Injury In Supta Kurmasana: Supta Kurmasana Goes Pop!

Supta kurmasana

Some time ago I threatened to write an article about pain showing up in the joint that connects the collarbone to the breastbone. I just had a couple more recent requests to talk about this potential injury in supta kurmasana. As always I try to look at the anatomy and its function, and make some observations about the yoga posture itself. Then we can look at how that information can inform the way we work in the posture or adjust it.

The sternoclavicular joint

I’m gonna get technical on you for half a second. I’m going to teach you my algebraic (not really) equation for coming up with the technical name of any joint in the body. The equation is bone + O + bone = Joint Name.

The breastbone is technically called the sternum. The collarbone is called the clavicle. Add them together, make a couple of changes to the endings of each one, and you have the stern-o-clavicular joint. And, it’s the sternoclavicular joint that can go “pop” while doing supta kurmasana.

The requests for information about causes of pain and injury in supta kurmasana, as of late, have unfortunately come out of injury during adjustments in this posture. But injury in supta kurmasana at this joint doesn’t only come during an adjustment. We can easily do it to ourselves if we’re not careful, and to be fair, even if we are being careful.

It seems strange to talk about being careful when talking about putting our legs behind our head and then binding our arms behind our back while face down. It can occasionally leave one to wonder why on earth we would ever do such a thing to ourselves? I believe that question might be better left for a different article some day in the future.

Joint structure and movements

The joint itself is quite unique. Okay, I’m gonna get anatomical on you again. Joints are classified by their shape and/or function. Some joints live outside of the normal classifications that have been created. This is one of them. This joint is usually classified as a saddle joint. Imagine two horse saddles. Flip one upside down, rotate it ninety degrees, and the curves forward and back meet up with one another in such a way that the saddles move along one another in two directions.

The sternoclavicular joint is shaped almost exactly like this except its curves are not quite so deep as a horse saddle. In the case of this joint, it moves forward and back in what we call protraction and retraction. It moves up and down in what we call elevation and depression. This fits nicely with the design of a saddle joint.

Rotation of the sternoclavicular joint

However, there is one additional function that lies outside the normal saddle shape. This joint also has the ability to rotate. It is in this function that the injury in supta kurmasana most likely occurs. It’s not that this is the only place that we utilize the rotation at this joint. Most bindings behind our back, such as marichyasana A, B, C, D, and prasarita padottanasana C with hands interlaced behind the back are other examples.

The sternoclavicular joint in supta kurmasana

What happens here in supta kurmasana is that we have to mix the rotation of the clavicle with retraction. Retraction is when the lateral or outer end of the clavicle is moving back in space. In this case, it happens by virtue of us reaching our arms behind our back. Mixing the two together increases the amount of pressure in the joint. In supta kurmasana you happen to be doing this combination of movements while going around your thighs. This “obstacle” in the way forces us to reach further and creates more general tension through the sternoclavicular joint when we bind.

Adjusting the pose

All of this makes adjustments a bit precarious depending on the student and their individual factors. Do they have short arms? Tight shoulders? Wider thighs? Wider torso? There are a number of additional factors that could be potential restrictions in the binding component of a pose such as this one. I talk more about what is required from the body to move safely in and out of supta kurmasana on pages 258-260 (1st ed.) of my book Functional Anatomy of Yoga.

I don’t want to get too deep into how to adjust this yoga posture. I’m not going to take on how to adjust the legs here. All of it together is a whole other article and perhaps even a book! The teacher should fit the adjustment to the student of course. I would suggest that we look at our ability, or at our students’ ability, to bind in postures such as parsvottanasana, prasarita padottanasana C (second most common place for injury at this joint with palms facing out behind the back), and the marichyasanas.

Should you adjust the arms or legs first?

It is common for many teachers to bind the arms first in this posture and then put the legs behind the head. In many poses we bind the pose before the rest of the posture happens fully. For example, that happens in those marichyasanas I mentioned earlier. We naturally bind our arms first and then fold forward or twist fully.

This posture might be an exception to that rule. For instance, let’s assume that some of you out there put yourself into a full raja supta kurmasana where your legs are completely behind your head. Do you do this with your hands bound first? No, you don’t. You sit up, put your legs behind your head, and then lower yourself down to the floor using those hands. Then, after your forehead is on the floor, you bind your arms.

Consider adjusting the legs first

I’m not sure why this same order of operations shouldn’t apply to putting someone else into the pose if you’re helping them. I know for me personally, if I bind my hands first and then someone tries to put my legs behind my head, it isn’t going to happen easily for them or for me. It isn’t going to be very comfortable for me either. But, other people are different. Someone with thinner legs and longer arms might not have a problem with either adjustment.

Trying to adjust someone’s legs after binding their arms may even make them tighten up. Why? Because they’re trying to hold onto the binding between their hands. Think about it, does binding the legs to the side of the body allow those legs to move more or less easily? This is a place where that pop, that sound of an injury in supta kurmasana, can happen.

Adjusting the arms

The other place where the joint tends to get injured in this posture is when the arms are being adjusted more deeply behind the back. Often the elbows are squeezed together from behind. If it’s you trying to bind your own shoulder, or adjust an arm deeper, don’t forget to help the shoulder get further forward. The shoulder should move down toward the floor before the arm tries to reach back and rotate. Moving it down toward the floor first tends to alleviate pressure at the sternoclavicular joint and make more space for the rotation to happen around the leg if it’s already behind the head.

What to do if you have an injury here?

The most likely culprit for an injury in supta kurmasana here is a torn ligament (there are always other possibilities). Before you freak out over the word tear, let’s define what that means to a ligament. Tear implies that the fibers in the ligament have been stretched past a point where they can return to their original shape/position. It’s like your old slinky. Once you stretched it out, as we all did at some point in its life, it never went back together in the same way. There were slightly larger gaps between the coils than when it was new.

Trapezius and SCM attachment onto clavicle

A better way to describe it is to say it was over-stretched. What do we do about this? Ice it. Reduce inflammation and swelling, if there happens to be any, and keep moving the joint around. Remember that scar tissue forms whenever there is an injury to soft tissues in the body. If you do nothing, it gets tighter and more restricted.

Compensations in the body

Just keep in mind that at a joint like this, you may quickly realize how interrelated things are in your body. Your clavicle moves with each breath you take. Muscles that attach to it also attach to your head and neck. It’s possible that an injury in supta kurmasana at the sternoclavicular joint may cause a number of compensations in and around your neck.

The sternocleidomastoid attaches very close to the sternoclavicular joint and then just behind the ear on the skull. Your trapezius muscle is attached to the end of your clavicle and scapula (which both move together). Its other end attaches to the back of your head and neck. The subclavius muscles that sit under (sub) the clavicle (clavius) also attach to the clavicle. All of these muscles exert their forces on the clavicle itself and the joint. If they are in balance, then the clavicle is in balance. If some of them tense up in response to an injury in supta kurmasana, which can happen, then the balance is thrown off. When the balance is off, the repercussions can be neck and shoulder pain as a result of the initial injury to the joint. So it can be much more widespread than we might initially think.