Side Sleeping: The Worst Sleeping Position?

Most people think that sleeping on your stomach is worst position for your body, as it places your neck, shoulders, and back in a compromised position. Although this is true, side sleepers might be sleeping in a way that is just as bad for the body as sleeping on the stomach. This video will address how sleeping on your side could be terrible for your body, and a few simple tweaks to make sure that your sleep experience is not only pain free, but restorative for the next day ahead.

What’s So Bad About It?

I know what you might be thinking, Logan “I sleep on my side and I feel completely fine.” Although this may be the case, you likely are not taking into consideration three specific ways your body is oriented when you sleep on your side. If left alone, this could lead to many imbalances in your body which of course can increase pain and decrease strength and mobility. Let’s take a look at what’s going wrong.

Body Positioning

If you look like what is shown in the video above, there is three huge errors. Your leg placement, hip placement, and shoulder placement. If left unchanged, these three areas could become so painful and unbalanced that you may find it hard to walk.

Leg Placement

For leg placement, the last thing you want to do is have your legs scrunched up close to your chest, mimicking the fetal position. This tightens the muscles on the front of the hips, which are usually very tight from sitting all day already. Instead, try stretching your legs out very slightly, so they are still bent at the knee and hip, but much less than before. Although this is a good place to start, we still need to address hip alignment.

Hip Placement

When you sleep on your side, your legs are stacked on top of another. Unfortunately, this puts your pelvis in a slightly compromised position which can lead to imbalance in the hip area, and even pain long term. To put your pelvis in a more neutral position, try placing a pillow between the legs. Combined with our change in leg placement, your side sleeping experience will already be much better. But there is still one more thing to consider.

Shoulder Placement

Most people experience shoulder impingement and pain at the front of their shoulder in their life. Side sleeping, where you are putting all your force down on your shoulder, can make this much worse. To fix this, simply tilt your body backward a tiny bit, allowing the “down” shoulder to be forward, with no pressure put on it.

Combining Them All

Following this advice, and combining every single side sleeping tweak will keep your body refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the day. In addition to this, if you are dealing with neck pain, I am going to link below an excellent cervical pillow below, designed to help alleviate neck and shoulder tension as well. And if you don’t want to do that, feel free to check out another article on sleep tips I’ll link below as well!

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