What’s The Deal With Keeping Your Head Up?

Categories: Blog Oct 07, 2015

My son has recently been exposed to the childish hilarity of Winnie The Pooh. He loves it and routinely cracks up. Especially during the one with the bees. However, we’re mean parents and make him sit on the floor, not in a chair. Funny thing is, he sits up ramrod straight, with his head remaining on top of his body. Contrast that to how most of us sit - slouched in a chair, with heads drooping forward. 

People often wonder (and struggle) with our recommendation, nay, insistence that you keep your head up when on the ground rocking or crawling or other such prone ground-based activities.

It’s so counter to what they’ve been taught and what everyone recommends.

The answer is simple.

It’s developmental.

It’s what we did when we were babies.

“But we’re not babies anymore!”

True. Thankfully we no longer need diapers, among other things. 

However, because we’ve spent most of our lives sitting and not moving our heads, we’ve not only lost full control of our heads, but our spinal alignment that we developed when we were little ones has been lost too. Hence the preponderance of lower back pain and chiropractors and the number of experts talking about regaining thoracic spine mobility.

The truth is, rocking or crawling or doing bird dogs with your head up not only activates and stimulates your vestibular system, the sensory system through which all your other sensory systems are routed (sight, hearing, taste, touch), it also rebuilds all of your spinal curves. This means you can restore your posture because you’re resetting the curve in your neck. And because the head controls the body, you’re also mobilizing your thoracic spine. You’re also activating and strengthening your extensor muscles, the muscles down the back of your body, and resetting you’re lumbar curve, and thus protecting your lower back. 

“Yeah, but holding my head up like that makes my neck tired and sore.”

I understand. That’s because you’re weak. (That’s not too blunt, is it?) I was weak too. My neck muscles were sore from keeping my head up too when I first got started. And that’s because the muscles in the back of your neck, (neck in general) are weak and need to be re-strengthened. This is only temporary. Just like when you engage in any sort of strength training there’s a touch of soreness from not using dormant muscles. Keep going and that soreness will disappear. The only caveat is if you’re having active joint pain in your neck. Then reduce your range of motion. If it persists, go see your doctor and get checked out.

Remember, at the end of the day, your body follows your head. Keep your head down and your body will slump around it. As a result, you’ll end up with all those tight muscles on the front side of your body and all those weak muscles on the backside of your body.

Plus, walking around with your head down makes you look like Eeyore.

Wouldn’t you rather be like Tigger instead?

 

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