Upper Back Pain Relief and Improved Posture with Yogic Stretching

Upper back and neck problems caused by stressed muscles is becoming more and more common now a days. The reason for this is increasing numbers of jobs which require us to sit in front of computers for long hours in a static position. Another reason is when we do desk job we usually ignore the correct posture to use while sitting.

Although maintaining the correct posture is important, but when we try to concentrate on the task for some time, it is also easy to forget about maintaining the posture. We will invariably push our chins forward and the back will also bend. For most people, if we try to continuously concentrate on maintaining the posture then it becomes difficult to focus on the work.

This creates many health problems like the upper back and neck muscles remaining very tired. You will always feel tired and lack of energy. If you still ignore these warning signs, you would end up with neck pain and eventually headaches and tired eyes and spondylosis.

Let us see two easy solution to strengthen the upper back muscles and avoid the associated health problems.

1. Gomukh Asana (Cow Faced Posture) - This pose if done sitting on the mat, with one leg above another and one hand holding the other at the back like shown in the picture above. For some people it may be difficult to hold the hands, but you can hold a towel or cloth and try to hold two ends of the towel with both ends. Then try to bring the hands as close as possible. This can be also done at office while sitting on a chair. Read more about Gomukh Asana (cow faced pose) to learn more.


2. Parsvottanasana - Here the hands would join with each other at the back and would be similar to namaste. For more details you can read Improve Posture with Parsvottansana. Although the are more steps to this pose as you can find in the link, but for our current topic of discussion, this is the important step.

Both these poses open up the shoulders and all the major muscles around the region, increasing the blood flow, removing the tiredness and making them stronger. In the long run, if you practice regularly these two poses, you posture would automatically become strong enough to avoid the problems in future.