Wrist injuries are common in yoga and pilates practise and osteopaths can relieve them easily.
Cause of injury:
Most people develop wrist injuries after doing too much ie more clases than normal or overloading the tissues – placing additional weight during poses. Usually people are eager to do more after the holidays or do additional classes following travel or sickness. For some they are misaligned during the pose because they are compensating for other minor injuries. Most people will delay their treatment until they can no longer practice yoga/pilates. By this time there is more swelling and compression of their joints, forced to stop yoga/pilates they seek urgent help. Important advice: seek osteopathic treatment as early as possible to recover faster.
Example of an injury
A patient recently strained her wrist because of a cut in her finger, in trying to avoid pressure on her finger she compressed her outer wrist joints by shifting her weight. She waited so long that both her wrists are giving her pain. Though she hates the idea of taking time off her classes, she reluctantly understands that she has to wait until the pain is resolved.
The forearm tissues maybe the cause-
Commonly it is not your wrist that is the main problem, the stiffness in the tissues of the forearm not allowing pronation (palm facing down) at the wrist is the underlying problem. The reduced pronation causes misalignment at the wrist bones causing compression leading to swelling in the joints.The misalignment also strains the tendons giving weakness when gripping and carrying things.
Phase 1 of treatment- to reduce your pain
Our first aim is to reduce the local pain at the wrist with gentle osteopathic manipulation, ice compress, easing the stress in the joints and releasing the tendon inflammation. Trigger point therapy maybe applied to quicken the recovery process.
Phase 2 of treatment- reduce recurrences
Usually after 2-3 osteopathic treatment sessions, the wrist pain should be better and the forearm tissues would have been released. Pronation of wrist should be easier and putting weight on your wrist into a downward dog pose or plank causes less pain. Phase 2 is about stretching and alignment education to reduce recurrence. We are keen for you to go back to your yoga/pilates as soon as possible and with greater care, you can continue your practise pain free.
Phase 3 of treatment- stay well
The final phase of treatment is a 6 monthly check up to make sure old habits don’t creep back in again. We like to promote the phrase “prevention is better than cure”.
Call 6327 8545 to enjoy a pain free yoga/pilates session.