a black belt in judo. After a serious knee injury, he turned down surgery with an uncertain outcome and began to explore how he used his own body. Out of that exploration came a method centered on learning and awareness, and on discovering more adaptable ways of organizing movement.
“If you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.”
Moshe Feldenkrais
Until you sense that you are raising your shoulders, you can’t even choose not to raise them. Feldenkrais called his group classes “Awareness Through Movement”. In these classes you learn how you move, and choice comes out of that knowledge.
Learning the way a baby learns
Learning in this method resembles the way a baby learns to roll over or sit up. Nobody shows the baby the correct position. The baby tries, makes mistakes and tries differently, and through this repeated exploration gradually discovers easier, more effective ways to move. Feldenkrais believed adults can learn the same way, if they are given enough slowness, attention and freedom to try many variations.
Posture as freedom to move
Feldenkrais was not looking for a “correct” position of the shoulders. For him, good posture was one from which you can easily move in any direction (Feldenkrais, 1985).
Shoulders held stiffly down and back are no freer than shoulders raised up to the ears. They are just stuck in a different place.
Learning through experience
In The Brain’s Way of Healing, psychiatrist Norman Doidge devotes a whole chapter to the Feldenkrais Method as an example of learning through experience, in which finer perception opens up new movement possibilities (Doidge, 2015).
The shoulders are just one part of the chain
The shoulders don’t work alone. The chain looks roughly like this:
- the eyes lead the head,
- the head rests on the neck,
- the shoulder blades lie on the ribs and glide over them,
- the ribs move with every breath,
- and all of this stands on the pelvis and the feet.
Changes in one part of this chain influence how much work the neck and shoulders have to do. That is why the Feldenkrais Method rarely works only with the place that hurts. It works with the whole chain, part by part, and change often begins more easily in the eyes, ribs or feet than in the shoulders themselves.
Online Feldenkrais sessions, one to one
This whole-body approach is at the heart of my online Feldenkrais sessions. We meet on Zoom for about an hour. You lie on the floor or sit in a chair at home, and I guide you through movements with my voice, adapting the work to how your neck, shoulders and the rest of your body organize themselves. No previous Feldenkrais experience is needed, and you can start with a free 20-minute call to see whether it suits you.
A Feldenkrais exercise for neck and shoulder tension (3 minutes)
Think of this as an exploration, not a workout: your nervous system is trying out a new movement pattern. You can do it at any time of day. It takes about three minutes and is done on a chair, even at your desk. Use very small, slow movements, only as far as feels clearly comfortable. You can pause whenever you like or simply imagine the movement, and if a movement causes pain, stop the exercise.
- Support. Sit toward the front edge of a chair with your feet on the floor and your hands on your thighs. Without correcting anything, notice whether one shoulder is higher than the other.
- Right shoulder. Very slowly lift your right shoulder toward your ear, just a little, then lower it even more slowly. Repeat three times, each time with less force.
- Shoulder and ear. Lift your right shoulder and at the same time tilt your head slightly to the right, so that your right ear and right shoulder come closer. Then slowly return to the middle.
- Eyes to the other side. Repeat the same movement, but as your ear and shoulder come closer, let your eyes slide to the left, level with the horizon. Your head tilts to the right, and your eyes go to the left.
- Compare. Rest and compare the right and left sides of your neck and shoulders. If you like, simply imagine the movement on the left side, slowly and in detail, then compare the sides again.
Short, regular practice is easier to learn from than an occasional long session. The number of repetitions is only a suggestion, and the movements should stay small.
What changes when you practice this way
Less force, a clearer difference. In this exercise you never push your shoulder down. You only lift it, more and more slowly and with less and less force, and the lowering happens by itself. A clear contrast between more and less effort makes unnecessary muscle work easier to notice and to let go. And because the other side stayed still, you feel the difference in the same body, at the same moment.
The eyes go their own way. When your gaze moves to the opposite side, the eyes, head and shoulders stop moving as one block, the way they have moved for years. When they separate a little, you discover another way to move your neck, alongside the one you use every day.
Imagined movement can also be useful. Imagining a movement isn’t cheating. It engages much of the same movement planning as the real movement, and faint activity can even appear in the muscles (Guillot et al., 2012). Imagining also comes in handy when the real movement feels unpleasant.
Where to go from here
This exercise is a small sample of what we do in Feldenkrais lessons. If you do it a few days in a row, pay attention to small changes: whether your neck turns more easily when you look over your shoulder, and whether your shoulders let go sooner after a tiring day.
If you’d like to continue:
- One to one, online: in online Feldenkrais sessions I guide you through movements step by step, adapt the work to you and your pace, and together we observe what changes. The first step is a free 20-minute call.
- In person, in a group: Feldenkrais workshops and retreats, for example on Koh Phangan in Thailand and in Portugal.
- If you also clench your teeth: read the article on jaw clenching and a tight jaw.
Frequently asked questions
Is my phone to blame for my neck tension?
Partly. A head tilted over a phone loads the neck more than an upright head, but one study of young adults found no link between the position itself and pain. What matters more is how long you stay in the same position and how freely your neck can move once you put the phone down.
Is yoga good for neck and shoulder tension?
Yes, when it is done slowly and without forcing. Yoga involves the whole body and the breath, and many people enjoy it. If you notice that your shoulders stay tense even during yoga, it helps to add exercises in which the movement is done with much less force, like the one in this article.
How often should I do neck and shoulder exercises?
Briefly and often. Short, regular practice is easier to learn from than occasional long sessions, because new movement patterns are learned through repetition.
Can I do this exercise at my desk?
Yes. It is done sitting, and the movements are small enough that no one around you will even notice. The easiest way is to link it to a moment in your day, such as a coffee break or the end of a task.
Sources
- Damasceno G. M. et al. (2018). Text neck and neck pain in 18-21-year-old young adults. European Spine Journal, 27(6), 1249 to 1254.
- Doidge N. (2015). The Brain’s Way of Healing. Viking.
- Feldenkrais M. (1949). Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Feldenkrais M. (1972). Awareness Through Movement. Harper & Row.
- Feldenkrais M. (1985). The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion. Harper & Row.
- Guillot A. et al. (2012). Imagining is not doing but involves specific motor commands. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 247.
- Hanna T. (1988). Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health. Addison-Wesley.
- Hansraj K. K. (2014). Assessment of stresses in the cervical spine caused by posture and position of the head. Surgical Technology International, 25, 277 to 279.
- Luijcks R. et al. (2014). Experimentally induced stress validated by EMG activity. PLoS ONE, 9(4), e95215.
I am Nikola, a certified Feldenkrais practitioner and somatic coach, with about nine years of somatic work. Here I write about different approaches to the body: how to understand it better, how to learn new ways of using it, and how to build a more holistic relationship with your body and with life.
Ways to work with me
- 1:1 somatic sessions onlineindividual work, online
- Online Feldenkrais sessionsIndividual guidance through movement on Zoom
- Workshops and retreatsin person, in a group
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