Shoulder Pain

There are a number of muscles that attach the shoulders to the neck and if the shoulders, or a single shoulder, are raised continually or repeatedly throughout the day it causes pain in both the neck and the top of the shoulder.  You often see people holding the area where the neck meets the shoulder, or slightly behind that point at the inside corner of the shoulder blade.  Every time the shoulder is lifted, the muscle that attaches to that corner of the shoulder blade is working.  It’s understandable that it should become tight and perpetually contracted.

Many people spend hours each day at the computer or a desk with their arms in a constant forward position.  Those that spend a good deal of the day driving a car also have the same problem.  The muscles that attach the top of the arm to the shoulder blade go in to contraction and the muscles that line the side of the ribs and attach on the underside of the shoulder blade go into contraction and pull the shoulder blade toward the front of the body.   The result is a “winging out” of the shoulder blade.  The middle line of the shoulder blade is no longer even close to vertical, the lower angle is fixed in the direction of the arm pit, and the upper angle is forced toward the spine.  This results in the additional contraction of those muscles that attach the upper angle of the shoulder blade to the neck as well as contraction of the muscles between the top of the shoulder blade and the spine.  Most people can reach that very tense point between the top of the shoulder blade and the spine.  Interestingly, that tension cannot be resolved without first correcting the winging out of the lower angle of the shoulder blade.

Often times the above condition is accompanied by an inability to lift the elbow towards the side of the body and up toward the ceiling.  This causes a deep ache beneath the shoulder blade which radiates up toward the neck.  In this case the muscle that lines the underside of the shoulder blade has gone into contraction as well and must be released to remedy the condition.

With the shoulder blade thus pulled toward the side of the body, the muscles that attach the shoulder blade to the spine are stretched to the point that some of these go into profound contraction, straining to keep the shoulder blade on the back of the body where it belongs!  Many people feel a deep ache in the upper body as well as a singing pain between their shoulder blades on that side.

Whenever the shoulder blade is not in its normal position, it changes the position of the depression that the upper arm bone rests in (which is on the side of the upper part of the shoulder blade).  This causes tension and sometimes pain in the arm as the muscles that attach the arm to the body strain to hold the bone in place.