Reach your arms around and interlace your fingers behind you at your sacrum. Prasarita Padottanasana, or a Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend, with your fingers interlaced behind your back is probably the most common (and familiar) shoulder stretch done in yoga classes, mainly because it’s simple, easy to do, and effective.īegin standing with your feet about a leg’s length apart and parallel with all of your toes pointing straight forward. A Standing Wide-Legged Forward Bend with Hands Locked Below are some of my favorite yoga poses for tight shoulders. One of the many reasons yoga is so great! Opening your chest and releasing deeply held tension in your shoulders not only feels better physically, it will also help you relax. The good news is that we can work with the body and breath to calm down and essentially reverse the stress response.

Your heart rate speeds up, pupils dilate, and your muscles contract, particularly your jaw, and before too long your shoulders are hiked up to your ears without you even realizing it. When we become anxious or stressed our body responds accordingly, kicking us into fight-or-flight, a.k.a. We also tend to hold a lot of tension in our shoulders, neck, and jaws thanks to our nervous system’s stress response (or hyperarousal). Repeated over time, and your shoulders inevitably become tight.

Nearly everything we do-sitting at a desk, working on a computer, cooking a meal, picking up children, riding a bike, driving a car, etc.-closes off the front of our chests and creates varying degrees of tension in our shoulders and neck.

Office yoga poses pdf