More Insights on Trikonasana – Stabilizing the Top Arm

The other day I was working with a student on Trikonasana and I noticed that she was struggling to keep her back hip from moving forward. This student is pretty experienced and even though I kept emphasizing to her that she avoid letting her hip come forward, it kept happening anyway. I began to wonder if there wasn’t something else going on that I wasn’t seeing.

Then I noticed something about her shoulders that proved to be an important insight. When she stretched her arms apart, her shoulder blades retracted toward her spine. Then as she initiated the side bend her top arm, without a stable shoulder blade to prevent it, fell behind her shoulder girdle, pulling her backward from her shoulder girdle. The force of her arm pulling her upper body back required that she counterbalance by moving her hip forward.

It’s fascinating to me how an unstable shoulder blade can have such a huge impact on a standing posture, but there’s no getting around physics. Even though the arms are not weight bearing in trikonasana, if there’s instability in the shoulder girdle it will destabilize the entire asana. Therefore I find it not only helpful but essential to teach students to bring their top arm forward as much as is necessary to protract shoulder blade. Then the humerus must be externally rotated to stabilize the scapula and shoulder joint. This approach will help to integrate the shoulder girdle with the trunk and pelvis so it’s not working at cross puposes with the hips and legs, making for a stable, integrated posture.

 

This photo on the left illustrates the mistake and the photo on the right shows the correction.