Forearm stretches and skeletal alignment go hand in hand when we are trying to create a balanced body. Our bones hold us up and our muscle move us. For this to happen successfully we need a great deal of skeletal alignment as well as muscles with balanced tone. This balanced tone needs to come from both the arm and the shoulder.
The forearm stretch that I demonstrate in the video above is an exercise that I teach in many of my classes. Most often on the journey from down dog to the floor one or both elbows wing out and end up wider out to the side than the wrist or the shoulder. For the correct skeletal alignment to take place (the lowering down of the forearm in line with the wrist and the shoulder), the muscles of the lower and upper arm muscle have the proper tone to allow for a balanced action.
Nothing in the body works in isolation so there is more to the above video than simply forearm stretches and skeletal alignment. The shoulder blade on the back is also responsible for the ability to perform this action. Â In the last post I wrote about reciprocal inhibition and how all muscles work in pairs or opposites. This is part of the amazing dance of the shoulder blade.
The scapula or shoulder blade sits or hovers over the rib cage and once physical actions begin, muscles start pulling the bone in all different directions, and the crazy thing is, it will ideally stay in the same place as all of the assorted pulling begins.  I’ll write about this more in future posts as I love, and am fascinated by, the shoulder girdle.  If the shoulder blade does stay in the stay place when you begin to lower the elbow it is much more likely that you will be able to maintain skeletal alignment and get deep access to the forearm stretches.
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