3 Essential Steps to Protecting Your Shoulders in Yoga

The trick here is to make sure that the student engages the proper muscles.

Ways to Ensure Your Yoga Student is Engaging the Correct Muscles

1.  Ask your students to pull down using the muscles underneath the shoulder blades.

2.  Place your hands (or fingertips) on the student’s lats and ask to originate the movement there.

3.  Have your student hold on to your fingers and resist as they pull down, checking to make sure that the movement is coming from the lats.

Step 3. Move from the Spine During Yoga Practice

The third important thing is that whatever movement we do in yoga needs to involve the spine. When you move the spine, you end up working with all the structures that bind the shoulder girdle to the spine, making each movement more effective. When we pull the arms down or back, we also flatten the thoracic curve; when we stretch the arms forward, we also round the thoracic curve, when we bring the arm across we also twist the spine, and so on.

That is why in my tradition you will rarely see a teacher do any sort of isolated shoulder stretches in a seated or any other static position (except for demonstration purposes). This is because the movement of the shoulder needs to be organically linked to the rest of the body, specifically the movement of the spine, so that the complex network of muscles that connects the shoulder girdle to the spine and ribcage gets alternately stretched and strengthened.

Until the student thoroughly understands the three main principles above, he/she has no business doing Sun Salutation-heavy yoga practices and other weight-bearing maneuvers that place a lot of stress on the shoulders; it’s just too risky.

Printed with permission from sequencewiz.com

Read more on shoulder safety in yoga class from YogaUOnline and Natasha Rizopoulos.

Educated as a school teacher, Olga Kabel has been teaching yoga for over 14 years. She completed multiple Yoga Teacher Training Programs, but discovered the strongest connection to the Krishnamacharya/ T.K.V. Desikachar lineage. She had studied with Gary Kraftsow and American Viniyoga Institute (2004-2006) and received her Viniyoga Teacher diploma in July 2006 becoming an AVI-certified Yoga Therapist in April 2011. Olga is a founder and managing director of Sequence Wiz- a web-based yoga sequence builder that assists yoga teachers and yoga therapists in creating and organizing yoga practices. It also features simple, informational articles on how to sequence yoga practices for maximum effectiveness. Olga strongly believes in the healing power of this ancient discipline on every level: physical, psychological, and spiritual. She strives to make yoga practices accessible to students of any age, physical ability and medical history specializing in helping her students relieve muscle aches and pains, manage stress and anxiety, and develop mental focus.