Dealing with Wrist Pain?

 
Do you ever suffer from wrist discomfort during a long yoga practice? You’re not alone.

Wrist pain in yoga is typically the result of either underdeveloped muscles in the forearm or limited extension of the wrist joint—or both. If you struggle with inflexible wrists or weak forearms you end up localizing all your body weight in one small part of one small joint. And that’s a recipe for trouble.  

Tackling the issue:

First, let’s deal with increasing wrist flexibility.   Most daily activities involve flexion  (carrying groceries home), adduction (opening a beer), or abduction (giving thumbs up about said beer), so it’s natural that we’d need to spend some time working on extension.

Warm up: Bring palms into prayer in front of heart center. Keeping palms flat against each other, slowly raise elbows to eventually bring forearms parallel to the floor.

Next step: Extend right arm in front of you, palm facing up. Extend fingers down toward the floor. Use fingers of the left hand to grasp fingers of the right hand. Gently pull the right fingers toward the heart. Try on the other side.  This one is easy to do throughout the day—hell, do it at your desk. Your wrists will thank you.

Strengthening the forearms is also super easy—it just takes some patience and determination. Keep up your regular yoga practice, just alternate between traditional downward facing dog and downward facing dog on the forearms (dolphin). If your wrists are pretty sore, start with just a few traditional down dogs per practice, and then build from there.

While you’re working on increasing strength and flexibility in the wrists—either opt for bridge pose instead of full backbend, or do your backbend with your wrists on a folded mat or wedge for a little cushion.

The more wrist strength you develop, the more comfortable you’ll be.  That’s it—no special weights, no tricky maneuvers. Just do yoga.