These stretches don’t require any equipment and take less than 10 minutes to perform. If you suffer from regular headaches give these stretches a try. It’s worth noting that these stretches aim to help relieve headaches/ muscle tightness. For individualised appropriate exercises booking a consultation with a qualified professional is recommended.

At Headaches NZ my goal is to enable you to live a pain-free lifestyle and improve your quality of life. If you feel like you’ve tried everything but your headaches are still affecting your energy and quality of life, contact me now to book a consultation.

While you gently pull your head down, use your right hand to hold the edge of the chair so your body isn't shifting in the movement, just your neck. Hold this stretch for up to 30 seconds then gently release. When doing this stretch make sure you sit up straight and you're not compressing your neck. You want to move your head forward and down.

You have two rhomboid muscles, one located on each side of your upper back. To stretch this muscle reach your arms out in front of you and place one hand on top of the other. Keep reaching out until you feel your shoulder blades stretching away from each other. Repeat this stretch as often as you feel necessary.

​​3 Easy Tips To Help Relieve and Prevent Headaches

How often do you complain about a headache? If it aggravates you constantly you're not alone! There are many different types of headaches including migraine, tension, cluster, vestibular, menstrual and cervicogenic. This blog will outline three helpful tips to help relieve and prevent headaches.

1. Posture
You may not connect bad posture with headaches but bad posture puts a strain on our joints and muscles. Adjusting your posture is something you can do to help relieve, but also prevent headaches. Next time you’re sitting at your desk, on the couch, or even with a friend at a cafe, try to keep your weight over your sit bones (these are the bones you can feel if you sit on your hands) and avoid slouching forward. Transferring your weight behind your seat bones and letting your chest collapse forward puts unnecessary strain on your muscles. Try focus on opening your chest by sitting tall and pulling your shoulder blades down and together. Widening your chest takes tension off the fibers of your upper trapezius muscle.

​Three Easy Stretches to Relieve Headaches​

Stretching the rhomboid muscle:

2. Position your head so it is balanced on your neck
If you think of your head as a filing cabinet drawer, you want to slide it back to a comfortable and balanced position over your neck. When your head is out of line it sets us up for muscle and joint strain because we are putting our upper body in positions it wasn’t designed to be in. This, in turn, causes pain and can contribute to headaches. If you suffer from tension headaches, in particular, try pulling in your chin and adjusting your posture. It is also helpful if you position your computer screen at eye level so you’re not constantly looking down allowing your neck to fall out of line and your shoulders to collapse forward.

3. Relax, de-stress, and breathe.
When we get stressed we often not aware we’re shallow breathing. Shallow breathing actually puts stress and tension on the muscles around your head and neck. When these muscles are under stress they can affect headaches through trigger point referral to the head, neck, and face, and altered position of the joints in your neck and head as the muscles attach to head and neck structures. Train yourself to take deep belly breaths, filling your abdomen with air (you can place a hand on your stomach and feel it rise on your inhale) and make sure to take a small break every hour to check in with your breathing. More often than not you aren’t even aware you’re shallow breathing so it’s important to stop, relax and breathe every now and again.

There are definitely times when medication is warranted to relieve an unwanted headache but try and become more aware of what your body is doing. Regularly check your posture and neck alignment while you’re sitting in front of your laptop or computer and remember to take some time out each day to breathe and relax.

Hopefully, you’ve taken something away from this blog. Give these three tips a try over the next few weeks and see if they make a difference to how frequent your headaches visit.

At Sue Wenham Physiotherapy I provide a range of physiotherapy services but have a special focus on treating people who are suffering from headaches and migraines. If you suffer from chronic headaches check out our services page or contact me to discuss treatment options.  

A great stretch you can do to relieve the tension on this muscle is to take a seat in a chair and rotate your head 45 degrees to the left or the right depending on which side you want to stretch first. (For this example we’ll say you've chosen to stretch the right side first).  Once you've turned your head 45 degrees to the left, gently place your left hand behind your head and pull it toward your left knee at the same 45 degree angle.

Headaches NZ

Stretching the Levator scapulae:

The levator scapulae is the thin flat muscle that runs between the upper part of your shoulder blades and the top four cervical vertebrae and attaches just below the upper part of your trapezius. You will find that this muscle becomes tight if you have poor posture or when you experience stress. You might notice that in times of stress your shoulders rise in response to tension.

Three muscles that are prone to tension and stress contributing to headaches are the levator scapulae, your upper trapezius, and your rhomboid muscles. This blog will outline an easy stretch for each of these muscles. You will find that stretching these muscles regularly will help relieve muscle tension, in turn, relieving those headaches that just keep coming back.

Stretching the trapezius muscle:

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A tight trapezius can be brought on by a number of things. Maybe you’ve starting doing a lot of overhead activities/weights at the gym, or maybe you have a desk job and you’ve been sitting for too long. You can perform the same stretch outlined above, but another easy stretch for the upper part of the trapezius muscle to do is to sit up straight in a chair and gently take your (left) ear down towards your (left) shoulder, you can add a little extra pressure using the (left) hand over the top of your head. Like the levator scapulae stretch, make sure you are not compressing your neck. Another quick exercise you can do at your desk is shoulder shrugs. Lift your shoulders all the way up towards your ears, hold for a few seconds, then release to a relaxed position. Shoulder shrugs can help prevent your trapezius from getting too tight in the first place.