Whether you're hunched over your laptop working, staring down at your phone screen or cowering against the wind and rain this winter, your neck and shoulders have to deal with a lot of strain.
Pain in your shoulders, neck, head and upper back can be debilitating, but there are some simple methods for reducing that strain.
Chartered Physiotherapist Aisling Frawley joined Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ Radio 1 to discuss why we experience stiffness in our head, neck and shoulders, and talks him through some easy exercises, to unstiffen those muscles and keep deeper problems at bay.
Most of the strain is caused by habitual situations, Frawley said, such as how we sit in work, how we move our arms and how we position our heads. As each of those areas are interconnected, over-exerting one part of your body can lead to strain on others.
"A lot of our life is out in front of us so we can't really get away from our arms being in front of our body, and that tends to be quite a lot of the problem too", she said.
"When we reach forward, our shoulders tend to follow suit with our hands, and we kind of protract our shoulders and round them inwards, so all of the front of our body becomes quite compressed or shortened, and our spine will then follow suit."
The head is one of the heaviest parts of the body, weighing between 4kg and 10kg, Frawley added, explaining that the way we move our shoulders and spine creates a ripple effect across our neck and head. This movement forward can create that hunched over posture that leads to discomfort.
Forward neck posture, or 'tech neck' as it's become known, is one of the most common complaints Frawley comes across.
"Our head, neck and shoulders are forwards, but we still have to have our eyes looking up so we can see where we're going, so then our chin also leads with where we're going", she said.
To correct this, imagine drawing your chin to the back of your throat, which creates an elongated feeling toward the back of your crown, she said.
"If you're aware of it, that's half the battle", she said. "First is conscious awareness of where your posture lies in a day-to-day basis and then making sure that we're constantly changing it throughout the day."
She suggested starting by drawing the shoulder blades slightly down the back as though you were tucking them into your trousers. Instead of the traditional 'army posture' with a poker straight back, Frawley suggested focusing on keeping a 'proud chest' that is open width-wise through the collarbone, and slightly draw your shoulder blades down.
Do this as often as you think of it, she said. "There's no quick fix for this. This is a habitual situation so it's more about trying to, when you think of it, just change your posture. It doesn't have to be perfect all the time, there's no perfect posture."
Instead of trying to maintain this improved posture all day, Frawley suggested holding the pose for three seconds and releasing, before repeating it again. She explained that pain and discomfort is caused by the length of time we spend in poor postures, rather than the postures themselves.
"It's trying to change those postures throughout the day rather than staying in that same posture for a couple of hours."
For more tips, listen back to the full interview above.
