1 Crucial Alignment Tip For Vinyasa Yoga

hi friends Kathy Madeo here back with another video this one all about the one crucial tip that you need if you're practicing Vinyasa or Flow Yoga let's get started so those of you practicing Vinyasa and Flow Yoga you've probably noticed that you spend a lot of time bearing weight on your hands in poses such as downward facing dog plank pose upward facing dog chaturanga and so many more and so the crucial tip I want to give you since you're spending so much time on your hands has to do with the placement of your arm bone your humerus bone in the shoulder socket now to start off the shoulder joint is a highly mobile joint that's good right it lets us reach for things and turn around and grab things from behind and above but it also means if we're bearing weight on our hands that we where we're lying more on our shoulder joint to stabilize us so one thing that you want to ensure is that you've got the placement of your upper arm bone just right in the shoulder socket in the most stable position so your arm bone moves in six different directions we're just going to cover two of them for today so it moves again in relation to this imaginary line it moves away from it in external rotation and then it moves in towards it in internal rotation when the upper arm bone is an internal rotation it is less stable in the glenohumeral joint when is when it is an external rotation you can even see how the arm bone goes into my shoulder socket it's more stable so we want it to be the most stable when we're weight bearing on our hands and this will help prevent things like shoulder impingement and just general instability in your yoga practice so let's have a look at some of these poses because it's not just the poses but the transitions into and out of these poses that is just as important so even our basic tabletop position right we're weight bearing on our hands so you want the upper arm bone not to be rolling in but rather to be in external rotation now the issue with this with many students especially students that tend towards hypermobility is they'll lock out their elbow joint and the crease of the elbow will face forward and if they're hyper mobile they'll be dumping into this joint right here so in general you want your crease of your elbow to line up to your thumb so that means your forearm is in a neutral position but the upper arm bone is externally rotating remember so that it goes right into the shoulder socket and it's nice and stable so setting up your alignment in table top is really great kind of foundational way to set it up for the rest of our weight-bearing poses so you can just play with that internally rotate them you can feel the arm bone you can actually feel it go out of the shoulder socket and then externally rotate but continue to press the joint forward and we don't want that that's going to cause that hyper extension the elbow joint so we'll Glide the crease of the elbows so they line up to about our thumbs so that our wrist creases parallel to the front of the mat and that upper arm bone is in external rotation we can feel it sitting in the shoulder socket so that now when we come into something like downward facing dog the tendency I see as people lift their hips and press their chest back is they tend to internally rotate the arms as they do that movement but what I want to encourage you to do is to leave the arm bones alone they're already set and placed nicely in your shoulder socket for the most stability so as you lift your hips continue to externally rotate those upper arm bones so they never need to roll in as you press back into your downward facing dog now again I notice as students come into plank pose they tend to roll those shoulders forward the arm bones forward or internal Lee so we want to avoid that as well so the arms are in that external rotation as you come forward into your plank they remain in the external rotation and your elbow crease and the forearm is set just like it is in your tabletop now of course we'll bring our knees down for our chaturanga here because this isn't going to be a tutorial on chaturanga but again we're still weight-bearing on our hands so as the elbows pin in those arm bones are in that external rotation as we come up into our upward facing dog we're not rolling the arms in right we're allowing them to sit in the shoulder socket and then again you have to watch it carefully as you go back through your downward facing dog keep those upper arm bones in external rotation couple other places we want to look at this where it becomes essential is in things to like plank to side plank and then side plank into wild thing or even three-legged downward facing dog into wild thing so let's have a look at that real quick so if we're in plank pose here again the tendency when we go into our side plank is to take this arm and roll it in but what did we just establish that's pulling it out of the shoulder socket keeping this shoulder joint in less stable and then potentially getting a little bit of that crunchy feeling that shoulder impingement there so as you set up your plank to your side plank you're going to keep this upper arm bone in external rotation in fact it's not even really moving here as I transition and then as I turn my chest to the side my arm bone is safely there in the shoulder socket I'll show you from the opposite side here so we're going left side upper arm bone external rotation external rotation into our side plank so this becomes very tricky when we do one of the common transitions in a flow class three-legged downward facing dog into wild thing so we're going to pay particular attention to this transition here lifting my left leg up I'm going to do the left hip on top of the right and watch as I move into Wild Thing this arm bone continues in that external rotation it doesn't need to go forward in fact that will help your backbend here help keep the chest open and then the same thing here as we go back through to downward facing dog the tendency is to roll the upper arm bone inward you're going to keep it in that external rotation so I'll show on this side what it would look like if you were internally rotating it I see this a lot goes in you're going to potentially you might feel that shoulder impingement so it goes in and in so we want to avoid this especially coming back as well so instead you're going to keep the arm bone in external rotation external external external and that way again the chest is nice and open for your your Wild Thing and as you come back also keeping it in that external rotation as you go back to your downward facing dog same thing so the shoulder joint's quite a complex joint I didn't even touch on your shoulder blades right but this is just one little tip that I want you to start playing with in your own practice and seeing if you can help stabilize your shoulder joint for a nice healthy optimally aligned yoga practice if you enjoyed this video and these insights please giv