Shoulders Away from Ears in Down Dog? How to Organize Your Shoulders in Dog Pose

Should you relax your shoulders away from your ears in Downward Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)? This is a very common cue. And there are some good reasons why we hear it so often. We’ll discuss these below. But yoga students are apt to overdo it and then wonder why they experience shoulder pain in Downward Dog. So, let’s look at the shoulders in Down Dog to understand how to organize them in this frequently taught yoga pose.

First, let’s start with a quick quiz. These are all cues I regularly hear teachers offer students in Downward Facing Dog Pose. True or false?:

• T/F: Squeeze your shoulder blades together in Down Dog.
• T/F: Move your shoulders away from your ears in Down Dog.
• T/F: Relax your shoulders in Down Dog.

(Hint: “It depends” is a valid answer to some of these.)

Shoulder Anatomy in Down Dog

So, let’s dive into Down Dog’s shoulders anatomy. We’ll focus specifically on the position of the shoulder blades and look at some of the muscles that organize your shoulder blades when you’re weight-bearing on your upper limbs with your arms overhead.

The 6 Movements of the Shoulder Blades

Your shoulder blades slide around on the back of your rib cage. This meeting of your shoulder blade, or scapula, and your upper torso, or thorax, is referred to as the scapulothoracic joint. We’ll name the six movements of the scapulothoracic joint and then examine which of these applies to the Downward-facing Dog Pose.

1. Shrug your shoulders way up by your ears. That’s scapular elevation.
2. Now, drop them far away from your ears. That’s depression.
3. Pinch your shoulder blades together. That’s retraction.
4. Spread them apart. That’s protraction.

The last two are trickier to grasp. Your scapula is shaped like a peninsula, like Florida. The next two scapular movements are described relative to the position of the bottom angle of the blade, say, where Miami would be.

1. Raise your arm overhead. Miami migrated away from your spine and up toward your armpit. That’s upward rotation.
2. Now clasp your hands behind your back, as you would for Setu Bandha, Bridge Pose. Miami slid toward your spine and down toward your waist. This is downward rotation.

With this anatomical terminology under our proverbial belts, we can now ask:

So What Exactly Are Your Shoulder Blades Doing in Down Dog?

When you reach overhead, as you do in Down Dog, your scapulae upwardly rotate. That lifts a part of the blade called the acromion process away from your arm bone, allowing space for the soft tissue between the two. 

The acromion process sticks out over your arm bone like a shoulder pad (but smaller than the 1980s fashion or football uniform variety). The tendon of supraspinatus, one of your four rotator cuff muscles, sits between the acromion and your humerus, or arm bone. Upward rotation creates space for that tendon and prevents it from impinging between the two bony structures.

Shoulder Joint Variations that Might Affect Your Downward-Facing Dog Pose

As an important aside, we should note that just as some people have longer legs than others or pointier chins, the length and orientation of the acromion varies significantly from person to person. If you’ve got a longer acromion or one that angles downward over your humerus, you may have a greater potential for impingement and shoulder pain in Down Dog. 

If your acromion is shorter or if its orientation is less hoodlike, you’ll naturally have more space between that bony protrusion and your arm in an overhead position. There’s delightful variety among human forms, and that diversity accounts for the vast array of experiences and challenges among practitioners.

What Might Cause Pinching in the Shoulder Joints?

Two scapulae movements pull the acromion down onto the humerus, possibly pinching the soft tissue between retraction and depression.

So, T/F: Squeeze your shoulder blades together in Down Dog? Answer: False. (There are always exceptions. If someone’s really rounded in their upper back, this might be an idea for them to play with. We’re looking at generalities here.) In Down Dog, the shoulder blades protract.

Moreover, T/F: Move your shoulders away from your ears in Down Dog? Answer: False! The scapulae elevate when you take your arms overhead. Yanking your shoulders down resists this organic shoulder movement and creates a potential impingement scenario. Are there people who need to hear this cue? You bet, and we’ll discuss why below. But I don’t give this instruction as a universal because students then depress their scapulae as much as they possibly can, creating a “sitting” in their shoulders rather than an engaged lift away from gravity.

On the subject of engagement, let’s talk about shoulder muscles in Down Dog.

Which Muscles Organize Your Shoulders in Down Dog?  

There’s a whole lot going on here, but understanding which muscles upwardly rotate the scapulae sheds light on why we sometimes see shoulders way up by the ears in Downward Facing Dog Pose—and hence why the “shoulders away from ears” cue has become so ubiquitous.

Three muscles contribute to scapular upward rotation: the serratus anterior, the upper fibers of the trapezius, and the lower fibers of the trapezius. Of these three, the serratus, which attaches to the underside of the shoulder blade and wraps around onto the rib cage, is the primary muscle of upward rotation. (It also protracts the scapulae, which, you’ll remember, is something they need to do in Down Dog.) The challenge is that it’s tricky to feel serratus in action. On the other hand, you’re likely quite tuned in to your upper traps.

In addition to upward rotation, the upper traps elevate the shoulder blades. Every time you shrug your shoulders against the cold or sling a bag on one shoulder, you’re using your upper traps. You’re attuned to sensation in your upper traps—this is the thick muscle at the base of your neck that you love to get massaged.

So, if your brain has difficulty calling on serratus to upwardly rotate your scaps, the upper traps jump into action. They sure know how to engage! This is one reason we often see shrugged shoulders in Down Dog—and the reason for the “shoulders down” cue in that pose.

T/F: Relax Your Shoulders in Down Dog?

It depends! I generally don’t cue shoulders away from ears in this pose as a universal instruction because I see a whole lot of unhelpful scapular depression.

If I see an individual with shrugged shoulders, I might suggest, “Relax the thick muscle at the base of your neck”—lay terminology for the upper traps. If that doesn’t work (it is a lot of words), I might whisper to that one student, “Move your shoulders away from your ears.”

The takeaway: When you reach your arms overhead, as you do in Down Dog, your shoulder blades organically lift slightly toward your ears. Yanking them down your back risks compressing soft tissue between the top of your shoulder blade and your arm bone. Organizing the shoulders in Down Dog is a bit of a Goldilocks endeavor: You don’t want to shrug them way up by your ears (too hot!), and you don’t want to collapse them away from your ears (too cold!). You’re after just the right amount of scapular elevation to avoid that pinchy sensation and shoulder pain in Down Dog.