Exercising your Levator Scapulae will help to prevent back and neck pain, so why not take a minute to watch this video and learn a quick and easy stretch that will strengthen and loosen your muscles.
Jason Lee is a graduate of the University of Melbourne. He enjoys treating a variety of musculoskeletal conditions and has developed an interest in spinal pain and headaches. He is a hands-on physio who utilises manual therapy, soft tissue therapy and dry needling. He is also a strong advocate for exercise therapy and runs strength training classes and clinical Pilates. Outside of work, Jason enjoys keeping active and is a keen surfer and basketballer.
As Jason mentions in the video, these exercises should not be painful. If any pain occurs stop immediately and contact a healthcare professional.
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Transcript
Our third exercise is continuing with a similar trend.
Another muscle, more towards the front of the neck, which we want to stretch out.
Once again, one of those fast twitch muscles that we often rely on for holding the head up unfortunately – if we’re sitting with poor posture – is our Levator Scapulae.
So, a similar exercise to last time but instead of bringing your ear to your shoulder, we’re going to bring our nose to our armpit.
I’ll take you through it in a second. So, lets go to the right hand side again, and lets bring your nose down to your right armpit, like you’re going to sniff the armpit – don’t breathe in too deeply.
And just gently pull the nose down towards the armpit. You might feel a gentle pull on the neck again, on the left hand side, but in a slightly different position to previously.
Alright, we’re going to hold this for 15 seconds, and then repeat the same thing on the other side.
So now we bring our nose down to our left armpit and just gently pull across.
So once again with this stretch, we’re going to try to do this at least four to five times a day and gently hold it for at least 15 seconds.
As I said before, none of this should be too painful.
We’ve all done one lot, so you’ve only got four more stretches to go before you go to sleep tonight.
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