Yoga correlation with wrist and hand pain
Yoga helps people with hand pain and arthritis improve many symptoms like pain and stiffness, stress, and anxiety.
People who practice yoga regularly can reduce joint pain, improve hand function and joint flexibility, and lower stress levels.
Hand exercises can be especially beneficial for the stiff fingers often seen in patients with different types of arthritis. Low impact yoga and stretching exercises can improve grip strength, can help to reduce inflammation and pain in patients with chronic hand inflammation and arthritis.
It is important to follow your yoga instructor's guidance and avoid pressure or axial load over the wrists during yoga. If you don’t follow instructions you might end up with more pain and potentially serious injuries.
Some people complain of wrist pain during yoga.
People walk on their feet, not on their hands. During yoga when we load the wrists, we must allow for a certain adjustment period.
When we are using our hands as feet such as in arm balances, planks, and downward dog, we need to give them time to get stronger gradually — not go from doing nothing to 100 chaturanga push-ups in one yoga practice.
There are specific pressure points over the hand and wrist allowing us to distribute pressure evenly.
For the experienced yogis, the following can be helpful adjustments to protect wrist injuries:
- Instead of downward dog, change to dolphin position (dolphin is a downward dog done on the forearms.)
- Instead of doing a wheel pose on the floor, place blocks at an angle against a wall and place your hands on those blocks.
- Instead of cobra or upward dog, you can do a baby cobra or sphinx (a cobra on the forearms).
- Instead of plank on your hands, do a plank on your forearms and come down to the knees if your core is too weak to hold up the hips.
