Tension, stiffness and rigidity often have similar causes.
Stress and lack of exercise over a long period of time, the unrecognized enemy of our days!
Tension, stiffness and rigidity often have similar causes. While tension means pulling or stretching muscles against resistance, stiffness is a lack of ease in movement. Stiffness occurs when the muscles contract very strongly to counteract movement. If you feel tense or stiff, it's probably because the muscles resist movement instead of allowing it to move smoothly. This means that there is too much voltage or resistance in your system, which can lead to fatigue. Anything that makes us tense — stress, anxiety, fear, or tension in general — causes our muscles to contract as a protective mechanism to restrict movement and protect our joints and soft tissues from injury.
When even simple things don't work!
Sitting on the floor
Tie shoelaces
Playing with the children
Lack of exercise and one-sided posture are common causes.
We are evolving into ONLY head people. Our technology seduces us to move less and less. Unfortunately, our body is not built for this and often reacts to withdrawal with pain in the long run.
When you're stressed, restless or anxious, it's easy to forget the importance of stretching and relaxing. Stiffness in our body can also be caused by a one-sided posture during the day.
For example, if you sit at a desk all day, you tend to have muscle tension or tension in the cervical spine, hips, hip flexor or back because you don't move enough or alternately.
Very often we hear about neck pain, which is becoming more and more common. The best way to avoid stiffness is to relax muscles and tendons regularly and give them time to recover after exercise.
So it's important to remember to change posture several times a day, get up, walk around, and roll your shoulders and spine in motion.
For this we have short exercises for you, which you can request here. You can find more of it on our Dao Yoga YouTube channel.
Permanent stress leads to stiffness and rigidity over the years.
A permanently high level of stress over years leads to stiffness and rigidity in the body. This means that you are constantly tensing your muscles, which leads to more tension and resistance throughout your body. If you tense your muscles chronically, your joints will also become stiffer. This can impair the functionality of the soft tissues in tendons, ligaments and muscles, leading to a decrease in range of motion, strength and endurance. Staring at the computer often triggers neck pain.
For example, if you can only move your fingers (neck, thoracic spine, hips) to a limited extent due to chronic tension, it will be more difficult for you to move effectively, without fatigue and without any restrictions throughout the day.
Stiffness and rigidity reduce the microcirculation of blood and juices.
Stiffness and rigidity reduce the microcirculation of blood and juices. It's easy to understand: if a part of the body is tense or stiff, it's difficult to move. The blood and juice microcirculation decreases and supplies the skin, organs down to the cells poorly. A factor that is considered to be of great importance in Chinese medicine. Imagine you are supposed to do a 100m sprint race and you haven't eaten much for days. How powerful will you be? This is how you have to imagine the performance of your organs.
Prof. Dr. Greten teaches German physicians the logic of Chinese medicine
Prof. Dr. Greten explains in his course book for traditional Chinese medicine1 that stiffness and rigidity can develop the same clinical picture as cold that penetrates the body. This can lead to fatigue, muscle cramps, joint pain, injuries and negative emotions. Everything, from head to toe, doesn't feel good! Better blood circulation promotes and nourishes joints, tendons, ligaments, connective tissue and, above all, organs. Therefore, every time you feel stiffness or tension in your body, you should do some stretching exercises, move a little.
Or you can do the most effective thing ever and start the day first thing in the morning with 10-15 minutes with one of our exercises, which you can request here. The more you move and breathe freely, the better your body can heal, the better cells and organs are supplied.
1 Course book for traditional Chinese medicine for Western physicians to understand and apply the logic of TCM by Prof.Dr.Greten
Tension is only noticed when it leads to pain.
Unfortunately, tension often leads to pain. When the system is too tense or our muscles contract too much, they pull on the soft tissues that surround the joints. This can lead to injury or affect the stability of the joints, causing pain and discomfort. The easiest way to relieve tension is to take a few deep breaths or find a way to relax your body. Mentally try to let go. This is a bit difficult at the beginning, but it becomes easier and easier with exercises. You will notice that you feel less tense and more relaxed.
Emotions such as fear and anxiety make you rigid and tense.
In the Heidelberg model of Prof. Dr. Greten, TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) does not appear as hocus pocus, as often reported by journalists in this country, but as a logical model in itself, whose logic only has to be understood in order to practice it properly. Many hundreds of trained physicians have gone through his advanced training courses to date because they have recognized how strong TCM is in prevention and more and more people prefer to take precautions rather than undergo surgery. Negative emotions such as fear or anxiety can be enormously improved or even completely solved with Qi Gong exercises. Many of these exercises from my Qi Gong practice have been incorporated into our Dao Yoga to work on negative emotions such as fear, fear, grief, etc. and thus also to release stiffness and rigidity. To work on emotions such as fear and anxiety, our TEDi (Transform Emotions immediately) exercise is particularly popular.
Neck tension? How do you look at your computer?
A stiff neck or tense work at the computer often causes neck pain, chest pain, shoulder blade pain or neck tension. You may experience tension headaches, muscle cramps, and pain in the shoulder, back, or neck area. Observe your posture on the computer, maybe you pull your upper body or even your head forward. You should check or change your posture several times a day.
Also, prolonged use of computers can lead to eye strain and eye fatigue.
The Advanced Exercise 😉
This is how you can relieve your neck tension.
If you suffer from neck tension, try these simple exercises to release your tension and improve your range of motion.
1. Stand upright and assume a relaxed posture. Place one hand on your head while the other presses on your chest. Let your head fall slightly back and look up at the ceiling (or at another object), now come very gently with your chin towards your larynx. You can try this 3-5 times.
2. Rolling Neck Release – Place both hands on your hips and start rolling your head back and forth, looking at a point on the floor that is about an arm's length away from you.
You may feel some tension in your neck during this exercise, but it should be bearable so that you can concentrate on relaxation.
We recommend our popular turtle exercise, which can bring quick relief. It creates space, relaxes the neck and helps to stretch into the cervical spine. Click here for our popular neck exercise!
The author in front of the Purple Cloudy Sky Palace. The Center for Health and Martial Arts has been dedicated to the creator of Tai Chi Zhang San Feng for 600 years.
This way you can easily relieve the stiffness when you get up and have a better day
Stiffness can be solved very easily. The secret is repetition. Practiced regularly for just eight minutes a day can change your body awareness enormously. Therefore, practice first thing in the morning, then the whole day will be better. Gentle wave-like movements can flush the stiffness out of the cervical spine, spine, and eventually the whole body in the morning. And yes, we also have a special exercise for this (dissolve stiffness), the wave will surely help you. Many love the exercise for this or that. In our experience, many problems are manifold and need a holistic solution. Why not put the whole body in order instead of just one point. If you work selectively, you can assume that the problem will come back. Stretching the muscle may seem counterintuitive, but it's a very effective way to reduce stiffness and tension in your body without putting too much strain on your joints.
Your tension in the shoulder blade or in both shoulders results from your posture.
Your tension in the shoulder blade or both shoulders is due to your posture.
The classic: pull up one or both shoulders unnoticed and hold them permanently. If you have severe tension in your shoulders and upper back, it's probably due to stress and your posture.
The wave exercise mentioned above (dissolving stiffness) is excellent for bringing more balance and softness to the upper back. But any movement that is soft and round will help you. Prevention has the strongest effect, i.e. taking action before the pain.
In his Heidelberg Model, Prof. Dr. Greten explains that TCM knows four stages of the disease. So something goes wrong in our body long before we feel pain. In our 15 years of experience, we have had the best results with participants who practiced three times a week. Just 8-15 minutes have a preventive effect and keep the body in good shape.
Many of our customers say: "The day is simply better if I practice in the morning".
Shoulder and neck relaxed 😉
How to relieve stiffness in the chest
At the end of the day, we are all different and tension can manifest itself in a different place for everyone. The causes are often the same and can be easily improved with a few regular exercises. If you've been dealing with stiffness and rigidity for a long time, it can take some time for you to become really flexible.
The good news: Even a few repetitions of our wave exercise bring noticeable improvement.
Here, we go to the wave exercise. Write us your experiences, we look forward to it.
Graduate computer scientist, systems analyst, project manager for multinational corporations. TaiChi, QiGong & KungFu expert. In 2012, Ralf was one of the first Westerners to be honored in a large ceremony in Wudang , China. Disciple of Master Yuan Giu Gang 15th Gen Zhang San Feng named Pi Mao Zi Xü – 资旭 (Rising Sun) in the 16th Gen. Disciple Wudang Zhang San Feng Pai.
