I woke up with a crick in my neck. What causes the muscle to be stiff and why is it usually unidirectional? Is this the same thing that causes “knots” in necks/shoulders/etc?
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Kinda, yeah.
When youre awake and alert and upright, your neck muscles are constantly shifting and flexing and relaxing.
When you lay down to sleep, your neck muscles are still trying to keep your head balanced but its more difficult with you unconcious. Add to that a bad posture – sleeping on your stomach with shoulders propped up, for example – that adds more stress to your neck muscles and you’ll wake up to them sore and worn out.
The muscles in the neck become tense or strained. This can result in limited neck movement and discomfort when trying to turn or tilt the head.
As a massage therapist, my experience is that the feeling usually comes from one of the scalene muscles at the side of the neck, often posterior scalene. Trapezius and levator scapula are also common culprits. The muscle is aggravated or in spasm because something happened during the night it didn’t like, like an awkward position or movement that was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak on top of chronic tension/stress. It will usually work itself out, but massage can certainly help.
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