A physical therapist shows how pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth for ten seconds can unlock neck stiffness. The trick activates stabilizer muscles. Test your range of motion before and after to see the difference.
First, we're going to assess your range of motion. Make sure you're checking how far can you turn your head in each direction, rotations, tilts, and up and down. Get an idea if any of those hurt, if any of them feel stiff, and now you've got your baseline. So now we're going to do 3 different exercises and then we're going to reassess after each exercise. The first one is going to be pressing the tongue into the roof of your mouth. We're going to do this for about 10 seconds with about 60 to 80% effort. So you're not pressing as hard as you can. The other thing that's really important to understand here is when you press your tongue to the roof of your mouth, make sure your tongue is not touching your teeth, but actually slightly behind. So go ahead and try that. Press it into the roof of your mouth for about 10 seconds and try to breathe normally. Try not to let this stress you out. What you will notice though is that the muscles in your neck start to get active, and that's a sign that now you're starting to get the stabilization in there. So now go ahead and relax and try and turn your head in those same directions and see if it's better.
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