This is your “Shoulder Girdle” (men's doesn't look much different in the bony and muscular shape) - the bones in aqua blue green. As I have said many times, This is the bony structure that raising your arms relies upon, the bony structure that pushing or pulling rely upon. As I have said many times, the only “mechanical” connection of the shoulder girdle is the collar bone to the sternum- and it’s really small.

The shoulder girdle pretty much floats on the torso! Mostly what holds the shoulders onto the body, in addition to what moves the shoulders are the powerful muscles of the chest and back - the theme of my teaching these many months. (See November and October's posts)

I want to illustrate for you how you lift your collar bones, how to “lift your chest” without kinking your lower back, without popping out your lower front ribs, without lifting your chin up.

Let's go back to that first image- here it is below so that you won't have to scroll back up.

If you go back to last month's post, you can watch the video on Scapular Force Coupling, animating how the shoulder muscles work together. Let's add onto this "Force Coupling" by looking at what can happen to the collar bones and the pectoralis minor muscle when the scapular muscles work together. Using a basic "see-saw" or coupling of force, the serratus anterior tightening and getting shorter will tilt the blade side of the shoulder blade into the back, down and to the side of the body. That in turn, will pull the upper tip (and it is really kind of just a tip, called the coracoid process) up and back, in turn pulling on the pec minor. These 3 slips of the muscle get stretched long, and if pulled sufficiently will pull open the upper ribs the muscle grows out from. Voila- lifting the upper chest.

 ​Now, let's say you are doing what you read about in November- in concert with engaging your serratus anterior, you are also engaging the obliques, internal and external, which are growing out of your lower ribs, anchoring them down to the crest of your hips (pelvis). Go ahead- take a peek back to refresh your visual memory this is all a lot to take in at once. Voila- anchoring the lower ribs, lifting the upper ribs. Look Ma- no thrusting ribs, no kinking back, no chin lift!

Yes, it might take a long time, much trial and error, different queues and lots of visualization to get this to happen. But, your body NEVER looses it's ability to develop muscle or find neurological pathways.

​I love the visuals, as they help me imagine in my brain and body what the pathway is as I move, and I personally have found this extremely effective. I hope you do, too.

You who have been practicing with me since the resumption of class know that I have been super focused on these two muscles as a fulcrum for every movement and breath during practice (and hopefully as you go through your daily activities.

​Whether it is back pain, shoulder issues, knee damage even balance and ultimately breathing that we are working with, the synergy of these two muscles in motion has an effect.

​The Obliques, internal and external, when you were a fetus, grew from your 5th through 8th rib and attached to the ridge of your pelvis. If you pull the two ends toward each other, they bring your ribs and your pelvis closer together. If you gently snuggle them into isometric contraction, they stabilize the front of your upper torso so that the pelvis and the ribs do not get loose from each other.
On the other hand, if they are “locked”, meaning they don’t have not expanded or contracted and are in myofascial non-squishiness (you like that term?), like a dried out sponge, not only will they not stabilize the torso, the upper torso and the lower torso will have no freedom of independent movement from each other.

​We want (we should want) both and even better, stability and freedom, each on demand when the situation calls for each.

The Serratus Anterior grew from the 1st through 8th (sometimes 9th) ribs and headed up, at a diagonal under the armpit to fasten to the underside of the shoulder blades- the side between the shoulder blades and the rib cage. They have a lot of tasks. To keep you with me here, let’s focus on how they should work to keep the shoulder blades from “winging” or popping off the back. They also are crucial in lifting the arms without wear and tear of the infamous rotator cuff muscles and the biceps and triceps.

​What I really want to get at is how the obliques and the serratus are really one continuum of force- they DO NOT work separately from each other. Even looking at the human anatomy, it’s pretty impossible to show how they could separate.

​Looking at the Gray’s Anatomy drawing, imagine how in your own body, you can pull the shoulder blade (hidden underneath the Latissimus dorsi) down and forward toward the frontal rib anchors with the assistance of engagement by the obliques at the Crest of the Ilium- AKA your pelvic crest- remember I mentioned above, “If you gently snuggle them into isometric contraction, they stabilize the front of your upper torso so that the pelvis and the ribs do not get loose from each other.” This is going to help you then snuggle the shoulder blade into position as you lift your arm. If you took the time to watch the YouTube video, scapular force coupling, that does a good animation of what we want so that we experience less pain, greater mobility and even more strength.

​This all gets a little nerdy/geeky (use your preferred term), I know, but almost all of us at Aspiration Community Yoga are struggling with strength and mobility issues that stem from this muscle being under activated, so much so that for some of us it’s going to take a lot of coaxing, time and patience to get the neurons to fire the synapses and for the serratus anterior to fully lengthen and shorten again. You can do it!! The body never, no matter the age of the tissues, looses the ability to re-fire and re-wire!

It’s almost too basic for us to really focus on: we want the stabilizers to stabilize and the movers to move. We don’t want the stabilizers to be locked up tight or at the other extreme weak and unresponsive. We don’t want the movers to be doing to whole job, getting over used, tight and hurting, inflamed, torn and worse.
 
I think stabilizers are what many of us have been really wanting to “work on” when we give our lists of practice and outcome goals. Whether It’s neck, shoulders, back, butt, calves, wrists or even our racing thoughts that are screaming out at us. If what developed to prevent the undesirable movement of a bone or a joint is not doing that, for what ever reason, there will be a downstream effect.
 
So, using the above mini snippet of video from Muscle and Motion, the idea of the exercise is to strengthen the red and purple muscles- shoulder girdle muscles. To do that, we want those muscles to be fully contracting, in other words, doing the work. The tan (beige, brownish) muscles on the mannequin in this exercise (and a lot of other exercises and yoga poses) are the “stabilizers”- they should be isometrically contracted, preventing movement. In this circumstance we (and the mannequin) want the shoulder girdle to move independently of the torso. However, as you can see when the mannequin moves, it is getting a lot of movement by bending forward just a little bit and then arching it’s back and flaring it’s ribs. So, it’s working the muscles of the shoulder blades a lot less yet getting the sensation and the idea that it’s doing a lot of hard work. To top it off, because the shoulder blade muscles aren’t getting all the intended load of work, the muscles in the arms are going to end up doing more, getting tired fast and even over time inflamed or injured.
 
Then, years down the road, the mannequin wonders why after years of training and practicing, it’s having shoulder and / or back and/or breathing problems. After all, it’s been going to class, working out, staying committed. Or, the flip, because it had all these aches and pains and injuries, it went to yoga or the gym diligently, but the problem never resolved.
 
I could be that mannequin (well, except that it has the XY chromosomes, creating a “male” pelvis….). Some of you could be that mannequin, too.
 
​So, our task is to back up, slow down, pay attention and focus on learning how to contract and then relax these stabilizer muscles, get to know the sensation of them contracted, relaxed and all the scale of degrees between the two. Our task is to focus on those sensations even though our arms are moving apart in space or pressing down into the floor.
 
The arms are a really only a distraction, as I like to say in class. They move easily, they are external, a sort of “hey, look over there” lure we can easily focus on. Don’t take the bait. No matter which mode of movement you are doing, the strength and mobility come from progressive stability.