This practice can facilitate balance in your mind, emotions and body, and almost everyone can easily do it. It releases neck pain and tension and muscle tension in the upper back, helps correct alignment of the upper spine and skull, can reduce anxiety and worry, and harmonizes your nervous system. It may even improve your eyesight.
Nod Your Way to Happiness
What is this practice? Head nodding. Not just normal head nodding though. The movement for this practice is activated differently to the way most people normally nod their head.
Reduce Neck Tension and Stress
Normally, most people use their neck and head to nod their head. However, our head is a substantial weight, and nodding your head using the neck and head to make the movement can put stress on your neck.
To correct that, for this practice we nod from a point known as the neck root. This is a point in the middle of your upper mid back in line with the bottom tip of your shoulder blades. You can also think of it as the point on your back behind your heart chakra. To activate the movement from this neck root point, take your inner awareness to that point on your body and imagine pushing up from that point. As you push up from that point your head will be pushed forward, but it will be supported by the muscles in your upper back. To lift your head back up, take your awareness to the neck root point again and imagine pulling down from that point to draw your head back up. Complete these movements slowly and consciously, activating primarily into the muscles in your upper back.
You can compare how it feels in your body to nod your head using your head and neck to make the movement, and then how it feels to activate nodding your head from your neck root. You will notice that your head feels much lighter when you use the muscles in your upper back to facilitate the movement.
Why is Head Nodding So Beneficial?
Ease Neck and Upper Back Tension and Pain
Nodding your head from your neck root activates the muscles in your upper back in a gentle movement that simultaneously releases tension in those muscles, and supports the neck reducing neck strain and facilitating freer mobility of the neck muscles. This can reduce neck pain and tension and is a great practice to help counteract spending hours using a computer.
Doing this head nodding practice regularly can help to correct postural alignment and reduce hunched or rounded shoulders.
Strengthen Your Nervous System
One of the most important areas for optimal functioning of your nervous system is where your spinal cord meets your brain. This area is protected by your first cervical vertebrae called the Atlas vertebrae. When your nervous system is compromised due to the Atlas vertebrae being out of place, it distorts normal brain to body, and body to brain, signals. Poor posture and misalignment of your upper vertebrae can cause a deterioration in your eyesight and/or the excessive replay of painful past memories stored in your hippocampus, and anxious thoughts stored in your pre-frontal lobe. In other words it can cause you to have difficulty seeing clearly, and to feel overwhelmed with anxiety.
Head nodding can help to correct spinal alignment, stimulate blood flow and facilitate communication between your brain and your spinal cord which will strengthen your nervous system.
Head Nodding to Balance Your Nervous System
I perform head nodding in one of two ways. The first is good for beginners and also good if you want an easy, calming effect. Slow, even, rhythmic breathing from your belly through your nose brings balance to your autonomic nervous system and produces deep feelings of wellbeing. Synchronizing this breathing with head nodding enhances the effect and benefit. Here’s how to do it:
Head Nodding with Box Breathing
Once you are comfortable with performing the head nodding with synchronized breathing as described above, you can try performing it with a box breathing pattern. Box breathing, also called square breathing, has also been shown to calm and regulate your autonomic nervous system (box breathing is taught extensively in the military to help control stress response). In addition, it can help to reduce patterns of over-breathing and facilitate more effective utilisation of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Over-breathing can cause us to have an excess of oxygen in our blood which leads to the formation of free radicals. Most of us are taught to increase the oxygen in our bodies by taking deep breaths, however, while you may be inhaling more oxygen doing this, it is likely that you are absorbing less. The reason for this is because over-breathing increases oxygen and reduces carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is needed for your blood to release oxygen to your cells and tissues (including your brain).
Breathing lightly through your nose, and practicing intermittent breath-holding can help to correct the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your body, increase oxygen absorption, and supply more oxygen to your brain. This can be done through a box breathing practice.
You can combine box breathing with head nodding in the following way:
- Breathe in lightly from your belly through your nose for a slow count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6 (aim for counts of 6, but you may need to start with counts of 4 until your can hold a longer pause).
- Push up from your neck root through the upper back to push your head gently forward as you slowly breathe out through your nose for a count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6
- Pull down from your neck root to slowly draw your head back up to neutral as you inhale slowly through your nose for a count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6
- Release down your spine from your neck root to your sacrum (tailbone) as you slowly breathe out through your nose for a count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6
- Imagine breathing slowly through your nose into your sacrum for the count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6
- Imagine pushing energy all the way up your spine to push your head forward into a nod as you exhale slowly through your nose for the count of 4-6. Pause your breath, and hold it gently in your belly/diaphragm for the count of 4-6
- Focus on your breath and the movement of your body and repeat steps 3 to 6 until your back and neck feel opened and released, and you feel deeply relaxed.
Doing these head nodding practices requires you to focus closely on your breathing and movement, bringing your attention to the present moment. This is the essence of mindfulness, and engaging in physical activities where you are focusing on what you are doing in the moment is one of the most effective ways to strengthen the functioning of your brain.
Mindful, meditative practices such as this can also stimulate the production of feel good and healing chemicals in your body such as endorphins, serotonin and GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid).
Nodding your head is included as one of the practices to help you rewire your brain to develop a greater sense of self worth in Step 8 of my 10 Steps to Happiness book.
The video below provides and audio visual description of these head nodding practices.
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