RSI sufferers
A harangue in one part: As I bounce from blog to blog, I notice a fair number of complaints about sore hands and wrists--that bundle of aches and pains practioners call repetitive stress injuries or RSI's. Certainly preferable to black lung and the scores of other work-induced maladies of previous generations, RSI's are at the very least annoying and at worst horribly debilitating.
OK, I'm about to get on my high horse, my foot's in the stirrup, ready...?
If you have a repetitive stress injury, go to yoga. GO TO YOGA. I know I've given this lecture before, but it's the one reasonably priced thing you can do to keep typing, knitting and tinkling the ivories. Plus, there's proof it works. Here is a link to an abstract from the Journal of the American Medical Association (it doesn't get more mainstream than that) saying that yoga is more effective than wrist splinting in the treatment of carpel tunnel syndrome.
Yoga's also great for a million other things, plus it's wicked fun to stand on your head. Find a good (certified) yoga teacher who knows something about cumulative trauma disorders (I would steer clear of Bikram, same thing over and over in a blistering hot room). I am biased toward the Iyengar tradition where the emphasis is on perfect alignment, but I'm sure many of the other traditions are wonderful. And keep it up. Yoga is intellectually challenging, physically demanding and generally good for what ails you.
I don't evangelize much, except about knitting and yoga. OK, I'll stop now.
7:58:35 AM 
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