3. Shoulder stretches and rolls
Sometimes, neck pain isn’t just about the neck. Muscles are connected to one another with ligaments and soft tissue, so sometimes the part that hurts isn’t really the part where the most tension is. For example, your neck muscles are connected to your shoulder muscles, so if your shoulders are too tense – and shoulders are among the parts of our body that more often get tense for postural or emotional reasons – they could contract and pull your neck muscles, stretching them too much and making them hurt.
So if you relax your shoulder muscles, you should help your neck pain. The eastiest way to release tension from your shoulders and upper back is to perform shoulder rolls, but you can also do shoulder stretches. A great combined exercise for shoulder and neck stretches is to tilt your head to one side, and then stretch the arm on the other side as if you wanted to pick something from the floor.