The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › Shoulder Impingement
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Hello Gabrielle
Thanks for the great site!
I have taken a long (8 month) break from Bikram yoga. Now I have an impinged shoulder and am thinking that hot yoga may be just the ticket to fix this. Can you advise if there are postures I should avoid?
Hello Stretchie
Thanks for posting in the forum. Much better for all when it’s here instead of in a personal email. Sorry to hear your shoulder is not feeling 100%.
Naturally you should avoid poses that cause excruciating pain, or pain deemed by you to be damaging or risky. If you have acute pain then yoga is not your answer.
However there are ways to avoid the situation occurring so that your shoulders are in the best possible position (literally and figuratively) to heal, feel better and better and to support an ‘ecological’ and ‘sustainable’ practice.
I am wondering too, how familiar you are with my work: Can you please tell me whether you have watched any of the free videos on my website, own my book, or have done research on the forum? It will help me point you in the right direction.
The main point of this answer: Every single pose you attempt is one where you must pay attention to keeping the shoulders down and back, away from the ears, not wearing them like earrings (!) where your neck can feel long and unhindered (even if that pose is a forward bend, you must start with the neck long).
Short rule of thumb: If you feel tension in your neck or shoulders, if your chin drops forward even a bit, then you must FIRST do what you can to establish that right relationship in your head, neck and shoulders.
What you need to do depends on what pose you are doing at the time. Generally speaking, for the first part of class, for standing poses, when you are lifting your arms up or out, you deliberately place shoulders down and back. With arms over head, say, in Half Moon, don’t worry that your arms might even be slightly bent.
With Standing Bow for example which is a wonderful pose for you to do for your shoulders (but ONLY IF you do it properly hence my question about resources above), don’t allow your chin to drop, keep both shoulders down. Feel the kick drive the pose and feel the traction in your arms and shoulders creating space.
Several of the poses you will feel a strong traction helping create space in the shoulder joint.
I can’t go through all of them here. I invite you to go to class with awareness of your shoulders and as a result of that experience come back here with pose-specific questions. Equally important is the answer about what, if anything, you do use for help (of my resources) and you might want to add in what level of experience you believe you have, and whether you go to scripted-instruction classes
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Hello Gabrielle
Thank you for your initial response. I stumbled onto your site when googling ‘shoulder injury’ and ‘hot yoga’. So I’m a newby and clearly have some homework to do! I’m also quite new to yoga (only a few month’s experience) but luckily I’m very flexible. The classes I have in mind are traditional Bikram scripted instruction classes.
Before I start I think I will get an ultrasound of my shoulder done to see if maybe there’s a tear. If it’s all good I will be very keen to get back into yoga and would appreciate you pointing me in the right direction, as you said…
That’s a great plan! Come back with any questions you have. You certainly want to know what to pay attention to. 😉
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Hello Gabrielle
As it turns out I have bursitis in my shoulder  and no structural damage. So I have been back to yoga and am loving it. The only problem is I don’t know if it is making my shoulder worse or not. It still feels very tender and hurts a bit at night. When I wasn’t doing any yoga I had a sense of improvement, perhaps a false sense because I wasn’t moving my arm much. So my big question is, am I better off resting my shoulder completely for a month or two or is there a distinct benefit to be derived from yoga? I’m avoiding certain poses that are too challenging, like full locust and camel, but still doing the rest which cause a little discomfort. Also, I’ve taken anti-inflammatories for quite a while and am not sure if I should keep taking them or take a break. I’m really impatient to be active again and want to take the fastest route to recovery!
Some guidance would be much appreciated 🙂
Hi Stretchie
Great news. Your guidance is outlined above! 🙂 Yay! Start with the stuff about shoulders. Best point is to begin with the free video on the Hot Yoga Doctor Home Page called Elbows in Your Back Pocket – A Transformational Technique. It’s one of 4 useful vids that is specific to your problem.
Your problem will be greatly aided by some mindfulness around movement and function in and out of the yoga room. So start there and then go through the above long post I wrote to you from 3 weeks ago. Come back and ask questions and clarification as you need them!
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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