Shoulders Feeling Tight? These 15-Minute Stretches Will Fix That.

If you experience tightness in your back—whether it’s something you wake up with or struggle with throughout the day—these stretches will help. The short 15-minute yoga for upper back routine is meant to bring ease of movement back to your spine so you feel free through your shoulders, upper body, as well as your mid and lower back.

The stretches aren’t too strenuous or demanding. They include just enough challenge to target the stabilizing muscles along the spine in poses that aren’t traditionally thought of as targeting the upper back. Instead, you’ll experience creative ways to target the upper body the primary focus by taking a backbend, side bend, twist, or bind during the 15-minute yoga for upper back practice.

15-Minute Yoga for Your Upper Back

This practice is accessible to almost anyone, no matter whether you’ve tried yoga before or not. Once you experience the relief a simple 15-minute yoga routine can bring, you’ll want to practice it on the regular. You’ll need just a mat for this practice. No props required.

Cat-Cow-Child’s Pose

Begin on your hands and knees. Rather than doing a traditional variation of Cat and Cow, we’re going to change things up a little. Walk your hands just a couple inches in front your shoulders. As you inhale, lower your belly, arch your back, and lift your gaze in Cow Pose.

As you exhale, round through your spine in Cat Pose and start to press your hips back into Child’s Pose. Your hips might not go back all the way to your heels and that’s fine. Try to keep your palms exactly where they are to emphasize the stretch through your shoulders.

Then repeat. So inhale, drop the belly and lift the gaze. Exhale round and stretch it all the way back. Try to get as much motion as you can through your upper back, mid back, and lower back. Go at your own pace as you take several more rounds, breathing in and out through your nose.

Extended Child’s Pose

Let your hips come all the way back toward your heels in Child’s Pose. Come onto your fingertips so your elbows no longer touch the mat and see if you can lower your forehead to the mat. Think of pushing your armpits down toward the mat.

Stay here or release your arms to the mat, bring your palms together in prayer, and bend your elbows to send your thumbs toward the back of your neck. Try to push your chest down toward the mat. Breathe here.

When you’re ready, release prayer hands.

Rabbit Pose

Still in Child’s Pose, bring your hands back behind you and grab hold of your heels. Slowly rock onto the crown of your head, lift your seat off your heels, and keep hold of your heels to create a stretch along your spine in Rabbit Pose. Don’t place much weight on the top of your head here. Keep most of your weight in your lower body.

Camel Pose Variation

Release your heels, let your hips sink back down to your heels, and lift your upper body so you’re kneeling. Bring your left fingertips behind you for support, and go ahead and reach your right arm up and over as you lift your hips and press them forward so there’s a nice thigh stretch here as you come into a version of the backbend known as Camel Pose. Release it down and switch sides. So your right hand comes down and your left arm stretches up and overhead.

Puppy Pose

Come back to center and, still kneeling, keep your hips over your knees as you walk your hands in front of you and melt your chest down toward the mat in Puppy Pose. Once again, you’re doing a more active version of the pose by pushing your hands into the mat and keeping your elbows lifted off the mat. Keep trying to push your chest down toward the mat. Take one more breath here.

Sphinx Pose

Slide forward into Sphinx Pose, bringing your lower body to the mat, lifting your upper body, and bringing your forearms to the mat. Roll your shoulders back, squeeze your shoulder blades toward each other, and push into the tops of your feet and your pubic bone so there’s no compression or pinching in your lower back.

Downward-Facing Dog

Push your hands into the mat, tuck your toes, and lift your hips up and back into Downward-Facing Dog. Maybe you peddle your feet, bending one knee and then the other or taking any movements that feel good. You can almost exaggerate the bend in your knees to emphasize pushing your chest back toward your thighs and lengthening through your arms.

Three-Legged Dog

Reach your right leg toward the ceiling, bend your right knee, and pause here to open your hip.

Low Lunge

Step your right foot forward in between your palms in Low Lunge. So your back knee comes down to the mat, your back toes untuck, and you’re going to push into your feet to lift up as you reach your arms alongside your head. Bend your elbows and make a little cactus shape here. Stay strong through your core and squeeze your shoulder blades toward each other behind you in a little backbend.

Warrior 2

Bring your palms or fingertips down to the mat on either side of your front foot. Lift your back knee off the mat, spin your back foot parallel to the short edge of your mat, and lift into Warrior 2 with your front knee bent.

Humble Warrior

Interlace your hands behind your lower back, roll your shoulders down and away from your ears, lift your chest, and then dive down in Humble Warrior, lifting your knuckles overhead as high as they can go.

Revolved Lunge

Bring your hands to the mat, lift your back heel off the mat, and reach your right arm toward the ceiling as you keep your left shoulder stacked over your left wrist in a twist. Press your left shoulder away from your ear.

Downward-Facing Dog

Exhale as you bring your right hand down and step back into Downward-Facing Dog.

Plank Pose

Inhale as you shift your shoulders forward into Plank Pose.

Cobra Pose

Exhale as you lower all the way to your belly and then inhale as you push your palms into the mat, lift through your chest, and keep your elbows bent and hugging toward you in Cobra Pose. Continue to press through the tops of your feet. Stay here a little longer than you normally do in a vinyasa class. Make sure you continue to breathe.

Slowly lower down and press back into Downward-Facing Dog. Then do that same sequence on the other side, from Scorpion Dog to Warrior 2 to Humble Warrior to Revolved Lunge to Downward-Facing Dog to Plank to Cobra.

Locust Pose

From here, reach your arms back, palms facing down. As you inhale, lift your upper body in Locust Pose, and if your back feels okay, you can also lift your legs off the mat as well. You want to be able to still breathe here. If you can’t, you’re exerting too much effort. Stay here for one more breath and then release.

Thread the Needle

Come back to your hands and knees. Reach your right arm toward the ceiling and then thread it underneath you, reaching it across the mat toward the left side, as you take your right shoulder and ear to the mat. Stay here or slide your left arm straight ahead toward the front of the mat. Keep your hips over your knees and push both arms into the mat. The more you reach your right arm to the opposite side of the mat, the more you’ll feel a stretch between your shoulder blades. Try to breathe some space into your upper back.

Draw your left hand back beneath your left shoulder, push it into the mat, and come back to your hands and knees.

Cat-Cow

Take a regular round of Cat and Cow here. So inhale, lower your belly, arch your back, and lift your gaze in Cow.

Then push the floor away from you, round your back, and release your neck in Cat Pose. Then come back to neutral and Thread the Needle on the other side. Take another Cat and Cow.

Kneeling Backbend

Sit back on your heels and bring your fingertips behind you. Stay on your fingertips, squeeze your shoulder blades together, and keep your elbows bent as you lift your chest toward the ceiling. Keep your chin slightly tucked.

Closing

Take a seat in any way that is comfortable to you. With your eyes closed, take a moment to do a quick body scan, paying special attention to how your shoulders, upper back, mid back, and lower back feel. Maybe notice how even a short practice can have profound effects on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Thank you so very much for doing this short 15-minute yoga for upper back practice with me. I hope you feel really freed up through your upper body and that this was a beneficial sequence for you.