In the body everything is connected. Therefore, pain in the neck can be linked to blockages in remote areas, such as the pelvis. Actually, the pelvis and neck are the ends of the spine.
The body is a whole. An injury to a hand, for example, alters the overall movement of the entire body. Because for a while one zone will be disabled and the rest has to be reorganized to continue working and because the system changes its hierarchy of priorities: now it is essential to restore the functionality of the damaged zone.
In fact, I haven’t told you anything new. However, we tend to forget it and move as if some parts were independent of others. Thinking of our body as a big cloth can help us understand the effects of our stresses. You can take a fabric and try to tie it in a corner and then in the center. When you extend it, you will see the limitation generated by each of those knots in the movement of the entire fabric.
Immobility in one hand will directly affect the elbow, shoulder, neck and chest, what would happen if the immobility, due to injury or tension, was in the pelvis?
Being in the center of the body, an alteration of the mobility of the pelvis produces direct effects on legs and feet, and also on the upper part of the body. I want to tell you how it can help you to have these links present in the relief of cervical tension.
PAIN DOESN’T ALWAYS SHOW UP WHERE THE PROBLEM IS
Think that between your pelvic bones is the lower part of your spine. So, if you suffer sustained tension in the pelvis, it is as if someone is holding your last vertebrae all the time.
Every time we move our head in any direction, it is necessary that our spine accompanies the gesture. Otherwise, the movement will be slowed down. Imagine a snake moving forward with its tail motionless… It’s not possible.
If the movement of the head is slowed by the tension of the pelvis and, instead of releasing the pelvis, we make more force with the head, to turn it or tilt it, the tissues of the nape and neck, which are being over demanded, will twitch and generate pain and tension to protect themselves.
REGAIN THE FEELING OF LINK BETWEEN THE HEAD AND PELVIS
Mobilizing the pelvis without making present that the body is a whole will not relieve cervical tensions. What is causing this tension is precisely the lack of awareness of this reality. Check how your movement changes depending on the idea you have of it:
- Think that your neck starts at the base of the head and ends where the trunk begins. And with that idea in mind lower your head as if you were going to read a book, then raise it to look straight ahead and then towards the ceiling.
- Now think that your neck starts at the crown and ends at the coccyx, your last vertebra, as if you were a snake. And repeat the previous movements. Surely you have felt notable differences in terms of the overall movement of the body: greater mobility of the dorsal, lumbar and pelvic area.
Now, with this idea of the body that allows all tissues to be involved in each gesture, I propose a very simple exercise to loosen your cervical tension:
- Lie on your back, with your legs bent and your feet flat on the floor.
- Your head rests on the floor or a folded blanket.
- Start swinging your legs side and side as if you were moving a bowl full of water: your pelvis. It is a small and light movement; the idea is that the water does not come out of the bowl.
- As you repeat the gesture go loosening the body, let it rest more and more on the ground, and observe how the movement of the pelvis is transmitted through the spine upwards. Perhaps on the first attempt, or repeating it a few more days, you will feel that with the movement of your legs you get to swing your head.
Remember that the body is not as we think and that the idea, we have of it conditions us.