Yoga Class Begins
Stiffffffff
As part of my flexibility self-change project I enrolled in a Yoga class that meets once a week in the dance studio at school. It is reasonably priced but I did find a less expensive class with the same instructor up at a local sports club on a different night of the week. Convenience is more valuable than money sometimes so I’ve opted to go with the class that fits into my schedule.
Yoga was one of my action planning strategies for increasing flexibility. I am motivated to go by the people in the class and enjoy the sessions. There are no other men in the class which is interesting from a demographic perspective but not a factor either way for me. As part of the HAPA process I intended to identify action coping strategies to barriers. The barriers I anticipated before diving into the project were more around scheduling and I admit having back up strategies in mind when the time just disappears has been useful. I am having trouble with my left wrist, however, in yoga which is very frustrating. I experience sharp shooting pain across the top of the joint during some of the repeated core poses of Vinyasa yoga. Fortunately my instructor today offered some alternative pose suggestions that focus the force across my forearms and not directly onto that wrist. This was not a barrier I anticipated however, so it was much more troubling than the scheduling issues I thought would be the real difficulty.
As the caption above says, I am stiff but am feeling better and better. I will carry on with home stretching between now and next Wednesday so hope to see some improvement between now and then.
When I began doing yoga, I did get occasional pain in one or more wrists, particularly with Power Vinyasa, which forced me to land on my wrists in a repetitive way. One of my instructors taught me to focus on spreading my fingers and lessening the pressure on my palm by pushing with my fingers and whole hand. It was difficult to remember, but it eventually helped a lot. Likely, there is nothing wrong with your joints or tendons but just that they are getting too much of the strain at one time.
Thanks for that tip. My instructor mentioned spreading the fingers but the idea of pushing with the fingers is a good suggestion. I’ll give it a try!