Massage Techniques for Hardened Shoulders & Stiff Necks
Video transcription
If you have questions about how to treat stiff neck and harden shoulders, I can tell you what I like to do. I'm Sundae with Natural Sundae. Now what I want to do, of course you want to just put a little bit of oil, cream or lotion on your hands; you just want to start by loosening up that tissues in the shoulders and in the neck. Just start stretching those shoulders down, going over the shoulders and up the neck. One more time, this is a really relaxing technique, feels really good and it's a great way to get that tissues soft so you can really get in there and effect some change. Now the first thing I like to do is I like to do a special technique, I call it the "lawn mower", I know it sounds silly but it's actually the movements are emulating pulling a lawn mower string. What you're doing is you're rotating your forearm down with your palm down to the forward up. And what you're going to do is you're going to use this part of your forearm on this part of the client. It not only effects the shoulder areas, but also there's a neck muscle under that shoulder area, called the Levator Scapulae and it's the muscle that gets tight and hurts you when you can't turn your head to the left or right. So this a really great in effecting both of those muscles. So you're going to take your forearm and gently rotate the palm down while you're pressing down on the shoulders and that neck muscle that's underneath there. So you're going to rotate that palm down. You can even go all the way down with your forearm, pass the muscle; excuse me, pass the elbow and all the way down with your upper arm. This really gives you a nice, interrupted, uninterrupted movement. Then you can just follow with your hands all the way up the neck and do it one more time. All the way down pass the elbow to the upper arm. Here we go. Of course we're going to repeat this on the other side. Then what the second technique I'm going to show you is, is using your fists. And what you're going to do is you're going to put your fists right here and you're just going to rotate your fists up and across the shoulders. Right up the neck and across the shoulders, just like that. One more time; up the neck, just like that and across the shoulders. This feels really good and it's way to get in really deep and really loosen those muscles up. Now the next thing you're going to do is just use some circular motions, you're going to take your fingers up the neck muscles and just rotate them across the neck muscles. Now your neck muscles are running vertically, up to here and up in this direction. And some run across the front. So what you're going to do is you're going to take your fingers and rotate them, just like this, so you're getting across those muscle fibers that are running along there. Just go like that. You can actually feel them, they're very hard and tight. Just get in there. You can do little circular motions and follow them down, across the top of the shoulders and then rake your fingers back up. Just take your fingers again, in circular motions; you can do larger circles or smaller circles. And there we go. Those are great tips to relaxing stiff necks and harden shoulders. I'm Sundae with Natural Sundae. Thanks for listening.