Pain in Wrist

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

I feel a little pain my my wrist when I do any of the following:

  1. Sun Saluatations.
  2. Plank Pose.
  3. Downward dog pose.

What are the possible reasons? Could my write be weak? Do I need to do some other excersize to make it stronger? I am going to ask my doctor about this as well in my next visit but wanted to go more prepared.

#2

What is your practice like every day? Are you allowing sufficient time for your wrist to repair itself after your practices? If you have a teacher you may want them to check your hand position as well.

It may help that I have heard that pressing the hands together in the prayer position with awareness can strengthen the wrists quite considerably and reduce this pain. When my wrists hurt, I would do it for 5-10 seconds at a time, a few times a day… but I wasn’t in a big hurry to get rid of it.

#3

Yalgaar dear

I think that maybe you should stop practicing asanas until you get a good teacher. Wrist pain can be caused by your body placement in all three of those techniques. Without seeing you practice, there is no way to figure out what is causing your wrist pain.

Trust me, it is not worth having an asana practice if you are creating injuries. It would be better for you to meditate, read uplifting books and walk 3-5 days a week as your yoga practice. Yoga means union and it is about uniting the spiritual with the mental.

Now days, Churches, YMCA’s, Gyms etc have yoga teachers. You may be amazed that you can find a quality teacher at these places. If you can’t find one, choose a workshop and save up your money to attend. A good teacher will cover the basics such as DownDog, Sun salutes and plank and you will then have a good foundation to practice at home.

Don’t injure yourself over this please. It is not worth it.

#4

Do you do a lot of other things with your wrist? Such as typing on a computer?

If you are experiencing a little pain during asana it could be a warning sign for something caused elsewhere in your life. (eg. carpel tunnel, from typing?) Yoga and asana is a tool to connect with your body. During asana one usually feels better connected to the body and may be able to experience pain you can’t when distracted by life.

I really like what my teacher always says, “you should not have pain in your joint while practicing asana, pain in muscles is good though, it means you are working them. Joints are not meant to be in pain, if they are in pain you are likely misaligned or may have some other problem.”

My advice, give your wrist some time to heal, maybe only do yoga poses that don’t require pressure or use of the wrist, if it still hurts after a week or so, check with a doctor.

#5

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f18/yoga-poses-which-require-effort-on-the-wrists-please-help-4529.html

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f18/another-wrist-pain-question-2963.html

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f16/wrist-pain-in-cat-down-and-up-dogs-etc-3016.html

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f16/wrists-gripitz-perfect-push-up-2635.html

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f18/pain-while-doing-yoga-2384.html

#6

A few years ago, I had a ganglion cyst on my inner wrist that was very
painful when trying to do any poses that required hand and arm support.
I thought I needed surgery. When I asked my Anusara Teacher, John Friend,
what to do he taught me about alignment in the shoulders as well as
Muscle Energy. The following may help you too!

Your pain in the wrist may be a symptoms of a misalignment in your
shoulders. Have you tried putting your shoulderblades more on your
back by using your rhomboids and serratus anterior muscles? By stenghthening
these muscles around the shoulder, you will be working
more from the core and not the extremity (wrist).

The other thing you will want to check is to see if the root of your index
finger (at the palm of your hand) is staying on the floor when you are
doing the three poses you mentioned. If not, try drawing your forearms
in more to the midline to help access muscle energy along with keeping
your shoulderblades on your back.

I hope this helps you. Keep me posted!

#7

Thank you very much all of you for your advice. I am considering to buy a "GRIPITZ

I just had 1 question. What is the difference between a “GRIPIZ” and a “Push-up-bar”

I am posting a link to give and idea on what I am referring to. I already have the push up bar. So If I could use it rather, will it give me the same result?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-PUSH-UP-BAR-HAND-STANDS-CHEST-DIP-FITNESS-EXERCISE_W0QQitemZ230356026362QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item35a24a03fa&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1205|293%3A1|294%3A50

#8

i am not familiar with either of those as far as a way to help wrist pain.
good luck

#9

Hi Yalgaar,

I’m new to the forum, but thought I would weigh in.

As to your last question about the push up bar (I gather a Gripitz is similar) they simply let you avoid bending the wrist. May stop you from doing the things that hurt, but they don’t address the problem.

I’ll second some good points made here before adding a couple of my own

  1. Alignment is important:
  • the crease of the wrist should be at right angles to the length of your body when your hands are on the floor. For many people, that means your middle finger pointing straight ahead - but the wrist position the important part.
    -the “four corners” of the palm should be engaged on the floor. (The fingers should not be gripping). This helps keep you from “dumping” your weight into the heel of the hand, which tends to over-stress the wrist. Practicing on a soft surface (plush rug or thick exercise mat) makes it harder to press the root of the fingers down and bends the wrists more.
  • the upper arm/shoulder should be rotated properly. You can get an idea of this by checking where the inner crease of the elbow ends up. In down dog (arms essentially overhead) the inner elbows should face in toward each other. In plank (arms essentially out in front of you) elbow crease would face forward toward your fingers.
  • in order to enable good shoulder rotation, the shoulder blades should not be “winging” off the back, which is common when overreaching in poses like plank. Think about squeezing the shoulder blades gently toward each other to get them flat on the back again. Shoulder position can definitely cause (or stop) wrist pain.
  1. You need a teacher knowledgeable in alignment/therapeutics. This stuff can be really hard to figure out until someone can help you see it/feel it. Alignment can be the difference between your practice healing or harming.

For all that, you might just have some stuck joints between the wrist (carpal) bones. This will usually show up as a localized sharp pain in certain positions. Over time, the tendon/ligaments can get inflamed and lead to more general pain. In that case, a chiropractor and/or acupuncturist will probably do you more good than an MD.

And you may well need to do some wrist strengthening. This can also help prevent recurrence of wrist joint problems. My favorite approach is to get on all fours, positioning the hands/elbows/shoulders as though you were going into plank. Then rock forward bending the wrist a little more. You can bend the wrists to a point of medium stretch, but no pain. In the stretched position, press the base of the fingers (edge of the palm) down into the floor as though you were going to straighten the wrist out. This is just an isometric exercise - you are engaging the muscles/tendons that are being stretched. Hold for 12-15 seconds, then relax and see if you can comfortably bend the wrist a bit more (if not, stay where you were). Repeat 3-5 times.

If your balance is good, I like to finish with “stand hands” where you are in a standing forward fold - slide your hands, palms up, under your feet, fingers pointing toward the heels. Your knees can be bent to make it easier. To do much good, you need the balls of your feet pressing down on the heel of the hand - so you are pretty much completely standing on your hands. Then you can pull up a bit and get a nice opening in the wrist joint, while it is flexed in the opposite direction as in the weight bearing poses. If you can’t do this, just go back to all fours and bend your wrists the opposite way as usual, so the back of your hands are on the floor, reversing the stretch. Do this gently.

#10

I had this problem when I began yoga. I know using a mat towel helped with grip, and not sliding seems to help the wrists. Mostly, though, it seemed like just continuing to do yoga strengthened my wrists and they no longer hurt in those poses.