Wrists in Woes

I thought I was good at arm balances until the day I knew I wasn't

This is a story about getting into a given yoga posture so easily that it made you thought you were naturally good at it, and then your body told you years later that you aren’t. After all, the biggest teaching of yoga is to sit with our ego comfortably and not be taken away by it.

What happened to me:

I never had to "practice" to get to arm balances. I mean, I really did get right into Bakasana (crow pose) by my third try. I’d see others struggling and wonder why.

After over a decade of this kind of "naturally getting it" practice, my wrist fought back—I developed a ganglion cyst. I had a small procedure to get rid of it earlier.

I was referred to a simple plastic surgery. I didn’t disclose much on the intake form, but when my surgeon saw me, his first question was "what kind of exercises you do? Yoga maybe".

Anatomical points-to-note:

• The wrist is made up of eight small carpal bones, multiple ligaments, tendons, and three major nerves (median, ulnar, radial). Pretty impressive considering the small size of it.
• It is a highly mobile and versatile joint, which means stability is often compensated. Modern life full of typing, texting and gaming can put repetitive stress on the wrist.
• Modern yoga practice makes our wrist joints go into more dorsiflexion than we are designed for, with weight bearing. Think of plank, chaturanga, arm balances and even adho mukha svanasana (downward dog).

Why it happened - some possibilities:

• The fact that I seemed to be “naturally getting arm balances” diminished the motivation to strengthen all the muscles that are necessary to support my arm balances, overlooked the importance of counter-stretch and relief exercises afterwards.
  

Management:

• Operation (for ganglion cyst)
• A lot of counter-stretch and relief exercises (see below)
• Using my fist instead of pressing on palm (see below)
• Strengthen the serratus
• So that I can engage serratus when push up from chaturanga to plank (for example) in order to stabilize scapulae and lessen the load on the wrists

Don’t get me wrong. I still love arm balances. I think it’s a unique combination of upper body strengthening, coordinated pranayama and dhristi in modern yoga.

For what it’s worth, hope my story gives some perspective to your practice, especially aspects where we encounter fewest obstacles. Sometimes all those difficult and challenging aspects in life draw and drain all our attention, blinding us to the fact that some easy paths we took may not have been the right one after all.