Heat helped me when I did that.

And when I sat on the couch/easy chair, I put a medium-soft pillow on my shoulder to support my head and put less stress on the neck.

That might work for you.

I would try a warm shower.

It wasn’t neck pain, but I got almost instant relief from an injury by getting a massage from a Licensed Massage Therapist. Many will make house calls.

Take a thin towel and roll it and put it behind your neck when you rest or sleep. You will need to play with it to get the right size. It usually helps overnight or a few nights. You need to support your neck so you don’t accidentally sleep in a bad position. Ibuprofen can help too if you are able to take it. 400–600 mg Ibuprofen (eat a little with it and plenty of water). Take it every 6–8 hours for 2–3 times (so about a day) to reduce inflammation and reduce pain.

I’d vote heating pad and massage it yourself as best as you can, right after removing the heating pad. I use mine on low or medium.

10 minutes with hot pack followed by 10 minutes with ice pack. . .do that for an hour. It will bring blood flow and calm down muscles !

I second the roll under the neck. I have found it feels best if I put it right where my neck meets my shoulders. This is only for sleeping on your back. I have also found that following a detox diet and eating clean, low inflammatory foods helps eliminate joint pain.

Many friends and family members have been helped by a good chiropractor.

I struggled with neck pain several times in my life. Here are some of the things I found:

Physical Therapy: Used only when it was long term or extreme pain/problems. I once had an issue where I couldn’t turn my head at all, couldn’t look up at all, and could only look down a little. I had a problem with the Atlas and Axis vertebrae and the PT had to physically manipulate the neck to help realign it.

Massage therapy: I’ve had chronic pain on one side or the other of my neck/shoulders. Typically it was inflammation of some of the muscles. In particular there is a muscle that comes from the shoulder and down between the spine and the shoulder blade…the Trapezius muscle. The problem with this is that often the swollen part is hiding under the scapula and is almost impossible to get to. To massage it, the therapist laid me on my stomach, took my hand on the affected side and moved it to my back. Then she lifted up on my elbow. This moved the scapula up allowing the therapist to reach the affected muscle. It took several session to completely get rid of the issue, but I did get relief after each session.

NSAIDs and topicals: One generic thing I have done for pain, discovered when I was slinging cases of beer and wine around for delivery, was ibuprofen and an “Icy Hot” type roll-on. The roll-on has to be 16% Menthol. I found this would relieve all back pain when I took the pills and put the roll-on onto the affected area right before going to bed. I’d wake up in the morning and the pain was gone. Of course if I went out and strained it again, the pain would return, but if I had the next day off the pain would be gone for the whole day.

Percussion gun: I recently (within the last year or two) discovered the joy that is the percussion gun. Just a couple minutes of usage on the affected area and the pain goes away; It is a bit difficult to use on or around bones as it hurts as it bangs into the bones, but I’ve used it on muscle pain several times.

How are you feeling?