Thetrapezius (traps) muscleis a triangle-shaped upper back muscle that starts at the base of your neck, spans the length of your upper shoulders and extends down into your middle back.
This muscle’s main function is to stabilize and move yourscapula(shoulder blade). The trapezius also helps you move your head, neck, arms, shoulders, and torso, stabilizes your spine, and plays an important role inposture.
Physical and mental stress can make your trapezius muscle tight, leading to pain in your neck and shoulders. Fortunately, learning to give yourself a trap massage can ease traps tension.This article will teach you how.
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Before Your Trap Massage
Before you can give yourself a trap massage, you need to know where your trapezius muscle is located.
The trapezius consists of three different parts in three different areas of your back. It spans the bottom of your skull, across your shoulders, and down most of your back.
The focus of a trap massage is the upper portion of the trapezius (upper trapezius or upper traps, for short). This part is located at the top of your shoulders.
To find your upper trapezius, cross one arm in front of your body so that you can place the palm of your hand on top of the other shoulder.
For your trapezius muscle massage, you will also need to know where your upper traps start—in other words, where the muscle connects to a bone. There are two areas to pinpoint.
The first point is on the bottom of your skull, close to the center of the back of your skull. Start there with your fingers and trace the muscle down the back of your neck to the place where the shoulders start to widen out.
If you get lost, try to locate the vertebra at the base of your neck (in back) that kind of sticks out.
That’s called C-7 and is another one of the upper trapezius’s origin sites.On either side of that bump, you can walk your fingers either up or down the muscle to relocate the origin at the base of the skull, as discussed above.
Trapezius Muscle Massage Technique
While a quality massage oil can hydrate your skin during a trap massage, it’s optional. Aside from your own hands, you don’t need anything else to perform the trap massage. If you have longer hair, however, you may wish to tie it up.
A trapezius muscle massage involves three steps:
Start at the Base of Your Neck
Choose one shoulder to work with at a time.
Slowly Work Your Way Out
Once you have spent about 30 seconds massaging the muscle at the base of your neck, you can start to work your way out toward the end of your shoulder.
In the field ofmassage therapy, a level of pressure that slightly hurts but still feels good is called “the good hurt.”
Repeat as Needed
Repeat each side of your trapezius muscle two to three times before switching to the other shoulder.
You may notice after massaging one or both shoulders that a certain area of your trapezius muscle is particularly sore or tense. Feel free to zero in on those areas a little longer.
Remember to relax throughout your trap massage. This is a great opportunity to learn where you hold tension in your neck and shoulders and how to apply pressure to relieve it.
This knowledge can also help you check in with yourself throughout your day, whether you are sitting at an office desk, doing chores around the house, or something else.
If you notice that you are scrunching or slouching your shoulders, take a few moments to massage your trapezius muscle and remind yourself to keep your shoulders relaxed.
Supine Position to Relieve Back Pain
Trapezius Muscle Benefits
Tension and tightness in the trapezius muscle is common, particularly among people who work in an office, do manual labor, or who are simply dealing with a lot ofstress.
Trapezius strains are a common overuse injury that is more likely to happen when your traps muscle is tight.The injury can cause you to alter your posture to avoid the pain.
Unfortunately, poor posture will only place more stress on your traps muscle, ultimately leading to a cycle of poor posture and chronic trapezius pain.
In addition to reducing pain and stiffness in your trapezius muscle, a trap massage can benefit you in many ways, including:
When to Contact a Healthcare Provider
Like any other muscle in your body, your trapezius muscle can get injured and require special treatment to recover. In some cases, your neck or shoulder pain may not be coming from your trapezius muscle at all.
Consider seeing your healthcare provider if you have pain in your neck or shoulder that doesn’t get better within a week or two, especially if it isn’t responding to at-home treatment.
Regardless of how long you have been experiencing pain or stiffness, if it is preventing you from getting adequate sleep or interfering with your daily activities, contact your healthcare provider.
Reasons you should see your healthcare provider immediately for your neck or shoulder pain include:
Frequently Asked Questions
5 Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Domingo AR, Diek M, Goble KM, Maluf KS, Goble DJ, Baweja HS.Short-duration therapeutic massage reduces postural upper trapezius muscle activity.Neuroreport. 2017 Jan 18;28(2):108-110. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000000718
University of Washington Department of Radiology.Trapezius.
Marker RJ, Campeau S, Maluf KS.Psychosocial stress alters the strength of reticulospinal input to the human upper trapezius.Journal of Neurophysiology. 2017;117(1):457-466. doi: 10.1152/jn.00448.2016
Mount Sinai.Shoulder pain.
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