How Crack Your Neck When You Sleep On It Wrong

In this video today I’m going to show you how to crack your own neck. If you’ve been sleeping on it wrong, there’s a few safety tips, I’m going to take a moment to share with you so that you’re safe doing this. The last technique that I’m going to show involves quick twisting, and that’s where there’s a bit of danger. But if you’re clear to do it, then it’s going to provide you amazing relief for your neck.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh, I’m a specialist Physical Therapist here at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, medications and injections. Please consider subscribing to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every week. Let me tell you the safety concerns that you need to pay close attention to. You don’t want to be doing this if you have headaches.

That’s the biggest reason why people go look to crack their neck. Now if you’ve got headaches, one of the number one signs of having an artery damage in your neck that could worsen if you pop your own neck. Or if you go to a chiropractor or somebody that can pop in neck. One of those signs is headaches. So you’ve got to be very careful about popping your neck and you’ve got headache pain.

This is only for people that have neck stiffness, neck pain, especially they woke up like this after a night that didn’t go too well for them. Some other concerns are having high blood pressure experiencing dizziness, vertigo, nausea, vomiting, having difficulty speaking like having a lot of stuttering, or difficulty swallowing as well. And if you’re experiencing double vision, this is also something that you should not be looking to doing your neck.

If you had a recent accident or head trauma, then you need to go see a doctor, you need to go get X rays and make sure that your neck ligaments are all intact. You don’t want to be twisting your neck if you got some ruptured ligaments or stretched out ligaments in your neck, you could really hurt yourself. Accidents and head trauma may include a car accident, bicycle accident falling on your head getting hit in the head, any one of those things can be considered head trauma.

The last concern is having moderate to severe neck arthritis. And the reason it’s of concern is if you’ve got neck arthritis and inside the joints of your neck, the surfaces have become rough and aren’t going to move very good and possibly become agitated. If you force them to turn, you need to have mild arthritis or no arthritis whatsoever, because then you have the best chance at having the most benefit from what I’m going to be showing you next.

If you’re forcing a rough joint to move, it’s likely going to become irritated, and this is probably going to hurt you in the long run. Now, that being said, if you’ve got any of these conditions, go get the appropriate medical attention and don’t proceed with anything that I’m going to show you next. Now if you don’t have any of those conditions, you don’t have to deal with a needed dizziness, the nausea, you don’t really have any severe arthritis or moderate arthritis haven’t had any car accidents.

You are otherwise healthy. You just woke up not feeling good as happened to me before. Then you’re good to proceed into the techniques that I’m going to show you. I recommend you use two materials you’re going to need at least one of them. me grab one here you need a pillowcase here. So this is a pillowcase. This is a longer one it’s a queen size pillowcase for you can use a standard size pillowcase as well.

But I like the long way just because you have better handles and you’re also I recommend you use a stretch out strap one of these straps like this now I’ve got links in the description below for Amazon purchases for these. If you wanted to get these yourself you can you can get by without the stretch out strap. But I think it’s a lot better if you have the stretch out strap. So if you what you’re going to be doing if you don’t have the stretch out strap, let me show you that first. You’re just going to roll this towel up.

I’m sorry, this pillowcase up in half fold in half, fold in half again, and then twist it a bunch of times to get a nice twisted pillowcase just like this. And that’s going to be going around your neck for the techniques we’re going to be using. Now if you have the stretch out strap, you’re going to do the same thing. But put the stretch out strap in the middle of it. So I’m going to lay this pillowcase down on the table just like so. Get the strap out and lay that in about the middle of it.

It’s okay if it’s not perfect. Then you’re going to fold it over and over again. And then just start you can start twisting it up the same exact way that you did without the stretch out strap. Now you’ve got a much tougher but soft and padded surface to work on your neck with the next I’m going to cover three techniques that you use this to stretch out your neck.

The first one is a distraction technique. So get your pillowcase with your stretch out strap inside, put it around your neck just like so you’re going to grab the ends here and you can just grab the stretch out strap if your pillowcase is smaller, that’s okay. I’m just going to grab here because it feels comfortable for me. And you’re going to move the strap the pillowcase and strap up to the base of your neck because what you’re going to be doing is pulling upwards to provide what we call distraction or opening up the joints on the backside of your neck.

So I’m going to show you from behind here, the base of my neck of my skull, the base of my skull is about right here. So I’m going to say I’m going to put the pillowcase right on the base of my skull, just like that. Next, I’m going to be pulling upwards right here. And just make sure your ears are comfortable. Just like so allow your head to come down. So you might do this motion while you’re pulling. And you can hang out there and give yourself some sustained force where you just hold it.

Or you can bounce a bit if you like, you can also tip your head over the side and pull this way or pull this way. And you can even add a little bit of rotation if you want, turn your head and pull in that direction. So I’m going to show you all of those directions here some pulling first, straight directly up, bouncing here holding, I’m going to turn my head sideways a bit. And I’m pulling a little bit more with this side to get my head to open up this direction, my joints can go the other way.

Pull, if you choke up like I’m going to do, you can hook up on the handles, and you can add a rotation. So just like that, and pull. And notice I’m not going straight up, I’m kind of coming at an angle like that, you want to push out in that direction, because that’s the way the joints goes, you’re going to be pushing at about a 45 degree angle away from your body. Same thing on the other side, I’m twisting a bit, you can add the twist and the turn at the same time.

If you want, like the twist and side bend, there isn’t really a big, secure way to do it a certain way to do it, you got to find where your neck meets the most resistance. Now, if you’re pulling upwards, and you feel a little bit of pain, move cautiously into it, you don’t want to force your way through it, you want to make sure that you ease your way into it.

Because it might be that if you force your way into it, you’re going to seize up your neck, you want to always start gentle, and move into the more aggressive forces and directions as you feel comfortable. I’m going to show you two more techniques. But let me just tell you a bit more, you want to do this as often as you need it, you might wear this around your neck while you’re dealing with a stiff neck problems just today, you can do it very frequently, you could do this several times a day, 5, 10, 15, 20 times a day.

It’s just going to take you a minute or so to do each one, you don’t have to do it for a long amount of time, like 10 minutes at a time is just too much, I wouldn’t spend more than about 30 seconds per technique that I’m going to show you here. To get the effect that you need, you want to spend a little bit more time like a minute each technique, then you could do that. But you’re going to get diminishing returns.

If you hang out there for five minutes. Some people will do it, I don’t think it’s going to necessarily hurt you. But you’re better off doing the high frequency with this meaning, do it for a minute or so or 30 seconds to a minute and then let it go for a while you’re next not going to clear up like the 100% with that. Give it give yourself about 15, 20, 30 minutes or even an hour. And then do it again. And just keep going like that throughout the day until this frees up.

The next technique is a gentle neck twist. Now this is going to set up a quick twist. That’s more chiropractic like, but you want to start out with a very gentle motion first to get an idea for how you’re going to move. And to make sure that you know your limits, you’re not going to overdo this on yourself. So you’re just going to grab the handle same way. Now instead of having this at the base of your skull, you’re going to move it a little bit lower in your neck.

Ideally, find the spot that hurts your neck and put the pillowcase and stretch out strap right over that spot. Once you’re over that spot, then what you’re going to do is put one hand down, you’re going to turn and pull into a twist just like so. So it’s my right side right here. I’m using my right hand to turn to the left and move over this way.

So gentle stretches, I’m just bouncing real light here. And with this bottom hand, you can kind of do a combined push and pull motion like I’m allowing some tension to go up with my left hand as I’m pulling my right hand and you’ll do the opposite going the other direction. Let me just show you this at first. I’m kind of letting this I’m not letting it slide but it’s like it’s going to slide because it’s going to grab my skin on my neck.

As you can see I can move that skin. Moving that skin on my neck right here allows you to kind of grab the bones and move them over each other so that you can free up some neck joint motion. Then you can go the other way. You’re just going to pull the other hand and just gently move over like that you can use this other hand that gets your skin and pull it over along with the joint and you can see I’m turned all the way your neck doesn’t turn that much.

Just go to what you can do if you’re if you’re having trouble training all the way one way you can only go so far like this far and just hanging out at that angle. And if you can gradually free up more motion and get further and further than that’s progress, you’re doing the right thing. If you feel comfortable this technique, let me show you the more aggressive quick neck twist technique using the same method that we’ve been using so far.

So get that pillowcase on the right spot on your neck where you feel like you, you need some more motion. And then just like we were doing that neck movement, you see that how moving my neck skin like this, you’re going to do it a lot quicker, but allow your head to twist with the motion. Again, go back to the beginning part of this video, make sure you don’t have any of the safety concerns that we talked about before you proceed.

Because I want you to be safe and not have any injuries. This is generally saved for the majority of the population. But if you got any of those conditions that I mentioned, you need to not do this. Let’s assume you’re clear. So here’s what it’s going to look like to pop your own neck, my neck might pop, I don’t know it’s popped earlier today. So might be okay for the day. But I do have some tension on the top right part of my neck about right here.

So I’m going to put that pillowcase and stretch out strap right over it. And I’m going to get my I’m going to do some warm up polls like this and get my head motion to go to get near the end of what I can turn, and then just give it a quick thrust. And it didn’t pop. But it felt good. It felt like I freed up some motion. And that’s okay.

By the way, let me just talk about that if you don’t get a pop, it doesn’t mean you need to keep going and aggressively move it. What you need to do is check how you move before you do all this and then check how you move afterwards. And even if you didn’t get a pop, it was successful, you can move better. Afterwards, the pop is not the necessary thing. It’s a confirming thing. If you do get pops and cracks in your neck as you’re doing this, then fantastic.

That’s confirmation that you’re on the right track likely, as long as there’s no pain associated with this should be relieving. But you don’t want to force a pop if you can’t get it within a few tries. So I try to one so far, I was doing some warm up motions, just in preparation for the big tug that I did. But I do it a couple more times, I’m going to go up and down my neck a few levels to make sure I Clear Motion and all my neck.

So warm up, get to the end, and go warm up one more time. I think that’s all I’m going to get and I can turn pretty good there. So then I’m going to go a little bit lower the same thing to the left. That’s all I got. So I’m going to go to the right just to make sure I have full motion both directions. You go what I did there. Let me explain I slid, you don’t want to slide on your skin, you don’t want to let this travel on your skin like that, you’re going to rub yourself a little too hard and get a friction burn, you want to just grab your skin.

So the only amount of motion that I’m doing here is what my skin allows me to do, which if you’ve got thin skin, if you’re older and your skin is thinner, please be careful, you might just go with a pillowcase. Without the stretch out strap as this does add a lot more grip to your neck. So let me finish going through my reps here, you’re just going to get that skin motion, twist a little higher up. Notice I’ve been looking kind of down you can do this look it up as well just like so. actually going to pop on that one, I’m going to go the other directions while looking up.

That was actually more effective for me actually got a little pop on that one. And I feel a release of motion as well. And hopefully this helps you out. If you’re dealing with chronic neck stiffness. When you wake up, you’ve got a deeper rooted problem like you’ve got some muscle imbalances in your neck and shoulders that are setting this up and causing it to recur frequently. And so you need to make sure you go treat the root problem which is usually getting stronger in certain muscle groups.

So that this isn’t stiffening up on you all the time. It is not a normal thing for you to run into a stiff neck on a monthly basis or even several times a year. It’s okay that it happens once in a while maybe a few times in a lifetime, for a normal average neck that is healthy. But if you’ve got neck problems and you’re you’ll be dealing with this more frequently, it’s going to become more intense each time that it comes on. And that’s a sign that you’ve got some root issues that you’ve got to address.

We’ve got tons of videos that help you to address those root problems. We’ve got a playlist linked below for neck pain help go check that out if you want to look for some exercises and more explanations on why your neck is becoming this way. I hope this video was good for you. Give us a thumbs up if you liked it. And don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already so that you don’t miss out on any of our helpful tips that we post every single week. We’ll catch in the next video guys. Bye.