My granddaughter wasn’t feeling well so she was lying on the sofa and she was complaining of a headache. When I looked at her I saw that the pillows were positioned in a way that brought her chin down toward her chest (contracting a muscle called the scalenes, and putting pressure on a bundle of nerves called brachial plexus), and to top it off she was looking to the side (which will contract the muscle that pulls on the bone at the back of your ear).
Sure enough, I had her sit up and began to massage her shoulders and posterior neck and she felt like she had a big bag of rocks holding up her head. There were so many spasms that it was amazing she wasn’t in worse pain than she was already experiencing.
It took a lot of squeezing of the muscles, and then direct pressure on each of the knots, to start to eliminate the spasms.
It’s important when you are lying on your sofa to watch TV that your head and upper back needs to be held in a straight line (start the pillow at your mid back, not at the base of your neck) and that your head is facing forward. If you are lying on your side, have the pillow adjusted so your head, neck, and upper spine are all in a straight line. Any bend at your neck will eventually cause headaches and may also cause shoulder pain.
Wishing you well,
Julie