Shoulder injuries are common among yoga practitioners. Thus, understanding how your body functions and being mindful of how your muscles and joints work together can help you prevent a variety of injuries.

If you are experiencing pain or discomfort in your shoulder, here are four things to remember before and during your yoga practice:

  • Make sure you warm up accordingly (we cannot emphasize enough the importance of this first bullet point)
  • Make sure your shoulders are properly aligned before getting into any posture that puts pressure on your shoulders
  • During your practice, only do restorative and gentle yoga asanas to ensure you are working with your shoulder on healing it while also protecting the joints rather then putting more pressure, causing more pain and long-term injury
  • Make sure you are keeping your torso strong during the poses by widening your shoulders

If you are looking to select the right asanas to help with the injury recovery, here are the ones we recommend:

  • Warrier II (which can help you straighten the muscles around the shoulder joint)
  • Chest opening poses
  • Tadasana
  • Mountain pose

Avoid any postures that force your shoulders to go beyond what they can do at the moment, work with them not against them. If the pain is serious, provide your body with enough rest to be able to recover and follow the advice of your doctor.

Finally, we advise you to watch this seven minutes video to learn more about the anatomy of the shoulder: