Prana Journal
Friday, May 13, 2005
  Shoulder routines
Alan Little asks me for my secret sauce for loosening up my shoulders: see his comments. He even gives his own his own example. My routines are not rocket science, much more remedial. I am still waking up to my body, probably for the first time in my life, after decades of misuse.

The premise that got me started is that I don't do anything fancy -- just do it everyday, along with my meditation and pranayama practice. These are routines that are equivalent to office yoga -- stuff that you can do to relieve tension from sitting at a desk all day.

I've found two good books with shoulder routines: Erich Schiffmann also has eight shoulder stretches, some with a strap, in his book Yoga The Spirit And Practice Of Moving Into Stillness. I can do only five of them. Miriam Austin in Cool Yoga Tricks has a whole section on loosening up the shoulders.

I still can't do the top half of Garudasana or Eagle pose. My arms and hands simply will not intertwine.

Postscript: here are some other ideas for office yoga: the University of Alberta has some detailed instruction with drawings in Word format. Easy Desktop Yoga has a free video download. Cyndi Lee gives advice in Yoga Journal. And then you have My Daily Yoga, which has some fun graphics.

 
Comments:
Oooh, I love love love the "office yoga" shoulder stretches. I do those every day, and they've really helped me deal with the shoulder pain I get from sitting in front of my computer all day. And props to pidgeon pose, too.
 
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Name: Michael Smith
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