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Yoga for a Happy Skeleton 6&7: life at arm's length - elbows & wrists

Ahimsa
Oct 18, 2015
4 min read

Our elbows and wrists bring us to the pièce de résistance of our fabulously mechanical skeleton - the hand. Care for the elbows and wrists, and your hands will continue to do your bidding.

Elbows

The elbows bend the arm in half, creating 2 manageable levers out of the great lengthy limb that hangs from your shoulder. Obviously the elbow has a basic bending up and down arrangement but have you noticed how wonderfully twisty your forearm is? The ability of the forearm to twist and swivel makes the elbow much more than a simple hinge joint. In the words of our super physio Sarah Key, “There is a twisting subtlety in the working forearm that converts it from being a relatively clumsy robot-like lever…into a remarkably graceful tool.” This rather sneaky cleverness is possible because of two parallel bones, the ulna and the radius, which revolve around each other, “carrying the hand along for the ride.”[1] The famous biceps are the main muscle involved in bending the elbow.

Elbow likes

The usual things;
Range of movement stretching to keep the joint elastic;
Movements that undo repetitive or routine patterns of use.

The boys from BSY - bahut sundar yoga! Strong elbows & wrists too.

Attention tennis stars, computer nerds and pianists!

Elbow doesn’t like

Repetitive movement – this can cause too much muscle tone leading to tightness.
Being bent for a long time with the wrist cocked e.g. computer use (especially mouse) and piano playing. Tightness and inflammation result.
Extreme problem is tennis elbow – so named because your elbow really doesn’t like tennis backhands (neither do I). They are a bad idea as far as elbow health goes.

What to do

Restore elasticity – yoga is good!
Reduce or avoid the aggravating activity.

Wrists

What a wonder the wrist is! This bony little junction is the base for the miracle of the hand. Its 8

carpal bones provide mobile bases for the fingers and thumb. From these chunky structures the metacarpals emerge – they are the fine bones that fan out along the back of your hand from wrist to fingers. The compact package that is the wrist can rotate an elegant 360° and it’s the thumb’s metacarpal that helps make us human, enabling what Sarah calls “this appendage’s genius quality of being opposable”. The incredible versatility and precision that the fingers and hands are capable of is due largely to the complex interaction of the carpal and metacarpal bones. Our wrists deserve immense respect and reverence. If they sieze up, your hands are in trouble, and that means you are in trouble.

Violin playing is hard on the wrists

Hasta Mudras

There is a whole category of yoga for the hands - the hasta mudras. Hasta means hand. Mudra means gesture. So they are hand gestures, each one producing a specific affect on the flow of prana which in turn may influence an organ in the body or a mental or emotional state. Hridayamudra, the heart gesture, influences both the physical heart and the qualities, moods or expressions of the heart. Hasta mudra pranayama is a beautiful sequence of 4 hand mudras which influence the breath. It is practised in the manner of a meditation, with each mudra held for 5-10 minutes with slowing of the breath and awareness of the mudra's affect on the lungs. It goes like this:

chin mudra - ventilates the lower lobes of the lungs;

chinmaya mudra - ventilates the middle lobes of the lungs;
aadi mudra - ventilates the upper lobes of the lungs;
brahma mudra - ventilates all three lobes of the lungs.

Instructions are in Prana and Pranayama by Swami Niranjanandanda Saraswati.

Wrists like:

The usual things! (see elbows above if you can’t remember)

Attention carpenters, gardeners, acrobats, cyclists, woodchoppers and violinists!

Wrists don’t like:

Too much heavy work (I’m sure you can relate to that) – this squashes the carpels together excessively and they can jam up;
Actions that require clenching and jarring e.g. hammering, chopping with an axe, mattocking, hoeing, over-enthusiastic hedge-clippering;
Bearing too much weight e.g. walking on your hands, strenuous pushing, leaning heavily into downward curling handlebars on a bicycle;
Playing the violin – sadly this is bad for pretty much all parts of the body involved – it’s an ergonomic disaster.
Being forced backwards e.g. when breaking a fall.

What to do:

Surely you know by now!

Sadhana for elbows and wrists

Pawanmuktasana part 1 for the upper body (during wrist rotations, don’t rotate the elbows. Do that during elbow rotations.)
Pulling the rope (it’s a great asana, we should do it more often!)
Tadasana (palm tree pose) - also do the arm movement while at your desk, holding them up for 1 minute – Sarah says.
Tiryaka tadasana (swaying palm tree) – keep the arms straight and the fingers interlaced.
Makarasana (crocodile or TV watching pose) – let the hands & elbows support the weight of the upper bod.
Sphinx asana – tuck the elbows in and be still like the one in Egypt.
Majariasana (cat) variation - balancing cat (weight on and off wrists)

Simhasana and simhagarjanasana (lion and roaring lion) - wow for the wrists and forearm swivel + tongue & eyes
Setu asana (bridge pose) - wow for the wrists and forearm swivel + strength.
Garudasana (eagle pose) - also do arm twist only while at the desk.
Ardha matsyendrasana (half spinal twist) – throwing out a challenge here – try developing the flexibility to do it properly! i.e. holding the ankle joint with the front arm. This is the cover shot of APMB. Many styles of yoga have compromised the arm position, having the flat hand raised from the bent elbow like a flag, a modification that compromises the completeness of the pose. (Call me a purist if you must.)
Vipareeta karani asana (half-shoulder stand) – wrist strengthening and so much more.
Prayer position behind the back. My favourite posture for this is Gupta padmasana. Good luck!