In short - the right kind of stretches for wrists and hands is how to get rid of hand pain naturally.
So what do we mean by 'the right kind of stretches'? First of all you need to do resistance stretches like the the stretches we teach at Bendable Body because our stretches address the root cause - the unhealthy fascia in your body. Secondly you need to stretch larger muscles away from the hands, in addition to actually stretching the hands, if you want to address the root cause and see long lasting relief. So when we talk how to get rid of pain in the hand, we are also talking about the wrists, fingers and arms.
Hand pain can be such a drag because it makes so many simple things difficult. Here are some common causes of hand pain and stiffness:
- Arthritis
- Tendonitis
- Carpal tunnel
- De Quervain's
- Ganglion cysts
- Gout
- Lupus
- Peripheral neuropathy
- Raynaud's phenomenon
Another really common cause is repetitive motion and over use... and there are so many activities we do with our hands that can cause this (typing, texting, sports, gardening, cooking, writing, driving... the list goes on and on).
In addition to making simple activities difficult, hand pain can interfere with your ability to exercise the rest of your body. Pain in your hand when stretching your arm or legs or lifting a weight are just some common examples. We deal a lot with this at Bendable Body because many of our stretches require a 'helping hand' in order to do the stretch. Your hand is moving your leg or arm against resistance to get the stretch in the targeted area. If someone is experiencing chronic or acute hand pain, we have to be strategic in choosing stretches they can do that don't involve the hands!
How to stop and fix hand pain.
The extent that you can give your hands a break from repetitive movements or anything that taxes them is great. Injury can't heal if you are always activating it.
In addition to resting your hands as much as you can, we have some stretches using resistance that go right into the hands and wrists that will give you immediate relief.
We also recommend you do resistance stretches for the following muscle groups in your chest and shoulders:
- Biceps
- Pectoralis Minor
- Teres Major
- Upper Trapezius
These larger muscles up higher in arm are associated with the pericardium and skin meridians in Chinese Medicine. These 2 meridian muscle groups regulate health in the wrists and hands in a general sense. So whenever you do stretches for these 2 muscle groups you are addressing the root cause of what is happening in your hands.
Stretches for Hand Pain / Stiffness
In this video we show you stretches to relieve hand pain directly. These are stretches for tendonitis, for arthritis and general hand and wrist pain stretches. However, in addition to these stretches we recommend that you check out our wrist blog and do the stretches in that video for the larger muscles up higher in the arms that are also essential stretching exercises for hands.