Yoga for Rocks Shoulders: 15-Min Mobility (Day 1, With Belt)

Alright keep the grip go up again lift your arm slowly turn your body always leaning away from the wall. So you have a little bit of tension maybe five pounds two and a half kilos of pressure just a little bit. And don't cheat past the awkward angles try to go really slow and decrease the pressure when you feel your shoulder popping or hurting. Let's keep spinning.

Lift your arm your elbow can bend but don't go fast try to go slow in circles always keeping a little bit of tension in your belt. So no slack in the belt. We are working our shoulder mobility you can do this one even if you have a shoulder injury as long as you go super slow. And don't try to be efficient and effective try to be lazy sloppy and do it twice as slow as you think.

Let's go a couple of more rounds without releasing the belt. I like to keep the same grip on the belt because when we reach just take one more spin. And then stop when you face away from the wall bend your elbow slightly and take five breaths here. If you feel pain inside the joint you might want to move your arm more lower so instead of keeping the arm up and moving forward.

You can bend the elbow like you're preparing to throw a ball right so you can keep I call it cactus arms. So 90 degree in the shoulder 90 degree in the elbow joint take another breath here. And then lift your arm overhead and let's start spinning the other way. Now we can round our spine a little bit try to since we're going the opposite direction even though we're doing the same movement.

Things will work differently in the shoulder because that's just habit of movement. It's completely different going opposite direction. And that's why we try to go slow to actually feel that difference. Making big circles with the arms small circle with the arms small circles with the feet.

Just keep spinning take your time. Just keep spinning take your time. I like closing my eyes when I do something for the first time. It's easier to breathe when you close your eyes and it's easier to be intuitive instead of analytical.

You don't have to analyze too much these exercises more or less do themselves as long as you show up for the class the exercise will work. One last spin. And when the belt is completely flat again we know we completed equal amounts on both sides. Switching hands.

Where did we start? We started by just having our hand in the shoulder height leaning away from the wall stretching our elbow our biceps and our chest. A one percent dislocation of the shoulder is what we're trying to achieve. The shoulder the arm bone is plugging out of the shoulder socket stretching the deep ligaments of the shoulder.

I get a really intense neck stretch here. A little bonus. And then turn to face the wall lean back and let your shoulder move forward as far as it can go. And then turn away from the wall so your arm is behind you.

This is just prep. We're not focusing on any achievements here. Just stretching stiff muscles and nerves. And then turn to face the wall and lift your arm over your head raise the arm and start spinning.

Remember go slow slower than you think and also lean away so you always have some tension in the belt. If you're injured go 400 percent slower. When we have an injury our body locks up muscles that are not injured but just to protect the injury and to convince your body that it's okay. Go slow and breathe never activate.

The reason you don't want to trigger the pain response is because you activate the wrong nervous system. It's really hard to facilitate healing in an injury if you have the fight or flight or free system activated. So try to avoid pain at all costs. And even if you're not injured try to go slow so you can explore new angles that your shoulders are rarely taking.

One more spin. Usually we only find ourselves in positions like this when we're getting submitted. So in a way we're practicing submission avoidance and injury avoidance. Stop here with the arm up and lean away from the wall.

And then turn to face the wall. Stop here with the arm up and lean away from the wall. If your clavicle bone is pressing into your arm bone and you feel pressure inside the joint then bend your left elbow and do more of a chest stretch than a straight arm stretch. Your elbow can bend too that's no problem.

Take three more breaths. And start rolling the opposite directions. Don't hurry. Nice and easy.

Japanese. The shoulders are designed not like the hips. The hips are designed very rigidly. They have some movement but they have much more strength and stability than movement.

The shoulders are weak compared to the hips but they have an insane amount of movement. You can roll your arm around 360 degrees like a wheel and you can still lift things straight in front of you. You can place your arms behind your back and that's why the shoulder joint is a very open joint and there is just a lot of ligaments holding things into place. It's not bone pressing against bone and that's why it's easy to dislocate your shoulder.

And if you have imbalances in these muscles that are supporting the shoulder joint, the shoulder is a very open joint so all the muscles and ligaments around need to be balanced both strong and flexible. If they're not then you have the problems that you're probably having right now. I'm assuming that since you're doing the yoga for rocks program. Right, release the belt.

Just swing your arms around from side to side. And then grab the belt. I'm gonna release this belt. Grab your belt, thumbs pointing in, belt behind your back and then just try to stretch your arms straight.

At the same time you're lifting your chest. Let's take 10 breaths here, pushing the arms straight, squeezing the belt with our fingers and palms, lean the head back and try to squeeze the shoulder blades together as well. So shoulders are moving back and together, back and together, back together. Five more breaths.

And release the belt, swing your arms from side to side again. And now super slowly let's do a full roll with our shoulders. So arms forward, arms are separating out to the side like a big Y. Take a big breath on the top here.

And then slowly lower your arms and push them back so the shoulders are in the same position as we just did. And then arms down. One more. Inhale arms up and separating.

Exhale arms down. Last round. Inhale arms up and apart. Exhale arms down.

And that's it for today's class. See you guys tomorrow and we're gonna take it one step further.