When I am lying on my back and I stretch my arms straight above my head then lower them to the ground they stop around a foot from the groung. Unless I bend my arms they are unable to touch the ground. Is there a way to fix this, my mother has the same problem and it may be a genetic thing. I have been trying to stretch away this problem for years but with no noticible success. Does anyone have any ideas?
Namaste and welcome to the forum.
You give us so little information that it is very difficult to really give a good reply.
However, I would like to ask and suggest the following. First do you practice on your own or with a teacher? You say in your post that “you stretch away this problem for years (I will accept that years mean here 10+ due to the little info you give) but with no noticable success”.
My ideas and guesses are:
A) If you practice on your own for years now you may have learned bad habits in your asanas which accumulates and lead to more and more bad habits, because with the years of practice behind you some level of flexibility should have showed itself by now in the shoulders as there are many asanas that targets the shoulders.
B) If you practice with a teacher, then why not go to him/her and ask your question from them and see how he/she can assist you.
C) Perhaps this is genetic and it is time for you to accept this and adjust and adapt your practice around this. This will instill greater peace within once you have accepted this and move on.
Contemplate this and perhaps you would like to volunteer more info on you problem.
back bends and pranayama.
what happens if you recline on your belly and try to put your arms along the floor, above your head?
[QUOTE=Techne;16495]what happens if you recline on your belly and try to put your arms along the floor, above your head?[/QUOTE]
It is pretty much the same however of course the weight of my body pushes my arms a little further. This is infact the pose I mainly use for this problem. I first learned about this problem when I first tryed the downward facing dog pose, I just couldn’t do it properly as you really need to get your arms far up.
Pandara I know I should get a teacher but I am quite poor and can’t afford to at this stage. I have an interest in yoga and have a routine which I learned through literature. I did do yoga in the past as part of karate so I remember how to do the basic poses properly, and I only do basic poses. This may be improper but I never push my body and follow the instructions exactly. There are no more real details I can give you as the problem is simply that my shoulders joints won’t allow my arms to rotate past a certain point. Lets say I was standing and you are looking at my body in profile and I am facing right. If you draw a circle around me then my head would be at 0’ and my feet would be at 180’. Therefore if my arms are stretched infront of me they are at 90’. I raise them and they will go to maybe 15’. Most people can get to 0’ easy and then go further to 350’ or whatever it may be. So this is my problem. It has noting to do with bad form as the problem is not getting worse and when I say it is a problem, it’s not actually a problem. I was just wondering if anyway had maybe encountered something similar or had ideas on weather this is a genetic thing or something that can be improved through certain exercises.
You’re referencing shoulder flexion and can see the motion here.
It is most likely that you’ve got some work to do with your pectoralis major as its tightness can inhibit the ROM in shoulder flexion. Simply take a bolster, place it across your mat (perpendicular), then lie down and place the back of the heart center on the bolster. Catch opposite elbows and begin to work the breath to lower them to the floor above the crown of your head. If that is straining, place another bolster above on the floor for your arms to rest on. Just enough height there to get some work but not to ache.
We can add more once you integrate this.