Yoga Shoulder Openers - Yoga hands bound utanasana pose

Utanasana, which is the standing forward bend, but this time we turn it into a shoulder stretch by clasping our hands behind the back. So start by lengthening your side waist line and opening to a bigger breath. Now, as soon as you feel more open, interlace your fingers behind your back, and again draw the shoulders back so you feel the shoulder blades supporting the heart. Then also take your throat back and the top of your mouth back and just breathe. With your next exhalation you're going to fold forward. As you fold forward you might find that your hamstrings are tight, that's the backs of your legs. No worries, you can just bend your knees and stick your butt out a little bit, and fold. Let your hands come up away from the pelvis. Shoulder blades stay in the upper back, but fold forward as full as you can. If it feels good you can push from your pelvis down through your legs and begin to straighten your legs for a deeper stretch in the hamstrings. Take a few more breaths here, and then extend and open through the legs, inhale to lift your heart all the way back up standing. Now for some of my friends it's going to be a little harder to do that pose because your shoulders are tight, so use a strap. It will feel way better. So you, again, hold the strap about shoulder width, or even maybe like hip width, behind your back. All the same actions and then fold over your legs, but when you fold, you'll be able because the shoulders are wider from the strap to lift the shoulders up toward the sky, and draw the shoulder blades into the upper back. It's that lift that will start to give you good opening. Inhale to lift back up.