In this video, Adaptive Yoga and Movement specialist Wendy Brom is showing Karen (her client) some back and shoulder movements to help with Shoulder and back pain.
Wendy Brom: So Karen, now we're going to practice with the movement of the shoulder blade sliding down, at a diagonal, down the back body. So this movement allows us to get into these lower trap trapezius muscles.
So again lots of people suffering from a lot of shoulder pain, we do carry a lot of tension back here. So we are going to help Karen get rid of that tension. That's the movement, just so that you can get familiar with it. Let your brain kind of understand what we're going to be doing here. Now you're gonna move into that. Lift into that now that you are kind of familiar with that movement. You're going to continue to press into my hand here, as you slowly slide that shoulder blade back up now, so you're staying in the contraction, and then slowly lengthen it like all these muscle fibers in here are releasing, lengthening it out.
All right and then even here, see if there's even a little bit more that can release and let go. Good. And then just gently press into my hand there and stay with that contact as you slowly release. So here all these muscle fibers are getting some relief. Nice. Interesting, that time I felt it more in the front, in the pectoral muscles. Did you feel them contracting? And then releasing.
Well let's come back and try that again and see if we can keep this focused with the muscles in here. So maybe you want to let's try even going slower and smaller and a little bit less pressure into my hand so we can see if we can isolate this, okay? All right. So when you're ready, drawing that down, good. Press into my hand. As far as I go up the pecs don't want to get moved. Okay, so now let's begin to release. Sometimes it takes just a really lighter touch. Again, that slow small movement is gonna give us the greatest boon.
We over-effort so much, right? We over-effort a lot so it's learning how to move a little with less effort really, right? We have this idea that our muscles need to be strong. So they are tight all the time. These six-pack abs and these big strong muscles. But think about it; if you look at bodybuilders who lift weights all the time. Bodybuilders are really strong, but they can barely move, right? They have no mobility at all. A good functioning muscle is different from a muscle being tight all the time. Our muscles want to be able to contract; we want to be able to contract them when we want to, release them when we want to, so they are resting, "tonus" and then lengthen them when we want to. For us to have that kind of voluntary control means that we can move with so much more freedom and less pain... It's exciting!
