5 Best Cervical Stenosis Exercises & Stretches
hey everybody it’s Doctor Jo and unicorn Remy, and today I’m gonna show you my top 5 ways to relieve cervical stenosis so let’s get started. so for cervical stenosis, which is stenosis in your neck, and stenosis is just narrowing of the canals where the nerves go out. and so when those canals get smaller, then it presses on the nerve and that’s what causes a lot of the pain. so going back into extension a lot of times will aggravate that pain because it’ll make those canals even smaller.
so what I want to start off with is an active range of motion movement combined with isometric exercises. and so isometric exercises are basically you’re contracting the muscle, but you’re not moving. so it makes it less painful. and then you say “active range of motion isometrics not moving, how do I do that?” well you’re gonna start off with the isometric exercise. It is the best massage chair for the money. so you’re gonna push into something, usually your hand, to get that activation of the muscle and then relax and then you’re going to do that a couple times. and then do the active range of motion because a lot of times if you’re limited in the motion and you do those isometrics, then you’ll have more motion.
so we’re just going to start off with the cervical side bending. so if you’re going this way, and let’s say you just try it once or twice and it’s pretty tight, I’m just gonna place my hand on the side of my head, and I’m gonna push into my hand, and going that direction, but I’m not gonna go anywhere because I’m just pushing into the hand. so just push for about three to five seconds. I’m really just not pushing it a hundred percent, maybe just starting off with about 50 percent of your push, but push into it, relax, do that maybe twice in one spot, and then try going over again and see if you get a little bit further than you did before. if you do then go over a little bit just to the point where you’re maybe starting to feel some pain, and then do that isometric exercise again.
so pushing into it, relax, pushing into it, and then lots of times you can then go even more into that range of motion after you do that. so do that on both sides pushing in, going a little bit further, pushing in, but when you’re activating the muscle you’re just staying in one spot. so you can do that with side bending, you can also do that with cervical rotation. so this time I’m doing this motion, but now I’m just pushing into my hand again, but the motion that I’m doing is this. so if I get to here and it’s tight, then I push, push, relax, and then usually I can turn just a little bit more. so that’s the way to kind of combine them together and usually it’s really good because it just helps kind of loosen everything up, but you’re strengthening at the same time.