Tight shoulders. That dull, tight sensation where you feel like your shoulders have relocated to live somewhere up by your ears.
In Chinese Medicine, we say this feeling is Qi Stagnation. Where Qi has gotten stuck or blocked whilst moving through the channels or meridians in the body, causing pain. If there's sharp pain too, we'd say there was also Blood Stagnation.
Here are a few reasons why this might be occurring:
Tension from stress. The organs most effected by stress and therefore effect the body are the Liver and Gallbladder. The pathway for the Gallbladder is on the head and neck, coming down across the tops of the shoulders. When stress is a big factor in your life, one of the side effects can be tight shoulders.
Trauma. Any experience that may have caused injury to the muscles, tendons or sinew in this area will cause tightness. Again, we view this as stagnation but we can also look at it from a musculoskeletal perspective.
Poor posture. This can also come with stress AND with trauma but poor positioning of the neck, head and arms from writing, typing or long periods on a computer or playing on our devices can all be examples of why this occurs.
So how can we treat shoulder tightness? With Acupuncture ⭐ we have extensive clinical experience with this condition; we'd see it multiple times a day whilst treating. All of us at Greenstone are able to support you with this but we're lucky to have practitioners in our practice who work specifically on this and use a variety of tools such as needles, electro-acupuncture, heat, cupping, Tui Na massage and liniments, all in support of your recovery.