Angle of the arms to the body

Hello jstein

For the kind of shoulder opening that you get in this pose the idea is to start with your arms in that position and then keep them there. This is interpreted by many in different ways, hence your question.

This is the way I look at it (and teach it :cheese:):
If you are being asked to lift up everything at the same time then for me it stands to reason that you can break what each body part does down to work out what they all will do.
* The legs go up. You aim to keep them how they started: long straight and strongly together and as high as you can.
* The head lifts and looks up
* The spine lifts up too. It goes from straight on floor to curved.
* The arms lift up. They are attached to your torso, so the way they move is also going to be affected by the destination of the spine/chest. Try to PRESERVE the relationship of your arms to your chest and shoulders. They start facing the same way as the space between your shoulders – flat on the floor. As you lift your spine your palms stay in that same relationship. Here’s where the tricky bit (to explain) comes in. You are ALSO lifting your arms up off the ground. If you isolated that movement and ONLY lifted your arms and didn’t lift anything else your arms would come off the ground at an angle. When you combine that movement with the curving up of your spine the arms APPEAR to be coming back in an angle. You don’t have to move them into a smaller angle. And you don’t consciously keep them perpendicular to the body. I want the shoulders to open so I ask my students to focus on the lift and preserving the relationship of the palms to the upper chest, and not trying to preserve the direction the palms will face, because that changes from person to person due to their OWN flexibility and ability.

If you are using purely the lifting movement I describe, when you lift your arms up off the ground as you lift your chest, it will only SEEM to create an angle with your body. It is almost an illusion. 😉 You don’t have to try to create it, it happens by itself.

So how do you do it? Have a little experiment first. Lie on the floor ready for the pose, and only lift the arms up as high as you can VERTICALLY only without any backward movement. Now try this again and lift everything up.

I hope that helps

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello jstein

Yes you can use this technique here to drop the shoulders down and back away from the ears, elongating and relaxing the neck in exactly the same way. Often people lift up in this pose and create tension in their necks. So this guards against it.

I like to instruct that just as you tense your legs before the lift, try activating the arms before the lift too. Many people squeeze their legs but only activate their arms at the moment of the lift.

Thank YOU for your comment

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂