A 27 year old woman reported a two year history of pain around her right shoulder blade after falling out of a head stand in yoga. She had tried chiropractic treatment, acupuncture and herbal remedies but these had not helped. She was still getting pain with use of her arm, couldn’t weight bare through it and hadn’t been able to participate fully in yoga since.
On assessment her shoulder blade pain was reproducible by stressing the joints in her lower neck and she had poor control of the stability muscles around her neck and shoulder.
It seems that she had strained her neck. Either this had caused inhibition of the muscles around her neck and shoulder which was perpetuating the problem or she had poor muscle control and mobile joints already which predisposed her to the injury.
We looked at restoring normal movement to the joints in her neck and embarked on a specific regime of exercises to re- train the muscle control in her neck and shoulder blade. As she improved we progressed these stability exercises into more demanding positions and specifically into weight- baring yoga positions.
Over a period of a few months her pain had completely resolved and she was back to fully participating in yoga.
