Try These Sleep Positions If Pain Is Keeping You Awake!

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Some injuries can hurt at night. In particular, tendons (the bit at the end of a muscle that attaches to bone). When you injure a tendon they become enlarged and are very sensitive to stretch, or  pressure against bone. For example, if you have a sore outside hip tendon and you lie on your pain-free side, it can wake you up because you are bringing that leg across your body, stretching the tendon against the bone below. This is really, really painful.

If you have overloaded your shoulder rotator cuff tendons, lying on your sore side will generally wake you up. This occurs due to the enlarged tendons pushing against the boy structures above them.

The problem with this is the lack of sleep. We really need good quality sleep in order to repair. The more optimal sleep, the better the recovery. 

So i’ve gone through the body from neck to foot with some sleeping positions to try to help you get a better night sleep depending on your injury.


Remember a better night sleep is the key to healing and recovering from an injury as quickly as possible.  A minimum of 6 hours and ideally 8 plus hours of sleep.

So before you try some of these tricks remember you need good sleep hygiene. This is a quick summary from a blog I wrote on sleep hygiene but you can also read it HERE


Sleep tips

  • Put your phone on flight mode an hour before bed.

  • Have a shower before bed.

  • Dim all the lights in the house an hour before bed.

  • Don’t ingest coffee 8 hours or less before bed

  • Meditate for 10 to 20 minutes then read a book before going to bed.

So once you’ve ticked all those boxes try the following positions 


Neck Pain:

Sleep with a rolled up towel under your neck and wrap it around like a scarf. It stops your neck twisting when you sleep. Play around with one versus two pillows but ultimately the neck needs to be neutral and not side flexed to one side.


Shoulder pain:

The idea here is to sleep on the non sore side or your back. Sleep with a pillow in the arm pit to create space for your shoulder tendons to not be compressed by the boney architecture.


Back pain : Similar to the neck you are just trying to get the spine in a more neutral position. Try a pillow between your knees or lye on your back with pillows under your knees.


Hip pain: if the outside of your hip is sore then I would scoop your hips so there is minimal pressure on your outside hip. Otherwise ideally sleep on your back with a pillow or two under your knees. Another option is to sleep on your non sore side. Just remember the pillows between your knees to stop your sore side crossing the midline.


Knees: Don’t generally like being overly extended or flexed. So pillows under your knees is a good place to start or between your knees and ankles. Also a good idea to raise the injured side to the limb is above your heart.

Try these positions if you’re getting pain at night. Try getting some good sleep hygiene to maximize your ability to be able to sleep so you can get out of pain and back to what you love as quickly as possible.


Remember that if this isn’t helping your night pain and you don’t recall a possible reason why you are in pain, then you must see a doctor as soon as possible. Other things can masquerade as night pain and it is important to not forget about those.