How do I Stop My Shoulder from Hurting when I Sleep?

Last Updated on February 9, 2026 by Sunit. S. Ekka

Shoulder night pain is the most common complaint that a frozen shoulder sufferer usually complains to me. Although there are other complaints like being unable to comb hair, pain during reaching the back pocket, the pain that keeps your night sleepless is perhaps most frustrating.

Winter magnifies the night pain problem. In this article, we will be covering a simple tip to get rid of shoulder night pain.

Shoulder pain at night

Frozen shoulder is the number one cause of shoulder pain at night. Imagine if you had a continuous sleepless night for days, it would affect your job output, your day would become lazy and most importantly, it would affect your overall health.

Though shoulder pain can’t be treated in isolation, to get permanent relief from pain, we have to treat frozen shoulder as a whole. Having said this, it means that you have to also focus on shoulder stiffness exercises to get rid of both pain and stiffness of the shoulder.

If you are a recently frozen shoulder sufferer, you want to know more details regarding this. We have a wonderful article frozen shoulder and its physiotherapy. We recommend that you go through it for a better understanding of your problem.

So without delay, let’s get started.

Step-by-step procedure to treat
shoulder pain at night

The procedure/ tips we are about ot discuss is very simple and can be performed with the things that are already available at home. And it takes only a few minutes to perform the procedure.

The two things that you need are:

Pain balm– Any pain balm you regularly use at home will do. But if it’s not available, get it from the nearest chemist’s shop because it is a very necessary thing for our tips.

Hot pack- We also need an arrangement for heat treatment. There are many modes for heat treatment, like a hot water bottle, an electric heating pad, infra-red lamp.

However, in this article, we will discuss using hot fomentation. But before we proceed, here’s a point you have to take care follow these tips just before going to bed. Have your dinner 30 minutes before doing it.

Preparing hot fomentation.

Preparation for hot fomentation takes only a few minutes. For this, take a bowl of water and heat it over the gas stove to 50 to 60 degrees Celsius. You can put a spoon of table salt or use it without it.   Also, keep a towel ready.

We will discuss the process of application below, but for a hint, we have dipped a towel in water and then applied a hot towel to the painful area.

So, here’s the actual step.

Step 1

1. Take the pain balm and apply it to the painful shoulder region. Most of the regions would be the front of the shoulder and between the shoulder and neck region.
2. Apply with the fingers and give a gentle massage. Remember that you have to give a gentle massage, not press too hard rise it.
3. After the thorough application of the ointment, leave it for 10 minutes so that the body can absorb the ointment.

Step 2

In step 2, we have given heat treatment. Giving heat treatment after the application of the balm magnifies the effect of the balm. As I have mentioned that I recommend hot fomentation, so I would proceed with the application of hot fomentation.

1. For this, we have to keep a bowl of hot water ready.
2. Now, take a terrycloth towel and dip it in the hot water, and squeeze out the extra amount of water from the towel.
3. Now apply the hot towel over the shoulder in question. Apply it firmly and move the towel around the region.
4. Repeat the process till the water in the bowel comes to the normal process.

Again, I would like to mention that you can use another heating agent if this process is found to be more cumbersome. There’s no hard and fast rule to apply only hot fomentation.

Shoulder home exercise chart PDF

I strongly suggest you to also download shoulder pain home exercise chart with all the exercises on this post and other useful exercises. All these exercises are described in clear picture that anyone can learn and perform.

Final words

This is a very effective tip that you can follow for other muscle pain conditions. Like lower back pain due to muscle spasm, neck pain due to muscle spasm. I would like to stress a point that, for a frozen shoulder sufferer, it does not solve the problem permanently. You have to focus on exercises for a permanent cure of frozen shoulder.

Keep Reading: What causes pain on tip of shoulder?

Sunit. S. Ekka

The author is a physiotherapist who has been practising for the last 17 years. He holds a Bachelor's in Physiotherapy (BPT) from SVNIRTAR (Swami Vivekananda National Institute of Rehabilitation and Research), one of the prestigious physiotherapy schools in India.

Whatever he learns dealing with his patient, he shares it with the world through blogs and e-books. He also owns a YouTube channel, "Sunit Physiotherapist" with over 8 lakh active subscribers. Here, he shares everything he gets to learn serving the patient.