Not All Wrists Were Created Equal

Not all arm balances are meant for every single body type. Read that again. We all have different physical attributes. These attributes affect our natural ability to move certain ways and do certain postures. Like the color and shape of our eyes or hair color, some of us have longer torsos or shorter arms, etc. Add in injuries, repetitive stress or other challenges and it can be easier to understand why this is the case.

Most arm balances involve shifting your body forward or backward and while we are not placing our weight into the wrists, the wrists have to be able to move into a certain degree of flexion. Re- read the paragraph above. If wrists are unable to make the shape, the foundation of the pose is unstable. Alexandria Crow, a well known yoga teacher and trainer, explains it like this: "In an arm balance, your hands and wrists are the pivot point and you have to be able to get some of your body's mass on the fingertip side of that point. Some people have wrists with a lot of mobility to them and they can bend them way past 90 degrees, and some people have wrists that won't even bend to 90 degrees and they never will because of their skeletal structure. If you have wrists that won't bend far enough, you'll have to bend your elbows — sometimes all the way to 90 degrees in your arm balances, but that can make them infinitely harder and oftentimes that still won't solve the issue."

Is this figureoutable? Sometimes. One way to try and manage this is to try a yoga wedge. They look much like a piece of cake laying on its side. You place the heel of your hand on the thicker edge and the rest of the hand cascades down to the thinner side. It's meant to make up for the degrees missing in the wrist's flexibility. Will this always work? The honest answer is no.

So now what? Get real with yourself. Here is where resilience comes in. Yoga, like so many situations in life, requires us to pause, reassess and move forward - sometimes with a different approach. We don't all always take the same path anyway. Ignore the finish line, aka the pose itself. Yoga is about being present in your body and having an experience. We can still do that. Try practicing arm balances on your back. This works the core, legs, arms and puts your body into the shape without forcing the wrists into a position they don't move into. Arm balances can be like bite-sized resilience. Yoga isn't about the poses anyway. It's about shape shifting to state shift. So on your back or on your hands, you're resilient enough to fly and not all birds look the same anyway ;)