Armless Yoga: Give Your Shoulders a Break

Our arms are our devices of doing. We use them to perform virtually all the things we do in our each day lives. We use them to cut veggies, to sort on our keyboards, to eat, to drink, to lug objects from one place to a different, plus many, many extra issues, all day lengthy. We stock this behavior into our yoga apply. We use our arms to help our our bodies and to extend depth in our asanas. For instance, in Parvrtta Sukhasana (Revolved Simple Pose), we use our arm to tug us into the twist. In Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), we regularly prolong our high arm again to assist open the chest, and we help ourselves in our decrease arm. However utilizing our arms to accentuate our poses can usually result in shoulder rigidity. It sounds bizarre, however armless yoga would possibly generally be a shoulder-nurturing strategy to play together with your apply.

Training armless yoga doesn’t imply that you must lose your arms altogether. We have to use them for a mess of poses. Assume Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Going through Canine Pose), Phalakasana (Plank Pose), and so on. However there are some asanas, like the 2 talked about above, the place we are likely to create stress within the shoulders by overusing our arms. It is a pure tendency as a result of “doing” is the function our arms play in our lives. Generally it’d even really feel as in case you are utilizing your arms to inflict the pose in your physique. Can we as a substitute use them as a help to our apply quite than to accentuate it?

Why Follow Armless Yoga?

The advantages of training armless yoga transcend merely relieving shoulder stress. Not that relieving shoulder stress is insignificant. Most of us carry some measure of stress in our shoulders and neck. After I take requests from college students for what they’d prefer to apply in a category, the shoulders and neck are virtually all the time first on the record.

In standing poses specifically, once we overuse our arms, our core and legs can disengage. This decreases the stabilizing qualities of standing poses and makes our arms do the work that the legs and core must be doing.

However there’s extra to it. The bodily advantages of asana apply go deeper than stretching muscle mass. Our yoga apply can promote physiological well being as properly. Stretching and strengthening are actually facet advantages to the primary goal—the nervous system.

Once we apply with aggression, utilizing our arms to power ourselves additional into poses, we are able to stimulate the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system. Asana was cultivated over centuries to do the alternative—to suppress the sympathetic nervous system and to permit us to relaxation within the parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) facet of the autonomic nervous system. This creates the physiological atmosphere that greatest helps meditation—the guts of yoga.

Tips on how to Follow Revolved Simple Pose sans Arms

I’ll use a easy instance to display the best way to apply armless yoga. You may take this instruction into all rotated poses.

1. Sit in Sukhasana (Simple Pose) on a folded Yoga Blanket. For those who discover that your lumbar backbone is rounded again on this place, be at liberty to apply this pose sitting in a chair.
2. Rotate your torso to the proper, scooting your proper hip again in order that your pelvis is in settlement with the twist. This helps to maintain your sacroiliac (SI) joint in a impartial place.
3. Place your left hand on the proper knee or thigh. Merely place your hand there, with out pulling your torso additional into the twist.
4. As an alternative of utilizing your arm to “full” the twist, think about you would invite your core into the pose. By the core, I imply the interior buildings of your physique, primarily your belly and thoracic organs. Right here’s the way it works. Think about drawing your proper lung and kidney again into your again physique. Concurrently draw your left lung and kidney, and your coronary heart ahead. Then draw your liver (on the proper) again and your abdomen (on the left) ahead. Now invite your ascending and descending colon into the twist. Draw the ascending (simply inside the proper facet of your pelvis) again and the descending colon (simply contained in the left facet of your pelvis) ahead. Think about the core (organs) and shell (muscle mass, bones and pores and skin) of your physique rotating collectively.
5. Keep for five to 10 breaths, shifting out of your core and holding your left arm relaxed.
6. Return to middle. Take just a few breaths to really feel the residue from the pose, after which rotate to the left.

Energize and Stabilize: Armless Yoga in Standing Poses

Training standing poses with out utilizing your arms can present you areas the place your physique shouldn’t be taking part as a lot as it’d. It’s frequent to overstretch the shoulder of your high arm in Triangle Pose, and to disengage your legs and lean in your backside hand. I’ll instruct Triangle Pose right here, however you possibly can apply different standing poses this fashion as properly.

1. Stand on a nonskid Yoga Mat together with your toes parallel and a couple of to three toes aside.
2. Flip your proper leg out 90 levels and switch your left leg—together with the pelvis—in 30 levels. Don’t attempt to sq. your hips. Learn this text to be taught why it’s essential to not apply this ever-popular alignment cue.
3. Draw your arms into your sides together with your arms pointing downward.
4. Now start to bend to the proper into Triangle Pose, stopping at no matter level you’re feeling a stretch however can preserve simple respiratory. The 2 sides of your torso ought to each be lengthy and your chest ought to face ahead.
5. Discover your legs. Are they working a bit tougher than common? How about your core muscle mass? If both or each these areas are working tougher than you’re used to, it’s probably since you’ve been disengaging your legs and leaning in your backside hand.
6. Now think about opening the ribcage—not the pelvis—towards the entrance utilizing your organs in the identical means as in Revolved Simple Pose. On this case that signifies that the proper lung will probably be gently drawing ahead, and the left lung and coronary heart will probably be gently drawing again.
7. Take 3 to five deep breaths right here after which return to an upright place. Rotate your legs in order that your toes are parallel.
8. Take just a few breaths on this impartial place earlier than training the pose on the left facet.

Training Armless Yoga

You don’t must apply your standing poses this fashion on a regular basis, in fact. However while you do apply with the normal arm place, ensure you’re not overusing your arms. Your legs and core must be your main help, and the orientation of your ribcage ought to come out of your core additionally, quite than your high arm.

And significantly while you twist or ahead bend, examine to see in case your arms are inflicting the pose in your physique quite than merely supporting the trajectory of the pose. Calm down your shoulders and permit your poses to unfold naturally.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.