Cell Phone Giving You a Pain in the Neck? Try Yoga Therapy Balls

In only 10 minutes in downtown Santa Monica, I counted 54 people talking on their cell phones while walking down the street. Only three chatters were using headsets. While headsets are now required by law in most states when driving, you won’t get a ticket for walking and talking with your cell phone jammed against your ear. But your neck and shoulders might eventually issue a warning of pain, and then a citation of spasm. Cell phone stress is a plague that, over time, can lead to serious debilitating pain. But I discovered a yoga ball remedy when I was healing from a rotator cuff injury that kept getting aggravated by my cell phone use. Now I am hooked on this low-cost quick-fix solution.

Holding a phone to your ear for extended periods sets up a string of prolonged tension in a gaggle of muscles that are prone to adapt to their shortened position. These include the upper trapezius, levator scapulae, supraspinatus. and pectoralis minor. So when you end your call and lower the arm, these muscles actually remain partially contracted in their “hold the phone” mode unless they’re fully stretched out. In addition, there are many specialized cranial nerves that flow underneath and within those muscles — and when those get blocked or compressed, you’ll get that “pinched nerve” sensation that can set up shop in your neck and shoulders for days on end.

In my Yoga Tune Up® classes, I work with dozens of students who have neck issues and rotator cuff injuries. While the causes of such injuries and pains are infinite, they often include basic underlying postural imbalances — and the imbalances caused by the repetitive stress of holding a cell phone is too often overlooked.

I’ve found that along with a consistent yoga practice, self-massage with my Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls has been an important element in healing and preventing these imbalances. You can also get a similar yoga ball therapy kit from Gaiam. Using the balls for targeted massage, along with a stretching program, helps to work out the tension built up in these areas by increasing circulation while lengthening and loosening all of the fibers in those spastic “cell phone grasping” muscles.

I highly recommend you compliment your yoga practice with some form of targeted massage therapy, as it is the combination of stretching and trigger point therapy that will keep your neck, shoulders and upper back relaxed and pain free.

For more remedies to heal the muscles contributing to cell phone stress, please visit www.yogatuneup.com

Learn more on Gaiam Life about how other forms of yoga therapy can help with many injuries, chronic conditions and symptoms.