Introduction
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Excursioning- not only does your humeral head pivot within the hollow surface of your socket (pivoting/rotating), your socket travels around the surface of your humeral head (excursioning).
- Medial/lateral rotation of the scapula is named based on the movement of the bottom tip of the scapula (sliding along the rhomboid/serratus sling). Upward/downward rotation is named based on the movement of the glenoid fossa as it follows the reach of the upper arm bone. Two different orientation points to describe the same movement of the scapula. Given the different orientation points, how does the experience change for you?
- Journal: This video introduces new ways of approaching actions that we have already studied. Part of gaining stability has everything to do with having many available pathways and a willingness and ease in shifting focus. Stability does not come from gripping and locking down. What are your insights given this definition of stability?
- Practice Tools: Contemplate the visuals of the Cezanne sketches, notice the direction and reach that the upper limb presents within this captured moment of a body in motion.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Anatomy & Biomechanics:
Deltoids Stabilize the Center of the Range
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Front of the shoulder joint:
- Pectoralis Major
- Coracobrachialis
- Back of the shoulder joint:
- Latissimus dorsi
- Teres Major
- All of these lead to internal rotation and adduction while those in the front are flexors and those in the back are extensors.
- Adduction is very compelling for stability but it can override our ability to reach. If our upper arm relates primarily to our side body we will skip the shoulder joint, we lose out on the possibility to call in a deeper stability in our shoulder joint.
- Your pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi muscles both have a twist in their fibers as they attach to your inner upper arm. This means when your arms are in flexion and external rotation (arms overhead) or in extension and external rotation (arms in the back plane) these muscles need to eccentrically contract (stabilize/mobilize at a length). Take this theoretical understanding into the following unlocking movements.
- Practice Tools: Learn more about the organization of these muscles through the anatomy slides.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Unlocking Movement:
Stability in the Overhead Plane
Key Movements to Practice and Integrate:
- Make sure that you don’t lose the external rotation. In the lifted version, your opposite hand creates the boundary, turning your elbow forward, When your elbows are on a surface, make sure you don’t fall into your inner elbow.
- Keep puffing your back ribs in order to find the active length in your lats and pec major. Otherwise your bottom ribs will jut forward and the action will be less of a shoulder lengthener and more of a spinal movement. (Another cue offered to stabilize your torso is anchoring down into your sternum and tailbone.)
- When your arms are overhead and you push upwards, as in this unlocking, your larger muscle groups are in eccentric contraction (are active while lengthening). It is also important to activate these muscle groups in concentric contractions. Pulling actions, like pull ups, give these muscle groups their greatest dynamic strength.
- Rotator cuff, deltoid and triceps are also activated in this unlocking. In fact, whenever we engage an action our goal is to invite the whole muscle suit of our body into the action. Not everything is going to fire up quickly, or is going to change length, or may ultimately only participate in coming into or out of the action. Readiness is key! Try this unlocking again with this in mind- how do your legs and torso also participate in the movements?
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Unlocking Movement:
Prone Exploration of Shoulder Range
Key Movements to Practice and Integrate:
- Beginning with pushing down recruits your shoulder stability. Keep that as you then transition to recruit the support to lift and reach.
- The flow leads from internal rotation and extension in your back and neutral plane into external rotation and flexion in the overhead plane (as you transition to take your arms overhead).
- Keeping the depth of the ball in the socket at the same time that you are reaching your shoulder socket upward towards your fingertips requires the activation of your larger muscles to work with your deeper stabilizers. Quite often the activation of these superficial muscles can override the deeper muscles. This is true at every joint- we aim for a stability that remains deeply orienting as we reach and engage our bigger movers.
- Practice Tools: see how these unlocking movements inform your further exploration of the asanas offered.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Sanskrit Study: Tejase
Call In the Light
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Tejase– attraction of light, to call the light, to prioritize that which brings the light
- Choosing the light, setting your sights, pointing your arrow towards the target. Your sockets have a magnetic pull on your humeral head and they also create a strong attraction of your torso onto the reach of your arm. Honing this relationship is choosing to bring your light into the world.
- Journal: When have you been sure of where you wanted to go? What are you moving towards what will bring the understanding you desire? What are you moving towards what will challenge and allow you to share your skills? How has your relationship with the light of the world expanded through your asana practice?
- Visuals: Turn to the Tejase syllable once more. The syllable has 3 characters with particular flows mid-character, focus on these flows. The final two syllables are two vertical lines that signify the end of the chant.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Practice Tools: Move
Short Asana Sequence
Live with Julia:
Q&A on the Shoulder Joint
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