You’re suffering from aching, painful shoulders, neck stiffness, and you might even be getting headaches too. It gets worse when you sleep, but mysteriously better when you have a drink or two? Sound familiar?

This is one of the most common, aggravating – yet easy-to-treat set of conditions found in the modern day work environment.

Surprisingly enough we weren’t designed to sit in the same position for 8 hours a day. But before you go and tell your boss what you think of him/her, and jump on a jet plane for a ‘long break’, there’s some incredibly basic and easy-to-follow principles you can learn, which could drastically improve your lot!

At the bottom of this quandry is usually one word – MOVEMENT. The simple reason most of us suffer these aches and pains is LACK OF MOVEMENT. In short, your body is designed for movement. When it doesn’t move for long periods of time it becomes unhappy, starts complaining, and that’s when you feel ‘pain’.

But what’s happening?

Our muscles are coated in a strong, thin film of connective tissue called ‘fascia’. If you’ve ever prepared chicken, you might remember taking the skin off the bird and seeing the membrane covering all the muscles? That’s fascia. As well as covering the whole muscle, it covers all the individual muscle fibres too. In fact, our ‘muscle’ is nothing more than a type of protein paste, with fascia forming surrounding the paste, much like a sausage, to form individual, microscopic muscle fibres. These in turn are coated with more fascia – which binds all the ‘sausages’ together to form what you see as a big ‘muscle’.

Following so far? Now as you can imagine, every time our muscles move, the fascia gets worn down. In order to maintain our structure, it needs to grow – constantly. Which is all well and good in a healthy, moving body – it grows, it gets worn down etc, etc. But in a body that isn’t moving. Well, that’s where the drama really starts.

Ouch!

You’re sitting at your desk, slumped over the computer in the same position you’ve been in all day. The muscles aren’t moving, yet the fascia continues to grow. As we now know, the fascia isn’t being ‘worn down’ by the movement, so, continuing to grow, it starts further restricting movement in already stiff areas. It’s not getting lubricated so it becomes dry and forms a hard, compact substance. Furthermore, muscle waste such as lactic acid gets trapped too. You now have a big, nasty traffic jam going on. And we all know how painful they can be!

So clever clogs, what’s the answer?

Well if you remember, the cause of the pain was LACK OF MOVEMENT. So it stands to reason that the solution here is MOVEMENT. You need to move those muscles, regularly. Get up, go and get a drink of water. Slowly shrug your shoulders – both forwards, and backwards. Slowly rotate your neck by looking to the left, then the right. Then slowly look up, and slowly look down. Everything should be done slowly, taking care to really feel what you are doing. Try shutting your eyes when you do it – this will heighten your senses surrounding your body awareness.

And once you’ve gone through these basic movements, get creative. You don’t have to launch into a contemporary dance routine in the middle of the office, but you can explore where your restrictions are, and see how they feel when you slowly stretch them.

It might all feel a little clunky at first. You’ll probably wonder if you’re doing it right. But keep trying, it’s a learning process.

Remember that getting to know your body is a journey, so don’t expect it to all come at once.

Is that it?

Well yes and no. Sometimes it’s as simple as learning how to move the body – and the techniques described above will suffice. But sometimes your body will be so ‘set’ in a cycle of dysfunction that it will have created further imbalances and weaknesses. These can be treated by a good sports and remedial therapist who can recommend easy stretches and relaxing exercises that will help you to restore function. Occasionally you may need to be referred to another specialist, which a good sports and remedial massage therapist will be able to recommend.

And remember – if you’re suffering from regular headaches you should always go and get checked out by your doctor!

Do your friends and loved ones a favour – Please forward this on to anyone you think who might be helped by the info within!