Question

I understand yoga should be helping not hurting, but the more I practice the more my wrists hurt. Help!

Answer

Yoga should help, and there’s no need for it to hurt.

But the fact is, a wide array of injuries are happening in yoga. Yoga teachers in particular are getting shoulder, hip and knee replacements right and left, while wrist pain is considered a mark of “advanced” practice.

Of course, this is silly, and preventable!

Prevention

First, let’s look at prevention. Two simple guidelines can help here:

1. Stop pushing, forcing, jumping and otherwise struggling into poses.

It’s important to practice ease in yoga. You get good at what you practice. Practice forcing and struggling, you get better at forcing and struggling. Practice ease, and you get good at handling even the greatest challenges with ease.

This is how yoga works: we wire our brains through how we practice, to let go stress and become more capable in our lives. Yoga is our practice ground for capable life.

Practice ease, calm, capability over frustration or struggle, and you’ll leave injuries behind.

2. Find your own way into your own body.

The idea that there is a single “correct” alignment for every pose has also been damaging in yoga. It keeps people aiming to be someone else, rather feel into themselves and find their own way. These rules don’t keep us safe; they keep us in someone else’s body.

Safety in my body requires that I be in my body!

Everyone’s body is different. Everyone’s life is different. We have different athletic histories, injuries, ways of sitting at desks and carrying babies. Yoga is our time to respond to our lives, in our own way. It’s also our time to practice getting there on our own two feet, no permission from anyone else required.

Injuries appear in yoga when people jump and push into poses. They come when we think we should be someone else’s shape, rather than our own.

Find your own way into your own body. Do it calmly and easily. This will not only keep you safe, it will also make you happier and more capable in your life.

Treatment

Second, let’s look at treatment. In this case, the question was about wrist pain. The following treatment guidelines may also be applied to minor injuries and chronic pain in general.

1. Stay easy in your body. Wrist pain is often brought on by jumping forward and back, jumping into handstands, pushing into crow poses, or anything that involves putting a sudden load on your wrists.

As a start, it’s good to let your body know it no longer needs to defend itself from you! If you’re doing any jumping or pushing, let that go. It’s best not to push through pain, or repeatedly test an injury.

2. Compress and release. Rest your knees on the ground, so your full weight isn’t on your wrists. Spend some time putting a little weight on your hands, then release, and repeat. If it hurts, don’t do it! Just find another way.

3. Keep moving, gently. Minor injuries and chronic pain can often be helped through movement. Easygoing movement can relax your body, improve circulation, and restore the right conditions for healing. You can help your body switch from defense mode, where it’s protecting against further injury, into healing mode.
Here’s a video that will guide you through some movement that should help with wrist pain. Just do it every day!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3t9p1QWMOU[/youtube]

Stay safe and have fun!

Mike

About Strala Yoga Training

Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.

It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.

In our Strala Yoga Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.

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