In the video above, I share a scapula activation and control exercise I created to help me explore, learn, and train proper scapula activation. The article below is a complement to the video. In it, I share the healing journey this exercise represents. To fully understand the healing journey, it will help to watch the video.
Years ago, I felt something arise within me, something within that wanted to run again. I hadn’t run or had an interest in running for years, so when this inner something arose, it took me by surprise. It also made zero sense. I was sick as could be, at a complete dead end in my life, barely managing to drag myself through my days. I needed to heal and get a job so I could support myself. Yet, there it was - this something, this nudge, this distant urge.
Searching my inner and outer psyche and seeing no other lifelines there, I took the one offered and… proceeded to fail, and fail, and fail again, because my body was too rickety and riddled with lurking injuries. Each time I failed, I went back to the drawing board. The first place I looked at was all the conventional running wisdom. That didn’t do the trick, so I turned to martial arts.
I had no interest in doing martial arts. But I reasoned that martial artists understood movement in a more comprehensive way than runners do, so I might find answers there. Indeed I did. And I learned a lot. But I still couldn’t run without risking injury with every step. Eventually, I turned to classic bodyweight and gymnastics movement traditions. Same thing. I learned a lot, but I still couldn’t run.
Fast forward to today.
In the video, I show you a scapula drill I began doing the other day. I created it to help me explore and train proper scapula movement and engagement. I had already been making progress on a niggly (R) shoulder issue I’ve had for years, but I was still frustrated. I felt that I wasn’t fully engaging my scapula as I should to get the most out of the exercises I was doing. I wanted to get that down because I understood that any strength I build will only be as stable and reliable as the scapular movement foundation I build it on.
So I was looking for something that would strip away everything but the scapula movement itself. That way I could learn how it worked in my own body: to truly get it so I could build meaningful, sustainable, supportive strength once and for all. That’s when I came up with the movement exploration I share in the video. It’s just what it says, a movement exploration of the scapula, a drill that helps you investigate each of the paired movements of the scapula. (I explain what those are in the video.)
At the end of the video, I talk about the gift that illness has been in my life. I’ve understood that for some time but still felt cranky about it. Today I realized that part of my crankiness was because I felt like a failure. Other people got sick and healed. They figured out what they needed to figure out to free themselves. Yet I have not. Here I am, having had insight after insight year after year, each one profound and freeing in its own way, and yet my body is still not healed.
But, I had another insight, which I talk about at the end of the video. This one has indeed been freeing, not from illness, but from my crankiness about illness not resolving. Years ago, when I said a bewildered yes to the distant, liminal urge to run, the commitment I made was that I would do it differently than before. I had no idea what that meant except that I didn’t want to do it the way I did it when younger.
Well, that scapula drill I demonstrate in the video? It turns out that’s what I’ve been looking for this whole time. Maybe not it, specifically, but what it represents - practice, mastery, path, self-inclusion. What I didn’t want to do again, which I can now articulate, was succeed on a self-harming practice foundation, on a habit of outpacing myself, of leaving myself behind, of failing to learn myself.
I didn’t want my life to be about the empty promise of success again. I wanted it to be about a path of self-discovery, of meaning. The scapula drill is my first step on that path I set out to find years ago. I am as surprised as anyone to find that this path goes through the body, not the emotions, not even the mind.
While I’m still sick, I have a deeper sense of appreciation and acceptance of it. Illness has always had my back. Not only did it help me get here, it will keep helping me for as long as the transformation it is here to facilitate - the one I said yes to a couple of decades ago - takes.
PS For those of you who listened to my astrology reading on the Scorpio New Moon, can you see the themes in that chart in this story? Have the energies been facilitating your healing, too? Consider:
Scorpio and the themes of commitment and renewal
Neptune at the apex of the house pattern
Chiron the wounded healer
The South Node in Libra
The promise triangle
Image Credits
For the video/post thumbnail, I wanted to capture as many of the themes in the article as I could. The idea that originally presented itself was of an ancient serpent, previously unknown, slowly surfacing. The feeling it gave me was one of freedom from past bondage. (Continued below.)
While I liked the serpent idea, I couldn’t pull it off. Instead, I found a couple images that each gave a feeling of some of the themes of the article. The image on the left above of peonies (by lh1986 from Pixabay) give an ethereal feeling of healing, acceptance, liminality, grace, and loving, spiritual support.
The image on the right above of San rock art in Cederberg, South Africa (by Don Pinnock on Unsplash), gives the feeling of something emerging from the the deep past, of the centrality of body, of peace, and of acceptance of where one is.
The peonies are the bottom image in the thumb, set at 100% opacity. The antelope rock painting is the top image, set at 65% opacity.
Updates
November 4, 2024
I tweaked the descriptions of the images in the section “Image Credits”.
I added divider lines around the Subscribe button.
Scapula Activation and Control Exercise