Wistful Wrists: How to Keep Your Wrists Safe

by Baxter

Following last week's hoopla around the New York Times article "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" and my interview on San Francisco public radio’s KQED last Thursday (see Can Yoga Be Bad For You?), Nina and I realized that it might be helpful to look at the most commonly injured areas of the body (from yoga or otherwise—more often otherwise!), and see if we could recommend a few helpful ways of avoiding injury or working with trouble when it arises.

I already mentioned Loren Fishman’s survey of 2009, in which he identified the areas of the body most likely to get injured. Wrists ranked number one among yogis surveyed. The main risk factor for modern yogis is the fact that contemporary hatha yoga, the practice of postures, relies heavily on poses that bring lots of pressure and force onto the wrists. The list of these poses includes such favorites as Cat/Cow, Plank Pose, Downward-Facing Dog, Upward-Facing Dog, Push-up Pose (Chaturanga), most of the arm balances (which we should rename accurately hand and wrist balances), and even the bottom hand in the asymmetric standing poses like Triangle pose.

There are very few manual labor jobs anymore that require us to have our hands on the ground supporting our weight. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view, we have evolved to our upright posture so having our hands on the ground is no longer necessary for our survival, except for that precious few months before we begin to walk as pre-toddlers. And modern society places our value as workers squarely on having a functional brain and adept hands to plug into our computers and produce! So the rest of our body is superfluous to the economy. Forgive my tendency to be hyperbolic, but we are stuck between and rock and a hard place. Yoga is wonderful way to reconnect with our whole self, and yet we must simultaneously be cautious with the delicate wrist area. And in fact one could argue that yoga asana is helpful in conditions such as osteoporosis in actually requiring us to bear weight on the wrists, a common area affected by thinning of the bones.

A Rock and Beyond by Philip Amdal

What’s a yogi to do? Well, from the start, gradually introduce weight to the hands and wrists if you are new to yoga. This came up again and again in last week’s discussion: beginners should start at the beginning with a competent guide (aka teacher) and gradually advance and integrate the yoga asanas. Secondly, consider the wrists you bring into your practice, taking into account any preexisting conditions that could put you at greater risk of injury while doing yoga, such as a history of carpel tunnel syndrome, other repetitive stress injury to the area, family history of arthritis, and so on.

You might want to invest in slightly thicker yoga mat to give your hands and wrists a bit more padding. When placing your hands on your mat, make sure to have equal pressure on the first knuckle area of your hand (what I call the ball of the hand) and the heel of your hand (which is closer to the wrist joint). It can be helpful to create a slight lift under the heel of your hand using either the front of your yoga mat rolled under tightly, or by placing a wedge under the front of your mat so it slopes toward the front of mat. There are also specialized gloves that have a small built in wedge in the palm of the glove that can be helpful, as well as a prop called the Gripitz. (For the latter, I find it is helpful to go over the use of the Gripitz with students to keep it helping and not aggravating their wrists.)

And there is nothing better than rest for an angry wrist, so if you have one, consider designing a non-hand weight bearing practice with your teacher that you can do as your wrists settle down. It should not be difficult to create a satisfying practice with the myriad poses that do not require much support directly from your wrists and hands. 

Another factor to consider as that many of the poses mentioned earlier require your wrists and hands to do a movement called extension (the wrist is bending back toward the arm), and there is a risk of hyperextension if you are not paying attention. Conversely, the opposite action of extension, flexion of the wrist (with the wrist bending forward away from the arm), is sorely missing in the asana practice. Practicing flexion of your wrists is a helpful counter-pose for wrist health. So if you are having wrist problems, you might start practicing the “wrist flossing” exercises described in the book Yoga as Medicine by Dr. Timothy McCall, featuring the wrists of moi. My students and I have found them helpful over the years in balancing our wistful wrists!