What’s up everybody? Patrick LeRouge here, from Evolve Restorative Therapy. You can find me at livepainfreeprocess.com. Folks, I help people that need to live an active life, eliminate pain for the long term and enhance their performance. Today what we’re going to be talking about is neck pain a levator scapula issue. So, a common mistake that a lot of people think is neck pain is only a bony issue. There’s many things that go wrong. Now, we’re going to take it even deeper; a deeper look into it. We’re going to look at one muscle that actually helps with non-moving neck muscles. Levator scapulae is a muscle that runs in the back part of your head and neck, that runs slightly on an angle. Massage therapists are known to be working with this a lot because it’s so easily accessible. But I’m going to show you one area that a lot of people make their mistake at. This is not a knock on them, we’re just trying to make you that much better by looking at it a little bit deeper. Within the levator scapulae, a lot of people have this knot that runs right through here. It attaches through here to here and it shrugs your shoulder up, that’s the main job of it. So right here becomes at here and it causes more tissue to form this. It’s a big lump that happens here.

 
A lot of therapist just do cross-fiber friction there and it starts to break it up, but let’s take it a little deeper. Let’s take it one step further. Why is it there in the first place? It’s because that muscle tissue’s trying really hard to uphold. We have some last issues that need to be addressed. We have some movement and new issues inside the shoulder. All those things are true, but what we need to realize is here is not the true problem within this muscle. It actually is the binding that’s happening within this twist. Levator actually has a slight twist in it that you have to focus on.
So if you have trouble moving your neck, and you find this muscle tissue actually adhered, tight, painful, tender – and it normally is because it does so much work – don’t go after the big knot that’s there. Go slightly high, right smack in the middle, and you’re going to have to find that twist, and get that twist to start learning how to move slightly better. You’re going to confuse – this is a common thing – you’re going to confuse the twist of levator with your erector muscle, which is a muscle that runs long-wise. All you have to do is get them to separate and start learning to move individually. If you do that, your neck pain is that much better on the opposite side of pain. So it’s going to start moving more. It doesn’t mean you’re going to completely get out of pain. The majority of the time it does work where it stops the pain almost instantly, but it will subside. It will start to get it to come down, all because you’re going to start getting it to move.
Now, this is a common mistake as well. When we’re starting to work with the neck that doesn’t want to move, we’ll hit this point and think we’re going to get it really far. We’re talking about extra movement just a smidgen. And as you start to look left and right and get it to move more and more, this will start the process to move more and more. It’ll get your shoulders to drop a little bit more. So doing shoulder shrugs in this manner will start to get easier, which would then get more movement in the neck. It’s all about incremental movements, folks.
So if you can’t move your neck very well, this is one muscle tissue that actually works with you. It works with you, but it binds and you have to work with it ever so slightly. Get it to move ever so slightly. Shoulder shrug, move it throughout the day, not a couple of minutes. Get it to learn how to move all over again, and your neck pain will start to subside relatively quickly within that day, as long as you follow your body’s terms.
So, don’t go after the big knot at the shoulder. Go after the twist inside the levator and you’ll see a dramatic change in how fast things will go, how much your shoulders drop. The density within your traps will start to subside as well. That’s the tip for this week folks. If you know anybody that needs to live this active life, send them my way to ask questions, folks. I love answering these questions that you guys are giving me. I’ll answer them, video format. Show you exactly one thing that you can do to make it better. Until next time, see you later. Bye.