How to Relieve Neck Pain with Meditation

Up to 20 percent of Americans have neck pain each year from numerous causes. Here's how to get rid of neck pain and calm yourself down with meditation.

Neck pain can be caused by muscle strain, injuries, and some illnesses. Modern life, however, can be a true pain in the neck, too. Sitting in one location working in front of a computer screen increases your risk of a sore, aching neck. So can tilting your head forward to stare at your smartphone screen while you text for too many hours, according to a study by Kenneth Hansraj, MD, chief of spine surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine.  

Overall, at any point in time 10 to 20 percent of adults experience neck pain. Although taking over-the-counter drugs and remaining active usually helps most people feel better in two to eight weeks. About one in 10 have lingering neck pain.

Researchers have found, however, the ancient practice of meditation may be a non-drug prescription to soothe chronic neck pain and reduce feelings of stress and depression associated with the condition.

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How to relieve neck pain with meditation

In a study headed by Michael Jeitler, MD, of the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Berlin, patients with ongoing neck pain who were also emotionally stressed by their condition were divided into two groups. One set of patients participated in meditation sessions, and the other group exercised.

After eight weeks, patients who meditated had a significant reduction in pain compared to the exercise group. The meditators were also able to cope better with their pain and experienced less stress.

“Meditation may support chronic pain patients in pain reduction and pain coping,” the researchers concluded.

More than 14 percent of adult Americans said they practiced meditation at least once during the previous year in a 2017 government survey.

While there are many meditation techniques, most people look for a quiet location where they settle into a comfortable posture, usually sitting. They focus their attention, often following their own breath, and seek to allow thoughts to come and go without judgement.  

Research on meditation

Research is underway to find out how meditation can influence health. So far, it’s known to relax the body, increase calmness, improve mood, help people cope with illness, and enhance overall health and well-being.

Regular meditation may lower high blood pressure, improve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, help people sleep better, and even reduce the incidence and severity of acute respiratory illnesses like the flu.

Research at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, found that meditation could relieve migraines. Other research has found that eight weeks of mediation training lowered stress-induced inflammation in the body better than a health program that included physical activity, education about diet, and music therapy.

According to the Institute of Medicine, an estimated 100 million Americans are affected by chronic pain of varying kinds, which often defies the best efforts to control it. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a federal agency is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to test meditation, along with other complementary treatments, as a non-drug way to manage pain in the military and veteran populations.

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