Protecting Your Wrists in Yoga

Are you one of the many people with wrist pain on and off the mat? To better understand why, when the wrist is extended in downward dog, plank, and arm balances, it puts stress on the soft tissue, such as tendons in the wrist. If you type on a computer with wrists in that extended position (rather than the recommended neutral position) and doing other common activities like driving and writing, the top of the forearm can become tense from overuse.


What can I do?


You don’t have to give up yoga if you have wrist pain. There are a few things you can do:

1. Rest. If the pain is severe, rest. Avoid poses that force you to put weight on your wrists until you can strengthen them.
2. Exercise your wrists. If wrists are weak or injured, they can be stretched and strengthened with targeted exercise. Make a loose fist, with the palm facing upward and do curls with the fist. Then turn the fist palm down and do small upward curls with a small weight.
3. Pay attention to alignment of the hands. Notice how you distribute weight on the fingers. If you roll the weight out toward the pinkie, you are more likely to feel wrist pain than if you place more weight into the "L" shape of the hand -- the thumb and index finger.
4. Modify the poses. Instead of downward dog, do dolphin (downward dog done on the forearms.) or do downward dog against a wall. Instead of cobra or upward dog, try baby cobra or sphinx (cobra on the forearms). Rather than plank on your hands, try plank on your forearms.
5. Use props. A folded blanket just behind the heels of your hands can support the base of your wrists. A wedge gives a lift to the heels of your hands while shifting more weight to the mounds of your fingers. You can cut it in half to better customize to the width of your shoulders and angle of your hands. In wheel pose, place blocks at an angle against a wall or a rolled up blanket against the wall and place your hands on those blocks/blanket.

Talk to us if you have wrist pain so we can offer alternatives.