Neck exercise 4
This exercise should always follow Exercise 3. You must again lie on the bed, face up. Before you can start Exercise 4, you must support your head by placing one hand under it. Now move up along the bed until your head, your neck, and the top of your shoulders are extended over the edge.
While continuing to support your head with your hand, lower your head slowly toward the floor. Now, gradually remove your hand and bring your head and neck as far backward as you can, so that you can see as much as possible of the floor directly under you. In this position, repeatedly turn your nose just half an inch (about two centimeters) to the right and then to the left of the midline, all the time attempting to move your head and neck farther backward. Once you have reached the maximum amount of extension, try to relax in this position for two to three seconds.
In order to return to the resting position, first place one hand behind your head, then help your head back to the horizontal position and move your body down along the bed until your head is lying fully on the bed again. It is important that, following this exercise, you do not get up from the bed immediately but that instead you rest for a few minutes with your head flat on the bed. Do not use a pillow.
As with Exercise 3, this exercise is used mainly in the treatment of acute neck pain. Also as with Exercise 3, it is effective, yet not as demanding as most of the others. Until the acute symptoms have subsided, Exercise 4 is to follow Exercise 3, and Exercise 4 should be done only once per session. Once you no longer have acute pains, Exercises 3 and 4 should be replaced by Exercises 1 and 2. By now you will have noticed that, except for the position in which they are performed, Exercises 3 and 4 are really the same as Exercises 1 and 2.
