Protecting Wrists in Downward Facing Dog and Yoga Poses
I teach Hatha Yoga classes at a variety of Yoga studios, some with carpet and some with hardwood flooring. Regardless of the flooring type, I often see common hand-placement errors in wrist-loading Yoga poses like Downward Facing Dog that can chronically lead to compression injuries in the wrists.
Having the proper placement and understanding of how to manipulate the surface area of the hands can significantly reduce the incidence of wrist injuries in your Yoga practice. The first issue to address is the floor type that we practice Yoga on. Most people find practicing on hardwood floors hard for the knees and other pressure points on the body. To create cushioning, many people practice in studios on two Yoga mats. This doubling of mats creates a similar problem to practicing with a Yoga mat on a carpet. The thickness of two mats or of a mat on carpet causes the hands to sink into the soft support. When hand positions are even slightly off-balance, body weight is shifted even more into those sinking points. The wrists are next to fall into this compression and take this uneven energy. What causes this uneven compression?
Notice what happens to the connection points in the hands the next time you do Downward Facing Dog, Cat pose, Plank pose, Cobra pose or any other pose that positions your hands forward of the shoulders and applies pressure. As you move away from your hands in Downward Facing Dog or in the exhaled phase of Cat pose, do the inner regions of the hands (proximal index finger and knuckle) lift off the ground? Is there space flowing from the inner hand into the palm?
When the inner hand lifts in these loaded poses and when we practice on thick surfaces, body weight transfers heavily to the outer wrist joints. These outer joints become easily compressed and, for some, result in acute or prolonged pain. Considering how static pressure increases when we decrease the surface area that the pressure is being applied to, we can easily decrease this damaging pressure by bringing attention to how we apply energy into the hands. Before loading the hands in Yoga poses, align the wrists so the middle and index fingers roughly point forward or parallel with your mat. Send a gentle spread across the fingers without tension going into the wrists and arms. Allow a pause to lightly ground the proximal end of the index fingers and the index knuckles. Feel that you are already distributing your body forward out of the wrists and more evenly over the hands. Rather than the weight going into a small portion of the hands (high pressure), the weight is fanned out over a greater area (less pressure). As you set up the rest of the pose, keep applying this gentle, inner grounding of the index region. You may feel as though you are slightly spiraling the forearm inwards.
In Downward Facing Dog and Plank poses, this inwards spiral of the forearms, may draw the upper arm bones and shoulder blades forward. Therefore, a countering motion is required. A slight outwards spiral of the upper arms should be applied along with a light hugging of the shoulder blades back and down into the upper ribs. There are various Yoga equipment products that can aid in reducing wrist compression as well. But I first recommend exploring how you can change hand placement and energy applications. If possible, practice with only one mat and thinner cushioning under the hands.
Be more aware of the surfaces you practice on and add additional care to protecting the wrists in loading Yoga poses. As our practice is life-long, we need to perform Yoga poses mindfully to sustain the vitality of joints.
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Understanding the Sacroiliac Joint
Asana Anatomy-Understanding the Sacroiliac Joint
Controversy does not often strike the yoga community. Non-harming, truthfulness, and loving kindness are not very controversial concepts. Yet the poor, barely mobile, sacroiliac joint has become the center of a yoga debate – to square or not to square the hips. Ok, so it is not as racy as a celebrity feud, but it may affect your personal yoga practice.
Let’s dissect this joint.
The two sacroiliac joints (SI joint) are formed by three bones: the triangular sacrum bone, and the two wing like bones of the pelvis known as the ilium. Each iliac bone (one half of the ilium) comes in contact with one side of the sacrum, forming two SI joints. This connection is like three puzzle pieces fitting together known as form closure. Form closure creates stability, keeping the pelvis together in one unit. The SI joint itself is shaped like a boomerang with two arms at 90 degrees to each other. The upper portion lies in an up-and-down orientation and the lower portion lies in a front-to-back orientation. The surface of the joint is covered in coarse cartilage, adding friction and contributing to the force closure.
The sacrum moves in nutation (forward) and counter nutation (backward) in relation to the ilium. The sacrum can move only on one side, like in lifting one leg, or both sides, like when we move from lying to standing. This movement is very small, amounting to 1 or 2 mm of motion in either direction. As we age, the sacrum becomes wedged increasingly forward, but this doesn’t fully happen until we reach our 30’s. This wedging increases the resistance to shearing (twisting) forces across the sacroiliac joint. Herein lies the problem. The SI joint is a joint that is intended to provide stability for the pelvis, and is not built to move.
The SI joint has another mechanism of stability – force closure. This is the stability created by the action of the core musculature that has attachments into the SI joint – namely, the muscles of the pelvic floor, and the transverse abdominis. Conveniently, we can access these muscles through the activation of the bandhas or energy locks in yoga. In mula bandha we imagine a subtle lifting up of the muscles we use to control the flow of urine. In women, activation of this musculature has been shown to provide force closure for the SI joint. In uddiyana bandha, we draw the lower belly in and up, activating the transverse abdominis muscle. For this version, the scooping of the lower belly needs only to be subtle, and slightly flattens out the lower abdomen.
Hip Opening or Sacroiliac Opening?
Many of us identify ourselves as having “tight hips”. For many, this means a lack of external (outward) rotation at the hip joint. Using the example of Virabhadrasana I or Warrior I pose, our front hip is in a flexed position with toes pointing straight ahead. Our back foot is on the floor at a 45 degree angle, and in order for the points of our hips (our iliac crests) to face toward the front of the mat, our back hip needs to extend, and externally rotate. If we look deep inside we see that these actions require our sacrum to nutate forward on the side of the lead leg, and counter nutate backward on the side of the rear leg. If the rear hip resists external rotation in order to square the hip points forward a twisting or shearing force is introduced across the SI joint. Over time this can lead to irritation, hypermobility, and dysfunctional firing patterns of our pelvic musculature.
Happy Sacrum
This situation is an opportunity to practice ahimsa or non-violence towards our SI joints. There are a few ways you can diminish the shearing force across the SI in standing poses. The first is to take a slightly wider stance, opening your feet to hip width (rather than heel to arch or heel to heel). This enables your pelvis to comfortably square forward. Another option is to keep the feet as they are and simply allow your pelvis to be slightly open to the side of your mat. That’s right, let go of the desire to perfectly square your pelvis forward. Instead, imagine the hip bone in its socket, outwardly rotating. Keeping that rotation, tuck the tailbone under slightly, creating room in the front of the hip. You may find that this provides more freedom of movement and may naturally square your hips further. In standing and seated twists, be sure to engage the muscles of the pelvic floor (mula bandha) to support the SI joint before twisting.
When we step back for a moment and acknowledge the true purpose of our yoga practice, suddenly trying to make our bodies fit a mold doesn’t make much sense. Being more forgiving and accepting of our bodies limitations enables us to go much deeper into our yoga practice and experience the joy of yoga safely. Now that doesn’t sound controversial at all.
