In this instructional video, psychotherapist and trainer Akim "Akim Aso" Ekemba Sooh explains why many people wake up with a stiff or painful neck and offers concrete steps to address it. He outlines four primary contributors: (1) recent or past trauma such as whiplash, which can harden tissues and lock the neck in a bad position if not treated promptly; (2) postural or overuse strain, especially forward‑head posture from prolonged desk, smartphone, or tablet use, which creates chronic tension and requires a targeted corrective‑exercise program combined with ergonomic changes; (3) underlying cervical pathology like radiculopathy or spinal stenosis, which may need specific, cautious treatment to avoid aggravating pinched nerves; and (4) poor sleep habits or inappropriate pillows that keep the neck in a compromised position during the night. He stresses that simply “medicating” the pain (e.g., hot compresses) does not resolve the underlying issue and can lead to chronic adaptation. The video also warns against generic self‑treatments that might worsen nerve compression, urging viewers to seek professional assessment. Finally, Ekemba Sooh promotes his holistic system, offering a free diagnostic consultation and a free report on sustainable training, and encourages viewers to subscribe for more spinal‑health content.
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Did you wake up this morning and your neck was stiff? You know, the kind where you can't look over your shoulder? Well, I want you to stay tuned because there's a bunch of different reasons that can happen, which means there are a bunch of different solutions. If we haven't met yet, I'm Akim aso. I'm a psychotherapist and trainer, and I've been in this field for over 25 years. Through my years, I've developed a holistic system that's not only helped myself, but hundreds of my clients get out of pain, get moving, and back to the life they want to live. But before we dig in, please take a second to subscribe. Don't forget to hit that bell so that you're notified each time we put out videos on how best to balance your body so you can live a life of your choosing. Your neck pain from waking up can come from a bunch of different sources. It could be trauma, it could be a postural or overuse injury. It could be a pathology, or it could be the way you're sleeping generally. Either way, it's from a chronic condition. You can tell it's chronic because during the day, your neck doesn't feel that bad. Maybe some kinks here and there, but for the most part, it moves well. But then when you lie down to go to sleep at night and you wake up, it hurts. That's because during the day you've kept it warm and moving because you're doing activity. But then at night, when you lie down, our body temperature drops. And so those tissues harden. And so when you get up, they harden in a bad position, and it hurts. You can always tell, because once you wake up, you can alleviate the pain by gentle moving, just being awake, taking a shower, hot compress, something of those sorts to get the tissue flowing again. Well, even though it made it feel better, it didn't make it go away. In fact, it's the opposite, because the longer you go through that cycle of not correcting whatever issue it is and just kind of like mediating the pain, your body sets in stone. More the pathology. So taking care of it as soon as possible and then specifically and correctively is the best route. Having trauma on your neck and then not taking care of it right away is a great way to have a stiff neck. Whenever you wake up, we have trauma that's taken. Take, for example, whiplash. You reorganize the whole neck issue. You reverse the curve. All the soft tissue around it becomes pulled or torn. Can't do its job, the joints become a little bit dysfunctional. And if you don't take it right away, your body starts to harden in that position, start to reform to that bad area. This makes it infinitely harder to take care of your neck issues because your body's adapted to the bad posture. So that when you go back and try to stretch or strengthen or normalize a certain area, your body is already saying, no, I want to stay in this position because I'm used to it. So taking care of it right away is by far the most important thing to do. So even if you don't think you hurt your neck in a whiplash or something else like that, go take care of your neck, get it checked out. Pain is only one indicator that something has gone wrong in a certain part of your body. Neck pain from waking up can also come from your postural or overuse of your neck and body. For example, your desk, smartphone, tablet posture. That causes what we call foreheaded posture, which means your head is forward, usually down, so that my spine, my neck is always inflection going forward and then on top of that inside the neck, slides down upon each other to make like little steps in your vertebrae. That's not a good thing. It also puts tension all down the soft tissue from your neck to your back of being constantly under tension and stretched. And also to have those same muscles trying to hold your head up so it doesn't fall down because it needs to see forward. So you want to make sure that you correct those issues through a good corrective exercise program. That means you need to I'll turn around again. You need to make sure that your mid back has enough mobility and strength to come back to shoulders to be pulled back so your head sits on a nice even table. You want your ear, your shoulder to line up along with your hip and your ankle. That's good posture. From there, you want to make sure that those muscles that hold your head up are mobile and strong. They mean fluid and also be able to perform their activities. You want to make sure all the spaces between your joints of your thoracic and cervical are nice and open to fluid again so your body can move without compensation from your neck. But you can't just do that, because if you keep that desk, smartphone, tablet posture and only do the corrective exercise, you won't get any results. You're in that desk forward head posture for 8 to 10 hours per day and you're doing a corrective exercise, hopefully one hour, let's say per day, eight to ten trumps, one because that forward head desk posture is an education to your body. I did a video on this and you can watch it. I think it's here, here on the dangers of desk posture and what you can do about it. But making sure that you have a corrective exercise program and making sure that you're eliminating or seriously negating that forward headed desk posture is imperative. Are stiff necks common when you wake up? Just give me a yes or a no in the comments. Your neck pain upon waking up could come from a pathology, cervical radiculopathy or stenosis, for example. More than likely you're going to feel more pain than just when you first wake up. You'll feel that throughout the day, but there's some instances that it could just show up at night. Well, like the other two, you need to train, treat, correct those things specifically because you'll never wake up with a loose free neck. And if you constantly have that pathology causing compromise in your body. So a word of caution with all the first three I just talked about. You need to be specific with your corrective exercises, your treatments and your corrections to what's going on. We'll take for example, a popular one I see on the Internet and that's kind of pulling your head to the side. Okay, pull your head to the side. You're supposed to release the soft tissue. You're supposed to feel better. Well, that could be a problem if you have a pinched nerve because you see when you move your spine, when you bend it, you have an automatic rotation. A rotation of the spine means compression because they come closer together. So if you have a pinched nerve and you do that and it automatically rotates and pinches that nerve more, well, congratulations, you just made your matters worse. It may have felt like you're doing something productive because you had a release of the soft tissue. But in actuality, that soft tissue is going to go back to guarding that area because you've pinched it again or repinched it and it harden back up to where you feel like you have to do the exact same thing the next time. Well, what you need to do is specifically treat in this case that pinched nerve by giving space by normalizing the tendon ligaments. But you want to make sure you don't do something that makes it worse. The last way that your neck could hurt upon waking it up, waking up is that you're not sleeping properly. Maybe you're not sleeping enough. You're getting under seven, eight hours. You're not allowing your body to repair and heal. And so your body and Especially your neck hurts. The rest repair time during sleep is essential for all body functions and body structures. Maybe you're using a gigantic pillow to push yourself up and constantly be inflection or some sort of contraption that puts your neck in a bad position to always keep it there the entire night. Well, that's going to cause pain, but in general, you should be able to sleep without an issue. If your neck is free, open and fluid, you should be able to take the different positions in your body as you move around to not wake up sore. Of course there's going to be those exceptions to the rule where you just get a kink in your neck, but it's not going to be a chronic thing. It'll happen twice a year or something like that. So getting yourself balanced, those other three things we talked about through trauma, through postural, and through some sort of pathology is going to be your first step to make sure you normalize your neck, bring it back to normal so that you don't wake up with neck pain. If you're struggling with neck pain or neck pain upon waking up and you feel like you need some assistance, they want to help. So in the description there's a link. The link will take you to a page where you can choose a time for a free diagnostic consultation. We'll find out where you are, where you want to go, what you've been doing or have done, and how to get there. The path forward. If that path forward includes working with us, we'll give you a lowdown of how we work, your different options and we'll see if you're a good fit. If you're not ready for a call, that's fine. We have a free report on how to sustainably train your body to be out of pain, to move better so you can live life on your terms. Again, in the description, there's a link for that. Just input your info and you'll get instant access. Check out this next video on spinal health and wellness so you can get out of pain and move better. Don't forget to subscribe and please like and share this so that the YouTube algorithm can present this video to more people who will benefit from it. And please remember, it's not just working out, it's building a foundation for a better life.
