"Raise your collarbone"?

Raising the collarbone is an impulse

Raising and widening the collarbones is a basic instruction in many yoga postures to open the chest and relax the shoulders. To understand this instruction, it helps to distinguish between movements and impulses.

• A movement is with yoga a clearly visible action such as raising an arm or bending a knee.
• An impulse, on the other hand, is an internal muscular action that is not necessarily visible from the outside, but which is the The practitioner's experience nevertheless changed decisively and resulted in more stability, calm and balance in the respective Attitude leads.
• The lifting of the collarbones is primarily such an impulse that is only visible when you look closely. In practiced yoga students, it means that the chest as a whole continues to rise, the shoulders become wider and the throat can relax inward.

How to activate your collarbones in yoga

Raising your collarbones is usually not easy for anyone at first. However, a few helpful tips will certainly enable you to put the cryptic instruction into practice.

1. Stand upright in the mountain posture (Tadasana), bend them poor and place your fingertips on your collarbones with light pressure so that you can feel them better.
2. Instead of pushing out the lower ribs to raise their ribs like many beginners do, you should now try to lift the sternum so that the collarbones are also up and back move.
3. Support this impulse by rolling your shoulders back and down and your shoulder blades in the move move in. Always hold back the lower front ribs to avoid a hollow back.

If you try to follow these instructions carefully, step by step, you will immediately feel what is meant by the instruction "raise your collarbones".