How to ease shoulder pain with these simple exercises.

Shoulder pain is all too common in our society these days and is very often caused by poor postural habits. This can create an imbalance in the muscles in the front and the back of your upper body. Your chest muscles can get tight and short for many reasons — poor posture at your desk and texting are just some of them.  Sleeping on your side at night puts your shoulders in a slightly forward position, causing  your chest muscles to shorten. Get up and eat your breakfast hunched over the table and your chest muscles will shorten even more. If after that , you spend time standing over a stove, or sitting and reading or knitting or doing any activity that involves bringing your shoulders forward and keeping your arms in front of you, your chest muscles remain short. In fact, there are many more activities that shorten the chest muscles than those that lengthen them.  This is why, on a daily basis we need to work on lengthening them.  Here are 2 simple things you can do to improve your posture and decrease pain right now.

1) Stretch out the chest muscles:

Stand in a doorway and rest your forearm in the door frame.   Make sure that your elbow is slightly below the height of your shoulder and you maintain gentle even breathing the entire time.  Also you should stagger the feet and have your core gently engaged to stabilize your lower back. Hold this stretch for 30-60 seconds and then ease your way out of it and repeat on the other shoulder.

2) Massage and release your pectoral muscles:

Using a tennis ball (or something similar), roll the ball around and massage the area in the front of your chest.  Explore the area from your collarbone to the sternum  and all the way out to your armpit and even onto the front of your shoulder where your bicep attaches and find any point tenderness. You can use your opposite hand to do the massaging and when you are ready to go deeper you can pin the ball between the wall and your chest and hold and breathe.  Find a spots and then maintain some pressure and wait until the intensity eases.  This may take a few minutes so remember to be patient.

These are just a few of many things that you can do to improve your posture. For a full body realigning session call Anna and book your 1-on-1 session so that you know what YOU can do for YOUR BODY specifically.

Til next time,

happy stretching and rolling,

Anna :)