Yoga For Healing A Bulging Cervical Disc

The muscles that support the cervical spine weren’t designed to hold our heads up for long.



An adept, stretching spine is required to support one’s head. The excessive muscle work ends up in a mass of tension just under the most high up bump located on the back of the human head.



A lot of muscles that begin in the pelvis, ribs, and shoulder blades attach under the occipital ridge. These muscle insertions are extremely tense almost all the time.



If they aren’t tense when we are holding our heads up, then the get tensed when trying to relax on a pillow.  However, they are still contracting as high resting tone. The three higher vertebrae don’t move much from their capital extension position. This is due to muscular tension. Orthopedics and physiotherapists are always digging their fingers in this muscle tension under the occipital ridge.

The mid cervical vertebrates of the human body are infamous for diagnoses like cervical disk herniation or cervical spondylosis. Any sudden or extreme movement in C4, C5, C6 just wear away the disks, joint linings, and result in abnormal mechanical stress to form osteophytes [spurs]. Cervical spondylosis is nothing but arthrosis of the spine with spurs and joint deterioration. The cervical disk walls are able to deal with just so much mechanical stress before the lateral walls start ton to weaken and bulging takes over. Hatha Yoga is an excellent way to heal this condition.

Chest openers are mandatory to boost the flexibility of the thoracic spines towards backward bends. Sethu Bandhasana, Adho Mukha Svanasana, and Chakrasana all have important spinal backward bending movements that our dull flexed spines need.

Very tense top shoulder blade muscles and side neck muscles are connected to the forward head. This is why the patient is also advised to also do a headless headstand in-between 2 folding chairs to release this hypertonus.

The real test are the standing poses in which the patient is expected to continue to ground, center, and lift as he / she moves through the different ranges of standing poses, while lengthening the cervical spines to support the movement of the head and arms.