TEACHING FOCUS: Modifications for Wrist and Ankle Injuries

For anyone with wrist/ankle injuries who practices yoga and wants to start, and for my Ekata Training Center students :)

WRIST INJURIES AND YOGA

I feel like I’ve had every injury possible, but I’ve never had problems my wrists. I remember when first starting to do yoga, my wrists felt very weak and tender, but that was mainly because I wasn’t placing my weight in the right places and didn’t have my form right. So I had to do a little research on it!!

Right away when I heard one of my students had a wrist injury, I knew plank pose would feel awful.

Modification for Plank Pose for Wrist Injury = Forearm Plank

forearm plank

Either interlace fingers as shown in the photo ^^^ or if that bugs have hands planted flat into the mat parallel from each other, shoulder distance apart.

Modification for Down Dog for Wrist Injury = Knuckles

down dog with knuckles

***Avoid placing too much pressure on the wrists/overworking them. Listen to your body. So it’d be best to avoid CHATURANGA’S (ya kno, those push-up things in Sun Salutations)

Julie Gudmestad wrote an amazing article for Yoga Journal on protecting your wrists/modifications in yoga! Please read and learn from her :) http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/1247

ANKLE INJURIES AND YOGA

Now ankle injuries I’m very familiar with because of dance – I was a ballerina for 10 years.

Until the ankle heals and isn’t swollen, PLEASE AVOID Bound Angle Pose and Lunges. In general, if it hurts to place your ankle on the floor, practice standing postures instead of floor ones!

I love to do hip openers on the floor and wall, so having a student with an ankle injury made me stop and think how to open up her hips without placing pressure on her ankle.

Standing Postures = Hip Openers w/o pressure on ankle

Warrior 2,  Side Angle, and Warrior 1 should open up those hips without pressure on the ankle. But once again, listen to your body, and if staying in the pose for too long irritates the ankle, just hold the pose for a shorter length of time! Experiment! Play :)

PLEASE CHECK OUT THIS BLOG FOR ANKLE INJURY MODIFICATIONS!!

http://yogaforhealthyaging.blogspot.com/2012/07/recovering-from-ankle-injuries.html

http://yogaforhealthyaging.blogspot.com/2012/06/getting-to-know-your-ankles.html

 

xo

-shan

@shannenrobertsyoga

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