Tension in the neck and shoulders are interpreted by the brain as being highly stressed – even if life is trundling along fairly normally. Lifestyle itself leads to tight shoulders – hours of screen time and sitting about, along with past injuries such as whiplash, concussions dental braces.
And so we try to sleep with our tight shoulders telling the brain we’re highly stressed, in great danger. Typically, we have a few hours sleep,then lie awake quite unable to get back to sleep. Why are we sleeping when there’s a Wildebeest in the room!
The muscles of stress lie at both the front and the back of the neck. Whilst it does take some skill,tensing a tight muscle really helps it to relax.
A general catch all way of tensing the shoulders is todraw them together, and pull them upwards allowing them to round, and then, if it does NOT make you dizzy, look upwards, giving all a squeezing. This will feel quite nasty. Then calmly let the shoulders return to normal and look forwards again. To stretch them, slightly roll the shoulders back and down, broadening the bottom of the shoulder blades and squeezing down into the armpits whilst slightly tucking your chin down.
If you really can’t sleep at night, it’s worth hopping out of bed and trying this out. Calmer shoulders means the wildebeest is grazing and it’s safe to sleep again.
Insomnia can be caused by any very mild pain in the body – a tiny bit of a tummy ache, a bit of a stiff calf and so on. It’s the brain’s way of waking us up to give us a message that all is not well.