Arms Overhead and Side Reaches
Okay. We're staying with shoulders one more lesson because I don't think you can undo years of hunching over a phone or a steering wheel in one session. This one opens up the whole side of your body, not just the shoulder. You'll feel it in your ribs and your waist too, which surprises people.
No pretense here, this is just reaching up and over. That's it. But done slow, it does something.
Why this one matters
Most of us live with our arms down. Reaching for a cereal bowl, typing, driving. Your shoulders forget they're allowed to go all the way up. This lesson reminds them.
It also gets into the muscles along your ribs that you basically never stretch unless you do something like this on purpose. Those get tight too, and nobody talks about it.
How to do it
Stand or sit tall, whichever is comfortable for you today. If you're standing, feet about hip width, knees soft, not locked.
- Reach both arms straight up overhead. Not shrugged up by your ears, just reaching, like you're trying to touch something just out of range on a high shelf.
- Hold that for a few breaths. Keep breathing, don't hold it.
- From there, lean gently to one side, reaching that overhead arm further over, like you're making a big letter C with your body. Other hip stays put, don't let it pop out to the side.
- Hold a few breaths, come back to center, switch sides.
- Repeat that three or four times each side, slow, no bouncing.
If overhead is hard on your shoulders some mornings, you don't have to go all the way up. Reach as high as feels honest, then side bend from there. Your body, your rules.
What it should feel like
A good stretch along the side you're reaching over, from your armpit down toward your hip. Maybe a pull in the shoulder of the arm that's up. That's all normal.
What's NOT normal is anything sharp in your lower back when you lean. If you feel that, you're probably leaning too far, not really side bending, more like folding sideways at the waist wrong. Come back up, try again smaller. Pain is information, not a badge. If it's sharp, stop.
A story from this one
I had a woman in one of my very first small classes, years back now, and we were doing a hip opener, not this one, but the same kind of thing where your body opens up in a way it hasn't for a while. She started crying, just a little, right there on her mat. Said her hips hadn't moved like that since before her kids, and her kids are grown now.
I didn't make a thing of it. Just handed her a tissue and kept the music going, well, there wasn't music, but you know what I mean. Kept things moving like normal.
I tell you that because sometimes these stretches hit something more than muscle. Your body remembers what it used to do and hasn't done in a long time, and that can catch you off guard. If that happens to you, that's fine. Nobody's watching you funny. Just breathe and keep going, or don't, and rest a minute. Either one's okay.
Making it easier or harder
If your shoulders are cranky and overhead is a lot, do this one seated in a chair with your feet flat, and only bring your arms up to where it's comfortable, maybe shoulder height instead of overhead.
If you want more, hold the side reach a little longer, five or six breaths instead of three. Slow beats hard, always, especially for a stretch like this. You are not trying to win anything by reaching further than the person next to you. There is no person next to you. It's just you and the floor, or you and a chair, first thing in the morning.
A caution worth saying plainly
If you've had a shoulder injury or surgery, or a rotator cuff thing going on, don't push overhead reaching past where it's genuinely comfortable. This is a gentle stretch, not physical therapy, and I'm not your doctor. Go small, go slow, and if something's been hurting for weeks, get it looked at instead of stretching through it.
Before next time
Try it once today, standing at your kitchen counter or wherever you're waiting on coffee to brew. Doesn't need its own ten minutes, it fits right into a morning you already have.