How Stress Affects Necks, Shoulders and Breathing

The holidays are over, the New Year has begun, and my clients are complaining of neck and shoulder pain.  Most of them work 10 hours a day at the computer, commute, care for their families and get in a workout whenever possible. And most of them don’t realize that they don’t know how to breathe fully enough to positively reduce their stress. Every one of these clients has elements of what we call the “red light reflex” in their posture: rounded and slumped shoulders, a neck that juts out slightly, tight abdominals

I started writing this blog during the holidays, so I’ll give you exactly what I’d written:

At holiday time with all the commitments and obligations people have to family, work and their yearly traditions, there is a tendency to get stuck in this “red light,” stress reflex, even when there is no life-threatening emergency or threat to one’s own survival. For many people just the idea of how much needs to get done as they race through the mall (or click away on the Internet, slumped in their chair, to order their gifts), buy gifts, put up Christmas trees, decorate the house, host family members, or attend parties, is enough to cause them to stop breathing, hunch their shoulders and stiffen their necks – as if danger is right around the corner. Repeat this all day long, and the end result is neck and shoulder pain, or sheer fatigue from shallow breathing and lack of oxygenation to one’s brain.

Hans Selye, the endocrinologist who created the General Adaptation Syndrome, is considered “the father of stress research.”  He was known to have stated that all disease is disease of adaptation – meaning that humans adapt to stress, which alters metabolism and other physiological states in our bodies – and that we have a limited amount of adaptive energy to deal with stress. If ignored a continuously stressed body, constantly in a “fight or flight” stage of high alert, will lose its defenses against illness. This is a very basic overview (and I will write more about it in another blog post about how stress affects joints and mobility).

“Hunched” posture is a response to stress.

The fight or flight state of stress is a primal survival instinct that kicks in when there is real or perceived danger. In Hanna Somatics the physical posture is the “red light reflex” (or startle reflex) of protection and withdrawal:  hunched and rounded shoulders, a neck that juts forward, and tight abdominals that suppress breathing. This posture occurs due to fear, anxiety, danger and on-going emotional stress.

We’re no longer being chased by meat eating predators, but too many of us experience the stress of our lives to be equally as dangerous as that kind of scenario. The real danger nowadays occurs when we habitually respond to non-life threatening events as if they were truly life-threatening.  When the “red light” reflex of stress becomes “the norm” in our bodies, here’s what can happen:

• we suppress our breathing
• our brain doesn’t get the oxygen it needs
• our hearts don’t get the oxygen it needs
• suppressed breathing negatively affects our mood and our creativity (which adversely affects our working environment)
• we contract the muscles of the front of our bodies, which rounds us forward
• we lose our equilibrium, causing other muscles to work harder than they should to keep us in balance.

Try this exercise to reduce your stress:

Here’s a wonderful exercise, called “The Flower.”

The Flower 9-30-11 720X405

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Come learn this exercise and others in my workshop, “Boost Your Immune System with Somatics” Sunday, January 22 at Shakti Yoga in Maplewood, NJ.

To buy my book, Move Without Pain, and my pain-relief DVDs, click here.