A number of people with serious use-induced problems in their wrists or hands don’t have their wrists mapped correctly, if at all. Find the wrist in the image below. We want no pressure on our wrists, no chronic pressure that is. We want a long easy sweep of skin and muscle and tendon across the joint, and we want full mobility with no retracting across the joint in movement. We want the fingers to move without the wrist stiffening, even when we grip or strike something. In order to achieve the freeing of the wrist it needs to be accurately mapped.
Can you find the end of your forearm? How about your wrist? Using your fingers, trace down your forearm, noticing where the radius and ulna bones end and the wrist begins. Keep going and find where the wrist ends and the hand and fingers begin. In many of us, the wrist is about two fingers wide. Try placing your index and middle fingers just below your forearm bones. Your wrist is right around there somewhere. Look for the movement between the wrist and arm, movement among the wrist bones and movement between the hand bones and the wrist.
The image above shows how the radius connects with the wrist bones and how the wrist bones connect with the metacarpal bones all the way down to the tip of the fingers. The wrist, hand and forearm are often capable of more movement than we allow them to have. An accurate map allows increased differentiation of all these tissues, resulting in refined feeling and expression as well as strength and mobility.
Next we’ll map our thumbs!