Waist matters & frustration - some venting

[NbyNW]

My question: Could the headache be related to the effort of keeping upright all day? Like I was using new muscles and they cramped up? I very rarely get a headache where my skull locks like that, so I thought there might be a correlation.

Could be. When I get a tension headache, it's VERY painful, and there are muscles in my neck and shoulder that tend to be tight as well. I have a muscle relaxant that I take before bed when I get to one of these, but if it's the middle of the day and I don't want to sleep, or if I don't have access to my medication, I work on trigger points in my neck, shoulder and face and it helps relieve the worst of the pain.

In Pilates we work a lot at keeping shoulders relaxed and neutral. In a lot of the exercises there can be a tendency to shrug the shoulders, or in my case, hyperextend them. It's another body awareness thing to develop.

How is your desk at work set up? Is the height of your chair appropriate to your desktop/keyboard? What about your monitor? Do you need a footrest? All of these things should be positioned to promote good posture. There's probably a good diagram of this floating around on the internet somewhere.