How To Fix Cervical Stenosis Without Surgery | 3 Simple Exercises

Cervical stenosis and neck pain from cervical stenosis can be fixed naturally without surgery. In most cases, it is possible to reduce the neck pain, increase the mobility so that you are not so stiff sleep better at night and on pinched nerves in your neck. In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to begin to fix cervical stenosis.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. This channel is focused on helping people keep healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and medication. Please subscribe to our channel and turn on your notifications so that you don’t miss any of the helpful videos that we put out every week.

If you’re looking for a video on what cervical stenosis is, I’ve got a video for that and it’s linked down in the description below. Just go down there you’ll find it. In this video. Today I’m going to tell you about what to do. So this is the practical advice. The other videos explaining cervical stenosis, I got a diagram and everything. So go check that out if you want to learn more.

So there are three exercises that I’m going to show you to begin to fix your cervical stenosis problem. For the first one, you’re going to need a towel or a pillowcase. So get one of those handy, pause the video, go find one if you need to. I’m going to grab mine from right here got a pillowcase. And all you do is fold it in half the long way once, make sure it’s kind of level even. And then do it again, doesn’t have to be perfect, then what you’re going to do is start to twist the pillowcase so that it gets kind of a little hard, but still has some softness to it because it’s cloth.

Same thing with a towel, then you get to put it around your neck. And this stretch is a neck joint stretch rule specific to joints. It’s designed to open up the joints where the stenosis is that you can free up the space for the nerves. This will also make you more mobile, so you don’t have so much stiffness. I’ll tell you about how long to do this. And how often do this in a moment, let me just show you what to do.

First, you’re going to hold the pillowcase or towel just like so put one hand down against your chest, you’re going to practice both sides. So just pick a side for now. Then with your other hand, you’re going to pull and turn your head slightly. And as you pull that pillowcase or towel will press against the stiff joints. And you can free it up as you turn your head, you can look down a bit, you can look up a bit you can play around with the motion.

Now where to put this is where you feel the most stiffness. And you might need to work your whole neck. But what I want to caution you on is if you feel like it isn’t very stiff when you do a certain part of your neck. Don’t hang out there too much, because you might already be too loose at that part. And if you do this stretch on that part of your neck that doesn’t really feel stiff, you’re going to overstretch an already flexible part of your neck.

So don’t over stretch loose joints, please. So adjusted to where you need it to where it’s most stiff, and then just work into it. You want to do this about a minute or two on each side. So you can see it in real time here, I’m adjusting going down to four levels, I don’t feel a stiff down here. So I’m not going to do that I’m going to come back up to the top, and I’m just bouncing a few times, it doesn’t matter how many exactly, then I’m going to do the other side by switching my hands.

I like to pull my right hand; it doesn’t really matter which side you pull with as long as you can generate the force by pulling on the on the towel of the pillowcase and get that pressure onto your neck. So if I wanted to see, I could do it this way, like so it doesn’t really matter how you have your hands and just turn and stretch your head and stretch your neck by turning your head and pulling with your hand on that pillow case.

So this works remarkably well as long as you’re not super irritated in your neck. If you’ve got stiffness, this will free it up very nicely for you do this as often as you need if you feel like it stiffens up again within an hour. So you might need to be doing this hourly. Some people get away with doing this just once a day, as little as that much. You could be strategic for when you feel the most difference like maybe first thing in the morning, or before you go to bed if you tend to get stiffer at the end of the day.

Now, you generally can’t do too much of this unless you’re stretching out the joint that’s already very loose. The way that you’ll know that it aggravates is if after you’re doing after you’re done doing this stretch and it feels more uncomfortable, you probably overstretched and already loose joint. Please don’t proceed on stretching that part of your neck, you need to go to the stiffest parts, which is usually a pyre in the neck.

The second exercise is called net curls. And there’s if you’ve looked at videos for cervical stenosis exercises, you’ve probably seen some that that they call them chin attractions or double chins we do that. This is a variation on that so that you can open up the holes on your neck. Because if you just come back like that, if you make a double chin motion, which you’re going to have to do for this exercise, it doesn’t really matter.

Move the whole neck, it just aligns up the bones, which is helpful and it fires at the right muscles. But we need to open up the holes in the neck so that the nerves can be freed up and you can work on that cervical stenosis problem. And it really does help neck pain quite a bit. So here’s what this looks like you’re going to double chin, as much as you can literally shove that chin into your neck, you should be feeling the muscles that are behind your throat, tighten up a little bit, that’s okay, as long as it’s not painful. Don’t push too hard if it’s painful.

Once you’re there, hold your chin in position. And then what you’re going to do is start to bring your chin down in your chest goes from far as you comfortably can. And then you just reverse the motion so straight now your neck, but keep your chin tucked until the very end. If you think of it this way, if each of my head into my fist here is a neck bone, you’re bending one neck bone at a time so that you can segmentally bend the neck.

When you do that you don’t you avoid unhinging at one level of your neck while keeping the other parts of your neck from moving, because that’s what usually happens if you aren’t used to doing this type of motion. If you can’t adequately do this, your neck joints won’t move uniformly, they’ll move a lot at one level. That’s why you can generate one level of your spine that that’s more loose.

That’s why you can create more freedom of movement at one spot, while others remain more stiff. This exercise helps you to evenly move all the joints in your neck, so that you can free up the space where the stenosis is happening on the sides in the middle of the neck. So let me show you this. Again, I want you to do this 10 times. I’m just going to do it a few more times here. But you’re going to pause this video, we’re going to do all 10.

So you can take your time with it, shrink the double chin, and then push your chin into your chest and look all the way down. Just hang out here for a second. And then uncross your neck. Keep the double chin up to the end and then relax. And then repeat it double chin, look all the way down. You might feel stressed in the back of your head and neck, upper back area even. That’s okay, and then come back up.

And repeat that 10 times, you might actually get tired doing this that happens frequently, especially in those muscles that are right behind the throat, those those double chin muscles. That’s good, we want that to happen as long as there’s no lingering pain afterwards. That’s not a bad problem at all.

Let me warn you one more thing, when you look all the way down. If you get pain that shoots down the back of your neck into the upper back area, that could be a nerve problem that we see on occasion, do not keep going all the way down to where you feel that neck pain or that nerve pain, that shooting pain, what you need to do is do the exercise still.

But as soon as you feel that edge of that stretch or pain happening, that’s your stopping point, you may not be able to go all the way down, then come back up. And the cool thing about this exercise is if you do have that shooting pain, just keep doing the exercise and what should happen in almost all the cases that I’ve seen here in the clinic is it will improve, you’ll be able to go a little further before you feel a stretch or that shooting pain because this exercise helps alleviate that problem.

So you’re looking at doing this neck curl exercise 10 reps, and that would do it pretty often I would do this exercise every two hours even every hour. As long as your schedule allows for it, the exercise will take you just a couple of minutes, maybe three at most, take your time do the motion properly, and you’ll begin to free up those neck joints while strengthening the right muscles to remain free in those neck joints. So you can have space for those nerves that come out the sides of the spine in the middle of the spine as well.

The third exercise if I want we’re going to cover in this video today is overhead shrugs. Now let me just give you some details about this exercise. If you’ve got a shoulder problem, you’ve got to exercise some caution I’ll show you how to modify the exercise so that you’re not aggravating a shoulder problem.

 And you’ve got to also keep your neck tucked slightly like we just did in the last exercise throughout the entire overhead reach motion, that you’re going to get tired in the upper trap muscles which is a good thing the more strength you have in these upper trap muscles, the more relief you’ve got in your neck, you can take pressure off the joints the rosette joints is what they’re called the holes where the nerves come out the foramen the lateral framing, and that takes pressure off the nerves it also helps out with disc issues.

If you’ve got a herniated disc in addition to the stenosis, which is very common, he can take pressure off the discs. Now this exercise is just level one. If you got a rotator cuff tear or some other shoulder issue that bothers you, just wait to see this exercise and then I’ll show you the modification. So here we go. You’re going to chin tuck slightly, not 100% like we did the last one think of it more like 50% so just a slight chin tuck, you should feel those muscles behind the throat working just a bit.

Then maintaining your head and neck posture. You got to work to maintain it because your heads going to want to shove forward Like this, we’re coming out of that chin tuck position, you’ve got to fight to stay there. So stay there, you’re going to raise your arms up. And as you come up, begin to shrug your shoulders as hard as you can.

By the time you get all the way up and hold it there for 10 seconds, make sure to check your chin, your chin, you don’t want to do this, but you got to keep it tucked a little bit, a little bit of a double chin. And after about 10 seconds, you can begin to relax with shoulders and bring your arms down and relax your head and chin as well. You can repeat this 10 times.

So start again by sucking the chin just slightly 50%, then reaching up and as you reach up, shrug your shoulders all the way up and double check your chin to make sure that your chin hasn’t moved positions, you haven’t tipped your head up, back or shoved your head forward, you got to keep that chin tucked down just a bit. And big, big shrug. Hold those shoulders up as high as you can.

It’s as if you’re trying to shove this party your shoulders on both sides up in your ears every time you come up. So let me do another rep here. chin tuck a little bit, reach up and I’m trying to shove my shoulders into my ears, some people can actually reach some can’t, that’s okay, just make sure you’re giving it your full effort and hold it there for 10 seconds.

Now one more thing is it’s okay, if your arms aren’t directly up over your head. If you watch me from the side view, chin tucked all the way up, I’m kind of forward I’m like my arms aren’t all the way up, I just don’t have the flexibility. Genetically, I’m not that flexible to go all the way up you might be and that’s okay, you do what works best for you.

The number one thing on this exercise is that you feel these muscles working right here, the double chin muscles behind your throat. And really no neck pain or neck discomfort while you’re doing this. In fact, it should feel relieving the more of this city you’re doing your fire those muscles that we’re trying to fire here, you should feel like your neck is more free. And there’s less discomfort going through this exercise. In some cases, especially very weak individuals, I’ll have them do this once every hour, 10 reps holding for 10 seconds.

Once every hour, what you might find is that every two hours works for you or three times a day works for you. The frequency of this exercise just varies depending on the severity of the weakness and the severity of the problem as well. In extreme cases, in a very aggravated cervical stenosis neck pain person, we might it might be necessary for them to eventually work up to doing this every hour.

But in the beginning, they may be too irritated to do that, it may be necessary for them to just do this a few times a day. And we’ll work up to doing it every hour to build the strength they need to know this is level one of this exercise we have more variations of this exercise, eventually need to hold the weight and pick it up like that, because this muscle is critically important to make to get stronger in order to take the pressure off the neck to improve the cervical stenosis situation. But this is how you would begin to fix a cervical stenosis problem.

Now let’s cover that modification in case you have shoulder problems, if you are thinking I raise my arm up and my shoulder is killing me, here’s how you can switch this exercise up just a bit. Same thing, you’re going to tuck the chin in a little bit, you’re going to feel those neck muscles working behind your throat, then instead of reaching all the way up, you’re just going to come up to about right here. The exact angle is important.

The idea is you’re just in a comfortable position with your shoulders in arms. And you can be in a little bit or out a little bit, get comfortable. But you still have to shrug, keep that Chin up position, and then shrug all that you can and just come up as much as you can. Now that hurts your shoulders too, there’s a way to make it even easier.

So if you find a wall nearby, same thing, like I said, Just lean your hands gently against the wall, not your body, you don’t want to lean forward on the body just kind of want to step up towards the wall so that your arms touch the wall and shrug from there. So look like this. And that little bit of contact takes off a lot of pressure from the shoulders. And oftentimes people with shoulder problems can now do this exercise pain free in their shoulders.

If you’re going to do it like that, this exercise is going to help out your shoulders too likely. So don’t stay at that level forever, you need to eventually come up to the first one that I mentioned in this video, except do it according to your body’s tolerance to your shoulders tolerance. So you can test it out every now and then. But make sure that you’re using a wall or get off the wall and just keep your arms like this and see what you can tolerate so that your shoulders are hurting more.

So these exercises are a great starting point. These are exercises that I would give a client here that has cervical stenosis, they’ll come in with a MRI or an X ray and the doctor would have told them to have cervical stenosis, you know, check them by hand and I’ll feel they’re joined to look at their nerves. I’ll do all this stuff that we have to check here a specialist physical therapist, and if they are a true cervical stenosis patient, then these or exercises that I would give them. I want to know if these exercises are working for you.

So drop a comment, let us know, if you try them out. And if they’re of any benefit for you, they should give you some pretty quick relief. If you try them out even for just a day or a few times in a day to do three rounds of the exercises, for example, even just one round, if you do thoroughly, it should begin to give you an effect.

These aren’t exercises you need to wait, you know, a week or two weeks for, they should give you a quick effect. Now they’re not exercises that you’ll stay at indefinitely and expect to fix the cervical stenosis problem. That’s very important. I don’t want you to watch this video and think I found a cure and this is going to fix cervical stenosis forever. This is a starting point so that you can eventually work up to the next levels, and then truly cure your cervical stenosis. And that being said, the cure for cervical stenosis, it depends on how you define a cure.

If you get better in your neck pain in doing these exercises and progressions of these exercises, then I say that’s a pretty darn good success. And I would label it as a cure. But if you’re in that situation where you feel better, you’re sleeping better at night, your neck is less stiff, you’re able to do more things, but you wouldn’t got an X ray or an MRI. And they still say that you have cervical stenosis, whereby X ray or MRI by imaging standards, you’re not cured, you still have the findings on the imaging.

But if you’re able to do everything that you want, and the stenosis is under control, it’s not irritated and it’s not getting worse. That’s a situation where you don’t have to have surgery, rely on medications or injections. And I’d say that’s pretty darn good all live with that you could probably live your last day feeling great and not worried about your cervical stenosis.

If you’re looking for more expert help you want somebody to get their hands on your neck and free up the joints because the towel just isn’t quite working for you or these exercises just you’re not getting them right or you don’t feel like they’re the right thing. Or maybe you think that you’ve got more than cervical stenosis going on. Like it’s it’s maybe an arthritis issue on top of that or a disc issue. You’ve got shoulder problems in addition to the neck problem.

If you want specialists help, then I want to invite you to apply for a discovery visit with us. All you’ve got to do is scroll down to the bottom of the page here and find the button that says apply for a 20-minute discovery visit. And leave us your details there and you’ll be you’ll start the application process for a discovery visit.

What a discovery visit is it’s a 20-minute appointment with a specialist physical therapist or we’ll take a look at your problem we can do virtually by the way we can get on a video call and discuss your issue with you over the video we’ll look at your move, we’ll have some tests that you can do, we can watch you to do them.

Of course, if you’re here in person, we’ll get our hands on your neck and feel the joints and muscles and nerves so that we can give you a diagnosis for your problem. tell you if it really is cervical stenosis. Let’s you know there’s other things at play, or if it’s something completely different, and we’ll let you know what it is.

And if we can help you, we’ll let you know right away so that you can go get the help that you need and you’re not wasting your time. At this discovery visit our goal is for you to leave our office here or leave a video call and feel like you have all the information that you need to make the next best decision about your cervical stenosis or your neck pain problem. So once again, scroll to the bottom of the page find that button.

Once a form pops up after you hit your button. Just leave us your details and one of my staff will call you back as fast as possible to let you know when the next steps to apply for that discovery visit. Thanks so much and we hope to be a part of your success story real soon. Bye.