The ins and outs of your neck

Before I ever took one class in bodywork I offered to gently massage a lady's neck as she obviously was in pain.  After a couple minutes, she started talking excitedly about the improvement she suddenly noticed in her vision.  Since I didn't have the knowledge to understand her response at the time, her reaction really surprised me.

Since that time, I've discovered that your neck is like a superhighway with all kinds of vehicles transporting all sorts of very important cargo.  There's the spinal column carrying the spinal fluid.  You have the major nerve trunk descending from the brain and branching out to all the areas of your body.  Then there are all of your surface-to-deep muscles which allow you to turn our head, nod hello or do a double take.  

These are all great reasons to take good care of your neck's flexibility and your ability to relax the muscles in your neck; you wouldn't want anything interfering with your nerve impulses or any muscle tension getting in the way of your ability to drive or enjoy your leisure activities.  Neck tension can do this, plus it can decrease the flow of oxygen to your brain, giving you a terrific headache or just making it difficult to concentrate.

There are a few more interesting happenings in this area, too.  The optic center of the brain sits just above the back of your neck with a few of its nerves threading through your upper neck area. This explaines why the woman's vision improves when I massaged her neck.

The back of the neck is also where all of your facial and cranial sinuses drain.  It would take little tension to bind up this drain, keeping you in a sinus-headache state.  Last but not least, you have the Vagus nerve going through this area, which likes to play havoc with your digestive organs when under too much pressure from tension-filled muscles.  

Energetically, neck problems, according to Louise Hay, can be about "stubbornness and inflexibility".  It can also be a place where we hold unresolved anger.  

If you'd like to work on relaxing and de-stressing your neck, just give me, Roxann, a call at:  623-330-8488.  I would be honored to work with you.