Shoulder Repair & Mobility

In this class we take an Anatomy Trains approach to exploring the fascia of the backside of our shoulders and arms, covering both the 'Deep Back Arm Lines' as well as the 'Superficial Back Arm Lines' in a sequence that will help you understand the continuity of the tissue which connect from our spine and shoulder blades, through our shoulders, down our arms, and all the way to our fingertips. This class is highly therapeutic for anyone struggling with pain or injury in their neck, shoulders, arms, elbows, and wrists, and also works as a great preventative maintenance routine for those who use these areas regularly! Be sure to check out our video on the Front Arm Lines to complete the journey and learn the 'other side' of the picture!

Spice Level: 4 - a blend of stretching and gentle strengthening Category: Gentle Hatha Learn an anatomical range of motion test that will show you your existing shoulder movement patterns, lubricate your joints and fascia, stretch and strengthen your shoulders and hips, and feel fantastic! All in 10 minutes!

Join me online for a deep exploration of our neck and shoulders. Enjoy a therapy ball massage along your shoulder blade and rotator cuff muscles, decompress and realign the cervical vertebrae of your neck, learn chest opening stretches to improve posture and reduce strain and injury to your neck and shoulders, and learn how to gently release your neck in a way that will help to stretch your muscles and ‘floss’ the important nerves that travel from your neck into your shoulders and arms. Experience the neck and shoulder relief and repair that Therapeutic Yoga offers! I look forward to seeing you in class!

This 10 minute quick-fix uses a therapy ball to help mobilize the rib cage and shoulders while helping to improve neck alignment and pain.

Do you get pain and tension between your shoulder blades? Tight shoulders that feel pinchy when you lift your arms up? Do you experience tightness or restriction in your breathing or chest muscles? This class will help with all these things and more! Join me as we decompress and mobilize our thoracic spine by loosening key fascial structures surrounding the ribcage and shoulders, safely introduce new ranges of aligned motion, and nourish our spine to help reduce pain and speed recovery towards movement liberation!

A therapeutic class dedicated to the health of the shoulders! With one of the highest ranges of motion available in the human joint category, it's not surprising that shoulder pain is so common. The shoulder girdle is a complex and intricate structure requiring balance and ease. This series will help you determine where your shoulders are out of balance, how to help them repair, and how to keep them healthy and safe! Have questions? Visit our Discover & Learn forum to post questions about any pain or discomfort your feeling in any of the poses, anatomy or physiology questions, and more! I'll be happy to answer your questions in the forum, and even to make a short video to show you how to adjust or align your asana to make them work for your unique body!

Your lower back pain has an upper back story. Last week, we dove deep into the thoracolumbar fascia and its role in chronic lower back pain. This week, we follow that same fascial chain upward — because the TLF doesn't stop at your lower back. It continues all the way to your skull, meaning that tightness, stiffness, or dysfunction in your upper back and neck can be a hidden driver of lower back pain you may never have thought to connect. Think of your spine as one long, continuous rope of connective tissue — pull on one end, and the tension travels the entire length. In this class, we explore how the fascia of the upper back acts like a fitted stocking wrapped around the deep spinal muscles, anchoring into the bony ridges of your spine and fanning out to attach along your ribs. When we spend our days hunched at a desk, this tissue becomes thick, sticky, and immobile — and when you try to rotate or twist, instead of gliding smoothly the way it was designed to, it grips and tugs, forcing your lower back or neck to pick up the slack. Over time, that compensation quietly becomes your chronic pain. Through targeted yoga movement, we'll restore natural rotation through the upper back, coax those fascial layers back into fluid motion, and take the hidden load off your lower back for good.

In this class we take an Anatomy Trains approach to exploring the fascia of the front side of our shoulders and arms, covering both the 'Deep Front Arm Lines' as well as the 'Superficial Front Arm Lines' in a sequence that will help you understand the continuity of the tissue which connect from our ribs, through our shoulders, down our arms, and all the way to our fingertips. This class is highly therapeutic for anyone struggling with pain or injury in their neck, shoulders, arms, elbows, and wrists, and also works as a great preventative maintenance routine for those who use these areas regularly! Be sure to check out our video on the Back Arm Lines to complete the journey and learn the 'other side' of the picture!

Join me in this episode for a deep dive into the Rotator Cuff of the shoulder. We will learn to understand what and where the rotator cuff is, how to therapeutically repair damage through fascial rolling and stretching, improve shoulder mobility and flexibility, and will learn to prevent future injuries from occurring through healthy shoulder maintenance.

Join me for a relaxing class designed to improve the mobility of our shoulders, realign our neck, and reduce pain in the entire upper body. In this class we will learn how our upper back and shoulder alignment affect the health and alignment of our neck. We will explore techniques that help to improve our posture, reduce tightness and adhesions in our shoulders, and reduce any pain or misalignment in our neck. Explore the 'hidden culprits' that often fly under the radar of our awareness and quietly cause referral pain in other areas and learn how to release them through a safe process that will make both your neck and shoulders happier and healthier!

Using fascial rolling, decompression techniques, and deep stretches, we will explore ways to release the tension and pressure that restricts our ribs and shoulders from enjoying their full range of motion. This routine will help to decompress your upper spine, mobilize your ribs, improve breathing, and release pain and restriction from your shoulders. Enjoy!

This therapeutic yoga class will take you on a gentle journey to help loosen your shoulders, decompress your upper back, and restore the health and movement your neck desires!

Join us as we discuss the anatomy of the Trapezius muscles and learn how to release them. These muscles are one of the common culprits in causing spasms in the rib space between our shoulder blades and spine, as well as pain in and around our neck and the top of our shoulders. First we will learn what and where the trapezius are, then to feel the activation and function of each region of this rather large muscle, we will learn how to use therapy balls and other rolling tools to massage and release, stretches to lengthen and repair. The result? Freedom of movement, feelings of increased vitality, and a happier, healthier upper back, neck, and shoulders! Please also remember that our traps can often be a source of tension headaches or triggers for pain in other areas. If you experience headaches or pain, please stop and be sure to leave me a comment in the Yoga on Demand Community Hub. We can adjust this routine to make it safe for individual needs, and let's face it, we all have different habits associated to our traps. I'd love to hear more about yours!

Frozen Shoulder, also called adhesive capsulitis, involves stiffness, pain, and lack of mobility in the shoulder joint. Many things can cause it, but essentially what happens is an extensive pattern of adhesions that effective 'glue' the arm bone down onto our side. This condition builds slowly over time and usually begins with random shoulder pains that come and go, tight, sore shoulder and neck muscles, and a reduce range of motion with pain when lifting the arm up over head. The best cure for frozen shoulder is prevention! So if you have any shoulder or stiffness pain, now is the time to start addressing it, and this class will help you determine if you have any frozen shoulder 'red flags' and will show you how to correct them. If you already have frozen shoulder, this class will help you start the healing journey to unglue and restore your healthy range of motion again!

If you have ever felt a stubborn ache in your forearm, an annoying tingle in your fingers, or a sudden weakness in your grip, your body may be signaling that its vital neural pathways are under pressure. Your hands are among your most valuable everyday assets, yet repetitive movements and modern posture frequently cause the tight fascia and muscles of our neck, shoulders, and arms to clamp down on the delicate nerve cords underneath. In this specialized, therapeutic yoga workshop, we will dive deeply into the physical signs of upper-body nerve impingement and actively learn how to release the specific muscular bottlenecks causing your discomfort. Through mindful movement, muscle retraining, and gentle "nerve flossing" techniques, you will learn how to safely break up tissue adhesions, restore smooth nerve mobility, and reestablish healthy, pain-free communication from your neck all the way to your fingertips. Join me live online to reclaim the strength, comfort, and vitality your hands deserve—reserve your spot and give your nervous system the targeted care it needs!

Rebalancing the intricate forces of your body’s most complex joint. Experience upper-body freedom in this online therapeutic yoga class dedicated entirely to the care of your amazing shoulders! The human shoulder is an incredibly complex joint, and when the deep web of fascia that anchors your arm into its socket becomes tight and bound, it triggers a painful ripple effect throughout your ribs, upper back, neck, and arms. In this class, you will learn targeted stretches and fascial rolling techniques designed to decompress the joint, hydrate and restore your fascia, and rebalance the subtle muscular forces required for optimal, pain-free movement. Whether you are recovering from an injury or looking to prevent future strain, step off your mat with a new found sense of space, structural alignment, and fluid functionality.

Dorsal scapular neuropathy is characterized by pain, numbness, or weakness in the upper back and shoulder blade region. It commonly occurs from compression or irritation of the dorsal scapular nerve, which supplies sensation and muscle control to that area. Repetitive movements, poor posture, or direct trauma to the nerve often cause this condition, and as such, the condition commonly evolves over time, worsening if the pattern in the associated fascia surrounding the nerve pathway is not properly loosened and repaired. Symptoms typically include achiness, cramping, burning, or deep-seated painful tension in your upper back and shoulder blade that worsens with activity. If you have ever had these sensations or symptoms in this region of your upper back, there is a good chance your dorsal scapular nerve was involved. If you have experienced this unpleasant phenomenon more than once, or it happens regularly as the area ‘flairs-up’, then it’s time to do something about it before the situation worsens and becomes much more painful. If you are already at the point of constant symptoms and pain, fear not! With gentle and consistent care, you can downgrade the situation quickly and overtime still completely heal from this unpleasant ordeal! Dorsal scapular neuropathy usually responds favorably to a combination of fascial rolling or massage, therapeutic stretching, and gentle mobility exercises. Once the nerve impingement releases, efforts to safely restrengthen can begin. In this class, we focus on step one – releasing the nerve impingement on the dorsal scapular nerve and repairing the damaged fascia which is causing the issue. Join me on this anatomical exploration as we each learn to determine what is going on in this region of our back, and how we can help to keep it mobile and healthy!

Do you get tightness, pain, or cramping between your shoulder blades? Do your neck and shoulders feel stiff and sore? Do you work or spend your day in a primarily seated or hunched forward position? If so, then this class is for you! In this class we will take a look at the posture and mobility of our upper backs and shoulders, and learn to assess which areas have become 'long-locked', causing them to experience excess strain, fatigue, and weakness. We will also explore which tissues have become 'short-locked' and are now resisting your body's ability to find balance and ease of posture. We will learn techniques to correct both areas and help them find their way back to a place of integrated equilibrium, restoring healthy mobility and function while reducing pain and strain.

Do you get pain in your shoulders during certain movements or rotations? Can you lift your arms overhead without hiking your shoulders up to your ears? Do your arms fall asleep or feel pain when you sleep on your side? Do your shoulders feel that they are consistently weak and never able to gain strength or stability despite your best efforts to train them? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there is a very good chance that you are suffering from a fascial dysfunction condition somewhere in your shoulder girdle. Sometimes we know an exact moment or two from the past when an injury began - 'that old rotator cuff injury' - 'ever since my car accident' - 'and then there was the time fell funny and re-injured it.' Sometimes the pain and limitation starts small and intermittetently and builds consistency and intensity over time from small repitive strains - 'it started 6 months after I started playing pickleball' - 'Ever since I had to start working longer hours at my desk' - 'at work I spend a lot of time doing this specific movement with this arm and it gets really sore'. Or, sometimes, we can't quite figure out when or why our shoulder started hurting and are facing the uncertainty of 'mystery pain', which usually results from compensation from imbalances in the fascial tension or muscle strength somewhere else in the body. Regardless of what the cause of the pain is, there are simple anatomical principles that apply to all shoulder experiences and if we learn to recognize what is causing the fascial dysfunction in the first place, we can learn to fix the issue as well as the habits which are causing it! In this class we will discuss the many causes of shoulder pain, learning to assess what approach is best in repairing various shoulder injuries and pains, recognizing and reversing compensatory patterns, realigning and repatterning, and ensuring that we prevent future injuries from returning or developing. Join me for class and start the process of reclaiming the comfort and mobility your shoulders were designed for!

We often blame a lack of strength for why Downward Facing Dog feels so difficult. In reality, mobility and flexibility play a far larger role. When your shoulders and upper spine are restricted, you aren't just fighting gravity—you’re fighting your own body’s resistance. This therapeutic class shifts the focus from "muscling through" to opening the shoulder girdle systematically. By improving your range of motion, the pose becomes more functional and far less exhausting. Whether you are recovering from an injury or just starting out, we meet you exactly where you are. This is a therapeutic space for shoulders of all conditions—from "office tension" to chronic stiffness. No Downward Dog experience required. Come as you are, and learn to move with ease.

Whether you're an athlete or someone dealing with daily aches, understanding your shoulder health is the first step toward recovery. Although conditions like rotator cuff tears, tendonitis, impingements, and frozen shoulder manifest differently, they often share a single underlying cause: myofascial dysfunction. Your shoulder is the most mobile joint in your body, held together by an intricate web of connective tissue called fascia. When the shoulder girdle falls out of alignment—whether due to poor posture, repetitive stress, or old injuries—the fascial web is forced to adapt, shortening in some areas, lengthening in others, weakening or excessively straining, and throwing the entire girdle into chaos. Through fascial rolling and gentle stretching, you will learn to release your way around your shoulder joint and begin to understand the what’s and why’s behind your shoulder pain so you can help your body do what it was designed to do: HEAL!