How to Safely Practice Downward Dog

Hi everyone, Frances here from Four Noble Holistic Healing. Welcome back! Today, we are going to talk about Downward Facing Dogs. Downward Dog is extremely important to do correctly because, if done incorrectly over time, it can really damage the muscles, tendons, and joints in our shoulders. So, let's get to it.

To start, you're going to put your hands into a five-star position. Your middle fingers should be parallel to the outside of your mat, and all your weight should be evenly dispersed through your palms and fingers. Next, tuck your toes and send your hips up to the sky. If needed, you can keep a slight bend in the knees. Your eyes are looking towards your shin bone, so your Drishti point is right in between those shins. Good!

Now, watch my arms. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see folks make. Their Downward Dog looks like this, but we want it to look like this. So, one more time, Down Dog looks like this, but we want it to look like this. Let me show you a little bit more of what I mean.

What I was doing was moving my shoulders, my scapula, and my arm muscles to rotate down. So, I'll turn around so you can see. When we push back to Down Dog, our arms naturally go like this, but we want to engage those arms and our backs to protect our shoulders. So, these muscles rotate down and under, and our scapula pulls down and towards the spine. Instead of this, we get this. One more time, instead of this, we get this.

So, I'll show you one more time. When you push back to your Down Dog, your body is naturally going to want to let your arms, shoulders, and elbows splay up to the sides. But we're going to rotate them in, scapula down the spine, shoulders away from the ears. So, naturally, you want to do this, but we're going to engage those muscles, rotate them in, and back and down for a nice safe Downward Facing Dog.

I hope that helped you. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below, or you can find me on Instagram and send me a direct message. Alright, everyone, until next time, namaste.

Sending so much love and light your way. 

With gratitude,

Frances

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