Last week in the cabin we brought our attention back to something very simple, yet incredibly powerful: the breath. Rather than focusing on strength or perfect positioning, we allowed the breath to take centre stage — exactly where it should always be in yoga.
This week we’re shifting our focus, turning our attention to shoulder strength.
At first, strengthening the shoulders might not seem particularly important. After all, in everyday life we don’t tend to bear much weight through them. But healthy, strong shoulders are incredibly important. The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint, similar to the hips but unlike the hip joint, which is deep and stable, the shoulder joint is relatively shallow. Because of this, stability relies much more on the surrounding muscles. In fact, there are around 17 or 18 muscles working together to stabilise and move the shoulder!
Yet we use our arms constantly without really thinking about it — reaching up to grab something from a shelf, waving hello, carrying bags, or throwing a few shapes on the dance floor 😄. All of this means that keeping the muscular structure around the shoulder joint strong and supportive is essential.
Luckily, yoga gives us some brilliant postures to help build that strength.
Downward Facing Dog
One of the postures we focused on was Downward Facing Dog, which is a fantastic pose for developing shoulder strength and stability. One of the key things we worked on here was not dumping all our weight into the heels of the hands, which can place unnecessary pressure on the wrists.
Instead, we focused on actively engaging the shoulders by externally rotating the arms. A helpful image we used was the ‘jam jar lid’ example: imagine your hands are on two jam jar lids and you’re trying to twist them open outwards while pressing firmly into the mat. This action turns the inside crease of the elbows towards the front and helps activate the muscles around the shoulders, spreading the work evenly through the arms.
Plank
From there we moved into Plank, where the shoulders play a huge role in stabilising the body. In this posture the shoulders stack over the wrists, and the muscles around the shoulder girdle work hard to support the body’s weight and keep everything steady.
Side Plank (and Half Side Plank)
We explored Side Plank, with options for Half Side Plank. These poses challenge the shoulders in a slightly different way, building strength, stability, and control as the supporting shoulder works hard to hold and balance the body.
Chaturanga
For many of you, Chaturanga might be a new posture. This pose is essentially a low plank, where we lower the body halfway while keeping the elbows hugged in close to the ribs. Keeping the elbows close is really important because it engages the lats and pectoral muscles — big, powerful muscles that help stabilise and support the shoulders. From here we practised rolling over the toes into our next posture, Upward Facing Dog.
Upward Facing Dog
In our Sun Salutations, we often do Baby Cobra or Cobra as our back bend after we’ve lowered down from Plank, but there is also a third option called Upward Facing Dog. This posture brings much more strength work into the shoulders. The arms are straight, the chest lifts forward and up, and the shoulders help support the upper body. Some people prefer the Cobra poses, others prefer Upward Facing Dog – it really depends on your body so it’s always your choice.
Shoulder strength might not be something we think about every day, but our practice reminds us how important it is. By building strength, awareness and stability in this complex joint, we’re helping to support the way we move both on and off the mat.
And hopefully making it easier to keep reaching for those shelves… and throwing those funky shapes on the dance floor too 🕺😄
Michelle x
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