"Can headstand heal torn rotator cuff"? That was the title of the blog post I wrote a few weeks ago. In that post I had mentioned that based on an interview with Dr Loren Fishman that I heard on NPR, I was going to try the practice of headstand to deal with my torn rotator cuff. In today’s post, I would like to bring you up-to-date with the current status of my shoulder.

Based on the reports that I read on Dr Fishman’s blog and also some of the comments from the readers, I decided to cancel my appointment for surgery and try the headstand routine for some time. It was around the third week in August that I began practicing the headstand on a daily basis. Before I injured my shoulder, I used to stay in the headstand position for about six minutes. However, when I started practicing it with the injury, I noticed that after about three minutes my shoulder would begin to hurt a little. That is roughly the duration of the headstand practice that  I have maintained since then.

Within about two weeks of practice I felt a slight improvement in my range of motion. For example, I was able to take my cup of tea and put it in the microwave oven which I couldn’t do earlier without some amount of pain.  That obviously encouraged me to continue with the practice. Unfortunately, however, even after a few more weeks of practice, I did not see any further improvement in my situation. During my asana practice, any attempt to do a weight-bearing pose which involved bending the elbows (e.g., Cobra pose or Chaturanga-dandasana etc.) would still cause pain.

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