Chest Relaxed, Shoulders Back

To continue on with healing sore necks and shoulders... ( I know it's been a bit of a break here, didn't mean to be gone so long) There has been a surge of painful shoulders in my practice and among my friends, so this has been on my mind and lips a lot. One of the most important things to do is get those shoulders down and BACK. When directed to stand up straight and get your shoulders back, most people push their shoulders back using their pectorals.(chest muscles) What you want to do is PULL them back using the muscles between your shoulder blades. The pecs are already strong muscles, and building strength in the back muscles is key to a variety of postural changes that will help your shoulders feel better. I'll describe how to do that most effectively on the blog, so I'll see you there...


So, part of having healthy happy shoulders starts with foot placement. Toes forward shifts our weight forward, relaxes the butt muscles, allows the spine to lengthen, and drops the shoulders. This was covered in the last post.  So now we have to get those shoulders back.  Most of our everyday activities involve postures that drop our head forward, and curl our upper spine.  This rotates  the shoulders forward, and shortens the pec muscles.  While this is going on the muscles between the shoulder blades are contracting to provide stability for shoulder movement, but are simultaneously being stretched, and are static for long periods of time.  This makes them weak and cranky. Really cranky.  So, the cure for this is, as in almost all cases, increased blood flow by way of muscle contraction.  The trick here is to get the back muscles to contract, and keep the pecs from being involved.  The solution is to get your arms behind your ears.  Let me explain.  Lift your arms as if you were holding a bar above your head., so your arms are straight out to your sides, and elbows bent in a 90 degree angle.  Now, move your elbows so that they are behind your ears, put another way, move your elbows towards the back of you, upper arms still parallel to the floor.  Got it?  Good.  Now from here, squeeze your shoulder blades together.  Your chest muscles should be out of the equation and the back muscles should be going, "ahhhh." Do a few repetitions in sets of 8-10. Do throughout the day to nourish and clean out the tissues.  Even simpler... with your arms at your side, again bend the elbows to 90 degrees, and rotate the hands so they are palms up and thumbs are pointing behind you.  Now squeeze the shoulder blades together.  So there  you have it, go forth with your feet forward, and shoulders rolled back.  You'll look proud, and your back and shoulders will be happier. 
Peace

Feet Forward, Shoulders Down

   Sore neck/shoulders? Of course, we all have them. Believe it or not, the beginning of having less pain there begins with your feet. This will take a bit of explaining, so I'll start here, and finish on the blog. The first part is this: stand up, or do this sometime you're doing something like washing dishes. First assess how you feel in your various parts: legs, hips, shoulders. Now, look down at your feet. Chances are one or both of your feet are rotated away from the mid-line of your body, the opposite of pigeon toed. Now bring both feet so they are pointing straight forward, (you'll have to look at them to make sure.) Take a deep breath, relax, and let your body regions readjust. What happened? For most folks there is a predictable sequence of events. I'll go through it on the blog if you want to follow the discussion there. 


 Continuing on with the exercise from today's Facebook posting, the first thing people say is that they now feel pigeon toed! Our muscles have proprioceptors in them that tell us where we are in space, but chronic muscle shortening can distort what they perceive to be the right place for us to be!
     Next, your body weight should have shifted to your quadriceps, the muscle on the front of the thigh. And your shoulders should have descended, relaxing from where they usually reside up around your ears. Some of you  may have felt your spine lengthen, as your tail bone tucked under. 
     The kids song about the "hip bone is connected to the thigh bone" is very literally true, and applies just as surely to the soft tissue. We are a collection of parts, but we are one; each member influencing the position and function of even its most distant neighbors.
     Try to develop the habit of feet straight forward. This will involve some hip stretching to counterbalance the outward rotation of the hips, which is caused by contracted gluts. This  will require some mindfulness, but will pay off in a happier body. 

Peace