Raise Your Arms to the Heavens - the Candelabra Lesson

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Class This Week:  Open Your Arms to the Heavens


This famous Awareness Through Movement Lesson, the Candelabra, slowly relaxes your shoulders, neck and chest through gentle arm movements.  The lesson adds neck movements and ends with a balance challenge, which you can take on or totally ignore.  


Focus this week:  The Candelabra
How you might feel afterwards: Shoulders and neck relaxed, chest fully open with each breath, arms comfortably aligned in the shoulder socket and supported by the collarbones. 

Stop Light Mini Lesson: Wave hello, loosen your shoulder (and turn more easily on skis!) - A Candelabra in action


Wave hello, improve your skiing?  I've been working on this all week and it really works.  This simple movement of rotating the arm in the shoulder also opens the chest and very subtly brings the ribs and hips together to make turning a ski easier.  It relieves shoulder tension and gets you sitting up straight in a snap.

If you have 15 seconds, try this mini-lesson:  

  • Sitting or lying on the floor, bring your elbow up to shoulder height, and bend the elbow so your arm looks like the letter "L" from the body to the hand.

    •  If sitting, palm faces the floor.

    • If lying, the fingers point up to the ceiling.


  •  Keeping your elbow at shoulder height, roll your whole arm up. Look at your hand as it moves up and back.

            If sitting, fingers point to the ceiling.
            If lying, the back of hand reaches to the floor.    
     

  • Repeat several times and notice how, when you move your arm, that side shoulder blade moves into the back, the front of the chest lifts, and the ribs under the lifted arm come together. You might even notice the hip on that side lifts a little. 
     

  •  Smile as you wave at the person next to you.
     

  • BONUS:  As you repeat the movement, start to reach your hand outward, so your elbow is straight.  Eventually, your arm is fully outstretched and all you need to do is roll your fist back and forth. Now try that with ski poles and feel how much easier you turn.

Jacki Katzman