Day 15

Day 15

Yesterday was about parts (sort of). Well today is about a muscle area that get way too much work and is rarely treated properly…the neck! I mean it’s holding about 15 pounds all the time (except for when you’re sleeping)! If you held out your arm for as long as possible, you’d probably be feeling the burn within a few minutes. You know the neck is neglected each time someone sneaks up behind you to massage it for you and you are surprised to find how tense your neck is.

So what’s to be done about it? Sure you can exercise it! That does help strengthen it. However, we don’t really need to much. I mean that when you exercise your upper body, you typically are working your neck muscles to help balance your head and keep it from bouncing around. What’s probably more important to know is how to keep it from being worked too much. Relax! The answer is simple, although it can be difficult to do at times. Relax…yes, just relaxing can be so helpful to our physical and spiritual health but can be so hard for us to do. Don’t tense up. Here’s the deal. Working yourself too hard, especially when you don’t mean to leads to tense muscles, soreness, and exhaustion, but not the kind of exhaustion that helps build muscles and make you stronger. This kind just wipes you out. Sometimes your body can’t take the stress any more and gives you a painful message – that signal that shoots straight through you, contorting your neck and making you look like a confused dog with it’s head cocked to the side (except that your face isn’t as cute, especially when your face screams, “Oh my gosh. Was I just shot in the neck?!?!”)

So in the midst of exercising your body, mind, and spirit, remember to relax once in a while and to push yourself in only the intended areas.