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may/june 2018yogajournal.com.auFeel your Deep Back Arm Lines
and Back Functional Lines
OUR PRO Writer Tom Myers is the author of Ana y p 35 d
numerous webinars on visual assessment, Fascial Release Technique, and the applications of fascial research. Myers, an integrative manual therapist with 40 years of
experience, is a member of the International Association of Structural Integrators and the Health Advisory Board for Equinox. Learn more at anatomytrains.com.
BECOME AWARE of these lines when you
go upside down. Take any inversion—from
simply being on all fours in Down Dog to
Headstand or Handstand—that’s easy and
non-injurious for you.
Ground through the heels of your
hands, or your little fingers and your outer
arm bones (ulnas) if you’re in Headstand or
Pincha Mayurasana (Forearm Balance), and
feel up through the myofascial line outside
your lower arms to the olecranon (the
point of the elbow). These are your Deep
Back Arm Lines. From here, the myofascial
connection runs into and up the triceps,
which may be insufficiently toned
in many beginning yoga students, and
unable to sustain balance with the rest of
this pathway. (Do your Plank Poses to get
those triceps posturally strong!)
From the triceps of each arm, the Deep
Back Arm Line runs into the rotator cuff
surrounding the scapula. The lats reach far
away to the back of the torso, but try to
put your mind into the shorter teres
major, which links the triceps with the
lower tip of the scapula. Can you feel your
shoulder blade at the end of your triceps?
Can you place your scapula on top of your
humeral head (the ball in the ball-and-
socket joint), and at the same time pull it
down onto your ribs?
The rotator cuff, which I call the “scapula
s
ANATOMY
your practice
the surrounding cuff of muscles. It gets
hooked to the spine by the rhomboids and
the levator scapulae. In the inversion, can
you feel this hook into the upper back
and cervical spine?
The rotator-cuff muscles—
supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor,
and subscapularis—surround the ball of the
shoulder. Lots of people get into trouble
with the rotator cuff (think baseball pitchers
and tennis players), but for yoga folks, the
trouble spot is often teres major.
So expand your awareness to the
whole Deep Back Arm Line. Where does it
feel weak? Can you feel it connecting all the
way up? Often the triceps are the weak part,
and the teres major is the overly short part,
creating a short circuit in the whole “using
your arm as a leg” thing.
You can sharpen your awareness of
teres major by practicing a short vinyasa. In
Down Dog: Ground through the outer heel
of your hand and little finger, tone your
triceps, and feel the connection build up
through your Deep Back Arm Lines. Track
the lines specifically through the back of
your armpits, through teres major, and into
the Back Functional Line.
Now move slowly through cycles
of Down Dog and Plank Pose. Feel
how the shifting angle of your shoulders,
and different weight-bearing in your
arms, travels through the Deep BackArm Lines to your mid spine in Plank
and extends across your lower back
and Back Functional Line as you move
into Down Dog. In Plank, these lines act
independently, but in inversions, the
lines connect through the teres major.
The key to sustaining happy inversions
lies in allowing teres major to lengthen
as you move back into Down Dog. If it
can’t lengthen, the foundation of support
through your shoulder will be lost. As you
extend your elbows, keep your humerus
bones and triceps connected to your lower
arms, but make sure your scapulae stay
connected to your back and ribs. Feel the
stretch? That’s your teres major creaking
open at last (see arrow below).
Shift onto one arm (you can drop a knee
or two to the ground) and grab the back
of an armpit to feel your teres major and
enhance your awareness of where you
need to stretch. Most people need to let
this muscle go in order to strengthen the
triceps and rotator cuffs. If you can find
teres major and let it go, you’ll become
more aware of your arm connecting to
the outside of your hand, and the tip of
your shoulder blade connecting to your
ribs. If teres major is too short, it will hook
the whole shoulder blade into your arm,
setting you up for a shoulder injury as you
load it with more weight in increasingly
difficult inversions.