These Common Yoga Mistakes Can Literally Be a Pain in the Neck

You’re probably familiar with the aching feeling of stiff neck muscles. Whether you chalk it up to accumulated stress or hours of leaning forward over your devices, you probably assume your yoga practice is an obvious way to remedy that situation. And it is. But there’s a chance you’re making your muscles even crankier by falling into some common mistakes related to your neck in your yoga practice.

If you automatically thought of dramatically hanging your head back in Camel Pose (Ustrasana) or awkwardly falling out of Supported Headstand (Salamba Sirsasana) as problematic, you’re not wrong. But there are other, more subtle, and vastly more common habits that affect your neck during your yoga practice. Here’s how to catch—and fix—these easily overlooked issues.

3 Mistakes That Cause Neck Tension (And How to Correct Them)

Most of these problems come from overdoing some actions and underdoing others. Bringing your awareness to the subtle, a primary teaching of yoga and something you’re already doing on your mat, can help you find balance.

1. Leaning Your Head Forward

Your neck is easily the most mobile part of your spine. But it has a neutral position that it considers home base—namely, your head stacked over the center of your ribcage and pelvis with a slight backbend in your neck. Returning to this as your default posture means the considerable weight of your head is supported, in part, by the structure of your upper body, which creates less work for the muscles of the neck. Turns out your mom was, to an extent, right when she nagged you to sit or stand up straight.

But when you spend hour after hour leaning forward and looking down at your screens, it becomes easy to lose all sense of that ideal neutral neck posture. And the resulting tension is exacerbated when you take this warped perception of neutral into yoga poses in which your neck muscles support the weight of your head more than usual—think Plank Pose, Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III), and Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana). When you consistently lean forward in those postures, that can create tension and irritation.

A forward head tilt also shows up when you wedge a block, bolster, or folded blanket behind your head anytime you’re lying on the mat. Propping your neck so your chin tilts toward your chest means you miss the chance to reset your muscles and remind your mind what neutral feels like.

How to Fix It: The more you experience a neutral neck position, the more easily you can recreate it in your yoga practice and in life.

After you find the basic shape of a pose, check your head position. To remind yourself what neutral feels like, try lying flat on the mat. Feeling the contact between the back of your head and the mat can help familiarize you with your neutral zone. You want to ensure your forehead and chin are approximately level and that there’s a slight curve between the back of your neck and the mat. Then replicate this posture while standing still in Mountain Pose (Tadasana), sitting in Staff Pose (Dandasana), as well as practicing pulling your head back into neutral in more complex poses such as Plank, Warrior 3, and Down Dog.

2. Forcing the Neck Stretch

If you practice yoga, your initial response to grumpy and complaining muscles is to stretch them. Tight hamstrings? Practice some forward bends. Tense chest muscles? Take some backbends.

Many of us approach neck stretches in the same way—which is to say with a little too much enthusiasm. And that’s a problem. Your neck muscles are smaller and more finely tuned than most. They respond to subtlety and fatigue more quickly than other muscles.

How to Fix It: Less is more with neck stretches. For example, taking a few slow breaths while gently leaning your ear toward one shoulder can deliver more profound relaxation for the opposite side of your neck than pulling on your head with your hand and trying to force the stretch.

Similarly, leaning your chin toward your chest and breathing into your back ribs might feel more restorative for the muscles on the back of your neck than a forced position such as Rabbit Pose (Sasangasana).

And subtly lifting your chin in Camel or Upward-Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana) can be vastly easier on your anatomy than dropping your head entirely back.

Giving your constantly working neck muscles a chance to relax in reclined postures can also work wonders. For example, slide the rolled edge of a blanket underneath the natural curve along the back of your neck to provide subtle support. Then tuck the sides of the blankets around your head and let your neck release.

3. Fixating on Stretching and Ignoring Strengthening

The key to long-term harmony in your neck muscles is an appropriate balance of strengthening and resting. This might be a surprise given how often you hear cues to “relax your neck” or “release your shoulders,” but the strengthening part of the equation is equally essential to the stretching.

How to Fix It: Just as your neck doesn’t need intense stretches, it doesn’t need intense strength work, either. You already strengthen the neck muscles by holding the weight of your head in varied orientations to gravity. Think of being upright in Mountain Pose and Staff Pose, leaning to the side in Triangle (Utthita Trikonasana), and Extended Side Angle (Utthita Parsvakonasana), as well as face-down in positions like Plank and Locust (Salabhasana) and face-up situations such as Boat (Navasana). Simply keeping a fairly neutral head and neck posture strengthens the muscles along all sides of your neck.

To add slightly more challenge in these poses, try exerting gentle pressure from your fingertips against the back, side, or front of your head to create resistance as you push your head into your hand. For example, place a couple fingers along the side of your head in Triangle or Extended Side Angle, or place a hand behind or in front of your head in Locust. Use a light touch simply as external reinforcement of your alignment, not as a means to generate the very tension you’re aiming to alleviate. When it comes to the finely tuned muscles of your neck, less is definitely more.