Wrist Strong

Stephen Colbert wears that silly LiveStrong knock-off supporting his faux cause "wrist strong". It's to encourage "wrist awareness" in wake of his own broken wrist. Even though it's a joke, the sentiment is one to take to heart.

We don't pay attention to the heavy duty the wrist bears until something goes wrong - usually in the form of carpal tunnel from the various repetitive motions that many of our jobs entail.

My own wrist issues are keyboard aggravated but stem from repetitive use injuries that came about during my Tae Kwon Do and kick-boxing days.

I ran across a post at Yogoer that outlined a few tips for wrist pain relief and strengthening that might be helpful.

* Wrist pain in yoga usually means you’re putting too much weight in the heel of the hand.
* Work on lifting the heels of the hands (in Down Dog and similar poses). You should be able to fit a couple pencils under the back of the palm.
* To strengthen the wrists, practice on “ridge tops,” for short periods: lift the heels of the hands about three inches, until the weight is entirely in the bottom knuckles of the fingers. Or lift all the way onto your fingertips.
* Most people lean weight towards the outsides of the hands; make sure the weight’s to the inner sides of the hands. The wrist should NOT be rotating outward.

Sounds logical and sensible to me and I plan to give the tips a try.

Have you found anything that helps with wrist issues? Please share.

Taught My First Yoga Class

Jill, the owner of the yoga studio I frequent and my teacher, asked me if I would take her Wednesday drop-in class this week.

I hesitated not.

This coming weekend will be my final teacher training session. Tests, demo teaching, Sutra presentations – the works. Teaching for real was just the thing I needed to prepare.

Over the course of training weekends, we practice teach on each other. It’s not the same as having real students and reminds me of practicing on my fellow students back in university. During the run up to student teaching (I was an English major), we’d craft lessons that we’d present to each other as though we were actual kids in a classroom.

Yes, that’s just as empty of substance as it sounds.

Yoga Face

I hadn’t thought about it before last weekend, but running undoes my yoga.

We were standing about after a practice teaching lab with Kat, the instructor, and discussing the various fitness routines – in addition to yoga – that we had and someone asked her what she did.

“Um, I do yoga,” she said, in a tone and with an expression that implied that the question itself hardly needed to be asked*.