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The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › The Hot Yoga Poses › Utkatasana › Arms in Awkward Pose…
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Hello everybody!
I just can’t get enough of this forum! It is helping my practice IMMENSELY on a daily basis as I am the kind of person who is interested in all of the subtle details of a hot yoga practice.
Anyway, I am watching the video about Awkward pose and it discusses the benefits of keeping your arms locked in the forward position. What does it mean it exactly when you say to slightly externally rotate your arms?
Also, with my chronic (but improving) neck and shoulder stiffness, I am unable to position my shoulders down my back and at the same time elongate my neck during Awkward while my arms are straight out and locked.
What I notice in the mirror are these vigorously active tendons/veins/something that connect from my neck to my shoulder-area. The more I try and straighten my arms forward the more these “veins/tendons” pop out and become stressed. Likewise, the more I attempt to relax my shoulders back down away from my ears the more these guys struggle to prevent any separation.
I think my traps are extra tight but hopefully they will continue to improve. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Hi Andrew
When I say externally rotate your arms it is the mechanism that allows you to bring your shoulders down and back. If you want an experience of this in everyday terms:
>> Stand with your arms down by your sides.
>> Notice what way your palms are facing. Those with regular posture should have their palms facing towards their legs.
>> Notice now what you have to do and how it feels in your shoulder joint when you rotate your arms so that your palms face forward, then outward.This is an external rotation and is what you do in your pose.
So I am wondering what you need to do to feel relaxation in your well positioned shoulders and balance that with a relaxed neck while still creating strength in your arms. Is it possible that there is tension in areas that you don’t need to tense?
What is going on in your jaw? Are you clenching your teeth perhaps? Sometimes we effort our yoga when we can just try!
Anyway, I welcome some more distinctions as to what you are feeling and where, so that I can better understand what is going on.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Thanks again for the reply, Gabrielle.
One of my greatest problems is with keeping my shoulders down and back. I definitely understand the concept of externally rotating the shoulders when in a standing position. I have a lot of scar tissue and a torn labrum in my right shoulder, all of this covered by a lot of pretty tense muscle tissue, so the act of external rotation seems particularly unnatural and difficult for me.
I have been working on it and do see some improvements. In Awkward though, I feel I can keep my neck and shoulders relatively relaxed only if I keep my arms slack. If I keep my arms locked it’s almost impossible to keep my shoulders down back and relaxed.
Is one version better than the other in your opinion?
Hi Andrew
I remember reading your post but was severely jet lagged at the time. Here I am back again (one month later and back from the trip – woops) to tell you that without seeing you in the pose my first response would be to keep working on the proper position of your shoulders and the decompression of your neck. In time you may find that you can find more ability to ‘lock’ out those arms. If activating your arms causes a problem with your shoulders and neck region I would choose to avoid the problem first. Every so often you can engage your arms to see what progress you are able to make.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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