Neck pain is a common complaint in the world of bodywork, and the causes are varied. There is one cause of neck pain that stands out differently from the rest, and that’s stomach sleeping.
When someone presents with neck pain in my office, and they admit to stomach sleeping
I
WON’T
WORK
ON
THEIR
NECK.
Sounds cruel, I know. But the truth is I can make the pain worse. As long as someone is a stomach sleeper, I can work on their neck until the cows come home, but the work I do won’t rid them of neck pain.
The only way the body can be pain-free is if the structure is balanced and the muscles are neutral. Optimal spine alignment is: chin over the sternum and the ears over (not in front of) the shoulders. Both are compromised while stomach sleeping *plus* the head is wrenched to one side and held there with the body’s weight for several hours during sleep. This posture creates overstretching of muscles on one side of the neck (think: rubber band over a too-big pile of papers) while the muscles on the other side are contracted (think: holding a dumbbell in your hand in a bicep curl for, say, 4 hours). All the hands-on work I can do in an hour won’t reverse seven nights of the above scenario.
We’ve experienced waking up on the sofa with a ‘cricked’ neck, or from a hotel pillow that’s too big. Symptoms in those instances are readily fixable. But night after night of stomach sleeping creates a pattern (long on one side, short on the other) and you no longer realize the ‘crick’ feeling indicating something is wrong. Not because it became right, but because the compensation patterns are so concentrated, by the time your neck exhibits pain symptoms, they don’t seem related to the sleep posture. They are. Additionally, any other neck issues won’t heal while you stomach sleep.
Stomach sleeping is the WORST repetitive static posture you can choose for your neck.
[CLIFF HANGER! Some folks have great difficulty falling asleep unless they are on their stomach. If this is you, I assure you there is a remedy READ MORE.]
In good health,
Developer of The Schatz Method™
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