Yoga for knitters
On the blogs and listserves, it seems a lot of knitters suffer from one repetitive stress injury or another. I have two words for you: Do yoga.
Although Deb Robson, editor of the upcoming enhanced edition of Knitting in the Old Way, swears that the reason her wrists stay healthy is she knits English/American style (hint: She's a thrower not a picker), most knitters I know would rather fight than switch.
For a little background, I spend my days curled up in front of a computer with a cat on my lap and my hand on a mouse. I spend my nights with a cat on my lap and my hands on my knitting. These are not ergonomic postures. I've never seen an ergonomic diagram featuring kitties, ergo having my feet on the floor is not an option; Sadie prefers to cuddle on a proper lap. I do make two ergonomic concessions when working. I use a headset for my phone and a wrist pad for my keyboard. And I do yoga.
For the most part I am pain free (although currently I'm having a nasty bout of TMJ--jaw pain--so back to yoga). It's not that I haven't experienced tendonitis, I hightailed it to yoga class when I started feeling the first twinges eight years ago. I had seen the results of surgery, it fxxxed people's hands. And I wasn't about to become a mewling workplace statistic. At first I thought yoga was weird. I fell asleep and snored in some of the poses. Downward Dog hurt like a mother. The only reason I kept going back was I paid in advance for the classes. Soon though, my wrists felt better, my shoulder pain was gone and I could stand on my head. I became aware of my posture and my body in space. After class, I felt relaxed and exhilarated, not spent and wrung out.
Today there's data to support all of this. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, yoga works better than wrist splinting to mitigate the symptoms of carpal tunnel sydrome. Click here to read the study's abstract.
So for those of you concerned about your knitting health: Get thee to a yoga class! Find yourself a certified Iyengar teacher and alert them to your symptoms before class. An Iyengar instructor can help tailor the class to your needs as well as offer suggestions for how you can work through the condition at home. (Iyengar has a more therapeutic orientation than other schools of yoga.) To find an Iyengar teacher near you, check out the Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States and type in the abbreviation for your state.
Namaste, y'all!
8:10:28 AM 
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