Sensorimotor Exercises and Neurodevelopmental Yoga in Chronic Neck Pain

Comparison of Sensorimotor and Yoga Exercise in Patients With Chronic Neck Pain

Neck pain is an important public health problem with a high lifetime prevalence and frequently occurring in all industrialized countries. Clinical practice guidelines for chronic neck pain recommend conservative management. Conservative treatment includes many approaches such as endurance, stretching and strengthening exercises, manual therapy, proprioceptive exercises, pilates and yoga. In patients with chronic neck pain, atrophy of deep neck muscles, deterioration in fiber type ratio, muscle tenderness and decreased range of motion are observed. These problems cause poor cervical postural control system and thus impaired sense of proprioception, loss of balance, decreased eye movement and cervical muscle activity. Sensorimotor control of upright posture and head-eye movement relies on information from the vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive systems that assemble throughout the central nervous system.The cervical spine has an important role in providing proprioceptive input. This role is associated with an abundance of cervical mechanoreceptors. Recent studies have shown that proprioceptive training is associated with cervical joint position sense, joint range of motion, pain and disability. Also yoga combines physical exercises with breathing techniques and meditation and yoga is one of the most commonly used complementary treatments for neck pain.The aim of study is to determine the effectiveness of exercises for sensorimotor structure and yoga exercises with physical and meditative effects in individuals with chronic neck pain.

Participants diagnosed with chronic neck pain will be randomly divided into two groups as sensorimotor exercise group and yoga group by the evaluator. Sensorimotor exercise group; oculomotor exercise to provide information from the visual system, laser target exercise to provide information from the proprioception system, and postural stability exercise to provide information from the vestibular system. Yoga group will be given yoga exercises. Within the content of oculomotor exercise, gaze stability exercise and head-body coordination exercise will be given to the participants. Laser target exercise will be given with the laser target fixed on the participant's head and 90 cm away from the target. Postural stability exercise will be given in form of tandem exercise and standing on one leg. Yoga exercises will be applied by changing and combining 14 poses every week. The study will take 8 weeks. Participants in both groups will also be treated for 2 days a week. Participants will be evaluated twice, before and after treatment. Participants will be evaluated with Demographic Information Form, SF-36 Quality of Life Scale, Neck Disability Questionnaire, Tampa Kinesiophobia Scale, Numerical Pain Scale, Joint Range of Motion Measurement (G-Pro), Joint Position Error Test. Data analysis of the study will be done using SPSS 22.0 package program. The difference between Independent Groups will be compared with the Student's-t independent Test.

Inclusion Criteria:

• aged 24-60 years of either sex, at least a 12 weeks history of CNP, CNP according to the Quebec Task Force grading system in Grade 1 and 2

Exclusion Criteria:

• according to Quebec Task Force grading system Grade 3 and 4 neck pain, neurological defects, speech and perception disorders, psychiatric diagnosis, recent history of neck trauma, recent history of cancer, diagnosed vestibular disorder, participants who diagnosed eye disorders, recent history of surgery, contraindications to yoga.