How can I keep my shoulders and wrists from dislocating when doing yoga?

Question

I'm double-jointed in a lot of places, one of which is my shoulders. Every time I raise my arms straight over my head my shoulders dislocate. It's not really painful, just uncomfortable. It also makes doing yoga poses like Warrior 1 and Chair Pose difficult. Is there a way to keep this from happening, or a way to modify the pose so it doesn't happen?

Along the same lines, whenever I do Side Plank I'm placing a lot of weight on my wrists. They are also double-jointed, and it actually is quite painful to place weight on them. How can I modify this pose to alleviate the pain?

Answer 1

Side Plank - To save your wrists you can brace yourself on your elbow and forearm, rather than on your hand.

Yoga - Given your lax or unstable joints, I would take a private lesson from a good yoga instructor to get modifications and to improve your alignments. Ask for postures or asanas that emphasize stability of the shoulder blade and strengthen the shoulders rather than emphasising flexibility. An instructor who teaches restorative yoga will probably be your best choice. If you have enough control with the overhead arm positions you could stop short of the position that causes your joints to dislocate or sublux.

The one thing you don't want to do is increase your joint instablility by continuing to repeat activities that cause them to dislocate. This will just stress your ligaments and tendons. Good luck.