Much neck pain is due to an auto accident or a sports related injury.

For injuries like fractures, strains, sprains, nerve impingements, I advocate heat and that's different from what a physical therapist or chiropractor would suggest. The goal in Chinese Medicine is always to stimulate the flow of blood and chi with needles, massage and heat. Yes, I use heat even with inflammation. When the blood is warmed up, it flows more forcefully. In the short term, using ice will give you immediate relief from the pain. However, ice will keep everything in the area frozen, making the circulation worse, andpossibly causing arthritis later.

From a Chinese Medicine perspective, even when you have an accident and a certain area of the body that has never hurt before, feels the pain, quite often that area has an underlying weakness that needs to be treated. For example, if you take two people who are both in auto accidents, driving similar cars, and perhaps their cars were hit at the same spot, you would still have two patients with different types of pain in different locations. If one has a spinal problem in the neck then this patient might suffer a severe whip lash. If the other patient has a spleen weakness or a kidney weakness, she might feel more muscle strain from the accident or knee pain.

Keep in mind that the external wind invasion that occurs during an auto accident is the sudden force generated by the impact. The wind will tend to migrate and lodge itself in the hard or soft body tissue, or joints that are weak.

Some neck pain is stressed related. There is also such a thing as internal wind . You're probably wondering where this comes from. In Chinese Medicine we say that air is thought, movement, and stirrings of the mind.Air is idea, objective thought, the flash of inspiration or the agony of a mind in torment. How many of you after having an argument with a family member, will want to open the windows to air out the room. How many of you talk of going out in the fresh air toclear your mind? What I am trying to say is that our minds generate internal wind from stress, worry, anger, frustration and so forth. Have you heard the expression "He's a pain in the neck?" Internal wind can gets trapped in the neck and shoulders after a stressful day with the kids. You know wind is lodged somewhere when the pain migrates from place to place, you have soreness and pain in muscles and joints, with limited movement.