If you’ve ever wrapped your arms into Garudasana, or Eagle Pose, expecting a gentle little stretch and instead felt your shoulders practically scream, you’re not imagining things. According to NIH News in Health, a publication from the National Institutes of Health, slumped, hunched posture from things like constant gadget use and long hours at a desk is directly linked to shoulders rounding forward over time, and researchers funded by NIH have specifically studied yoga as a way to help reverse this. The arm position in Eagle Pose looks deceptively simple from the outside, two arms crossed and wound around each other, but it demands a genuinely deep range of shoulder mobility that most people, especially anyone who spends hours hunched over a desk, simply don’t have readily available. Here’s why those Eagle arms feel so much harder than they look, and what’s actually going on in your shoulders when they do.
