If you find yourself suffering from significant shoulder pain, stiffness, limited range of motion, difficulty in making your hair or hooking your dress behind, you could be suffering from frozen shoulder or adhesive capsulitis. With primary frozen shoulder, there is no evidence or background history which explains the stiffness or decreased movement. When secondary, there’s an event of injury or trauma which precedes the discomfort.
A blend of customized yoga based practices, serve as a wonderful tool to help restore the shoulder's strength, flexibility, and function. They have to be performed thoughtfully and with patience and involve slow, deliberate movements requiring focus on what is being one and how the body feels. When overdone, they may make the shoulders go into spasm and freeze up even more. It is better to under exercise rather than over exercise. The practices mentioned are for primary frozen shoulder where there is no evidence of muscle injury.
Yogic Sukshma Vyayama – Release the tightness safely
1. Shoulder Circles - Start out with some very small circles; just a few minutes with each shoulder, several times a day.
2. Side lying arm circles - Lie on the side of the shoulder that is not hurting. Place your top hand on your shoulder and make circles with your elbow, thus rotating the shoulder. Start with small circles and gradually progress to larger ones to finally a figure of eight shape.
3. Side lying fist arches- Then making a fist with the hands of the painful side, pressing the upper arm to the side of the chest, bring the fist down towards the floor and then rotate it up.
4. Hands in and out breathing - While lying on your back, stretch your arm up toward the ceiling with the palms facing each other. As you slowly inhale, open your relaxed arms to the sides and before they touch the floor, breathing out slowly, lift them back to the vertical. Let the length of your breathing be equal to the length of each movement….do it continuously and slowly for a minute and then relax you arms by bringing them down with palms on your belly.
5. Controlled arm stretch – Lying down as above, move your parallel arms back. When you reach a point of stretch with mild discomfort, stop. Have a friend or helper bring some support to rest the arm at just that height. Then at that point of stretch, but not pain, let go of the weight of the arm fully supported with the prop . Breathe and relax for two minutes or more. Do this stretch at least once a day.
6. Side arm lifts - Open your arms out to the sides with palms up, while still lying on your back. Again, use support for the arm at just the right point of stretch sensation. When the arm is at about 90 degrees, you can also bend the elbows to 90 degrees or more, releasing the forearm and back of the hand toward the floor, with the palms up – making a ‘W’. As it is important to restore this movement, use plenty of height supporting the arm, planning on slow progress.
7. Chair release - Place the wrist of your 'good arm' on the top of the chair and walk back keeping legs perpendicular to the floor. The hand of your 'painful' arm’ is hanging down. Let the ‘hurting arm’ just hang down. GENTLY rotate your hips and upper body in a circular motion, you will notice that your hanging arm also rotates very gently in the same direction. Allow your hanging arm to move naturally. Pause for a few seconds, then rotate the hips and body in the opposite direction.
Shoulder strengthening -
Though one may be apprehensive about trying this, most frozen shoulders actually like mild weight bearing, especially when they have gained some confidence after subtly warming up their shoulder muscles.
Setubandasana - with hands interlocked on the floor, give a good blend of strength and stretch to the shoulders, without hurting them.
Marjarasana – Come on your hands and knees and keep your shoulder area actively wide. Then lift each arm forward and up a little off the floor, one arm at a time. Make sure that you keep lifting your trunk up out of your shoulders so there's no valley between the shoulder blades.
Adhomukhasvanasana - If you can do the above without pain, you're ready to progress. An easier variation, with hands on a chair seat suits many.
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