A Closer Look at Alignment Cues – Wrist Extension

Why you may not be able to extend to 90°

By Bernie Clark
September 1, 2026

[Note: this article was not written by an AI, although most illustrations were by ChatGPT. See the About Us Page for our AI philosophy.]

In many yoga teacher trainings, an unspoken goal is presented: if the new yoga teacher can get every student in a class positioned into the identical alignment for each pose, she will be considered a good teacher. Without being named, this is an aesthetic approach to yoga performance that ignores the reality of human variations.

Early in my yoga teaching career I was inundated with alignment cues that required me to place students’ limbs into predefined positions that looked symmetrical, linear and pleasing.¹ I was assured that these alignments were the safest ways for postures to be performed. The joints must be stacked and if they could not line up correctly, I was told to adjust the students to help them find the correct alignment. Students who would not listen should be advised to relax, breathe and work towards the proper alignment over time. I was convinced and collected dozens of specific cues that I treasured and shared liberally. Then, I met Paul Grilley.

Suffice it to say that Paul re-wrote the book on how to teach yoga posture. After learning about the reality of human variations and the real reasons students could not go deeper into a pose, I stopped demanding specific alignment rules in favour of a functional approach to yoga. While Paul began his mission to share a functional and safer way of teaching asanas back in the 1990s, I still see today teachers, websites, social media posts and AI-generated illustrations (see figure 2) insisting on aesthetic alignment cues without acknowledging the dangers these cues could present to students who cannot force their bodies into the prescribed shape.

In this series of “A Closer Look at Alignment Cues” I hope to illustrate why aesthetics are irrelevant, while a functional approach to alignment, one which honours natural variations between students, is healthier and safer. This is not to say that alignment is unimportant or irrelevant but to show that there are no universal principles of alignment that work for every body.

Alignment cues are not alignment rules

Alignment cues can provide useful starting points. I have no issue with suggesting students try a variety of alignments, including those shown in the illustrations. Problems arise when those directions are elevated into universal requirements and students whose anatomy does not permit the prescribed position are encouraged to work toward them anyway. In other words, alignment cues are not alignment rules. What is important is to find the alignment that works best for you and your body.

This inaugural “closer look” will investigate extension cues for the wrist.

Most People Cannot Extend the Wrist to 90°

What is a normal range of motion for the wrist? First, we need to distinguish between active and passive ranges of motion (ROM). An active ROM is one that you can achieve using only the activating muscles around that joint. This is shown on the left of figure 3. Try it yourself. Bring your hands together in prayer (anjali mudra) but keep the palms a few inches apart. Without any external pressure on the hands, how deep can you bend your wrist backwards? In Your Upper Body, Your Yoga I cited a study in which average wrist extension was approximately 73° for women and 63° for men.² Are you closer to these averages or to 90°?

Now bring your hands lightly together, as shown in the middle of figure 3, without adding any pressure. This is still your active range of motion. When you start to push your hands together, you are providing an external force which allows your wrists to extend to their passive ROM limit. You will find that your passive ROM is greater than your active ROM, but extra external force is helping to increase the angle. How far can you go? The poses in figure 2 show 90° of passive ROM, which is required to get the heel of the palm in line with the elbow or shoulders. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones who can do that but about 80% of people cannot go that deep.

The table below shows an average amount of wrist extension for men and women, along with a standard deviation, which is a measure of variability.⁴ From these data, I estimate that only about 21% of women and 13% of men would be expected to achieve wrist extension of 90° or more. Consider what this means when an average person tries to mirror the postures shown in figure 2. Only about 1 person in 6 will be able to bend their wrists that far. The rest will wonder what is wrong with themselves.

What stops you?

There are two reasons we may not be able to go further into any joint movement: tension and compression.⁵ Tension is the resistance of the tissues to further elongation. Compression is the meeting of two parts of the body.

Tension can restrict movement

In figure 4, you will see a wrist in both extension and flexion. Tension can restrict these movements because the elongating tissues become taut and will not allow further stretching.⁶ When we extend the wrist, the tissues on the palmar side of the hand become longer and stiffer like a stretched elastic band, which, interestingly, causes the fingers to curl inward. (The opposite happens when we flex the wrists: tension along the back of the hand causes the fingers to straighten.) This tendency is known as tenodesis action and it is one reason why many students have to keep some curve in their fingers when they place their palms flat on the floor.⁷ You may be able to sense this tension if you again come into the first position shown in figure 5. As you pull your wrists into active extension, do you feel a sense of tugging in the palms?

To see how tension is restricting wrist extension, curl your fingers into your palm. Do you notice that you have more extension now? Slowly straighten your fingers and watch your extension reduce. It helps to repeat this a few times to fully see the effect. If you need to extend your wrists further in a pose, try bending your fingers and see if that helps.

The good news about tension is that, over time, you may be able to reduce the tension in the resisting tissues and achieve greater ROM.

Compression is the ultimate barrier to further movement

When you come into the position shown on the right in figure 3, passive extension, you may still feel some palmar tension, but many people also feel a mysterious stuckness in the back of the wrists. They have likely reached a point of compression where the carpal bones are now impinging upon the distal edge of the radius bone.⁸ Once the bones are hitting each other, no amount of yoga, stretching or strengthening will change this reality. You have reached your ultimate limit for wrist extension, barring surgery or an accident. For most people, this bone-on-bone limit occurs well before the wrists extend to 90°.

So, what is stopping you? When you press your palms together and actively try to increase wrist extension, do you feel that stuckness in the crease of the wrist? If you do and your wrists are not extended to 90°, you may be experiencing bone-on-bone compression and, if so, you probably will never be able to accommodate the request of aesthetic yoga teachers to “bring the heel of your palm under your elbow” or “place your hands under your shoulders” when your arms are straight. If you cannot achieve a 90° wrist extension, what can you do?

A Functional Approach to Wrist Extension

Rather than asking the student to change the wrists to fit the pose, change the pose to fit the wrists.⁹

When you cannot comfortably achieve 90° of wrist extension, the simplest solution is to reduce the amount of extension required. A wedge placed under the heel of the hand accomplishes this while still allowing the whole hand to bear weight. (See figure 6a.) The same effect can be created by rolling or folding the front edge of a yoga mat under the heels of the hands. When you try this option, or any other suggestion, check to make sure you feel safe, secure, solid and grounded without any discomfort or pain.

Another option is to move the hands farther forward (figure 6b). In Tabletop, for example, there is no universal requirement for the wrists to be directly beneath the shoulders. Moving the hands forward so that the hands are not under the shoulders or elbows reduces the amount of wrist extension required. We do this all the time in Down Dog. Similarly, the hands can be placed somewhat wider apart and turned outward (figure 6c). These alternatives may violate traditional aesthetic alignment cues, but they do not necessarily violate any functional principle, provided the resulting position remains comfortable for the elbows and shoulders.

Another alternative is to make a fist and place the knuckles on the floor rather than the palm (figure 6d). Now the wrist is in a neutral alignment. In some poses, students can also support themselves on their knuckles or fingertips, although this considerably increases the strength required from the hands and forearms (figure 6e). Finally, the wrists can sometimes be removed from the equation altogether by performing an appropriate variation on the forearms instead of the hands.

The larger principle is that the position of the hands should not be dictated by an aesthetic ideal. Rather than forcing every student’s wrist into 90° of extension so that the hands can occupy a prescribed position, the pose can be adapted to the student’s available range of motion, which may be dictated by their anatomical structures.

The goal of any posture is not to achieve the alignment shown in a photograph; it is to find an alignment that allows your particular body to experience the intended function of the pose.

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¹ For a more detailed review of my early yoga education, see Prana – One Breath, Many Worlds. www.yinyoga.com/prana

² See table 4.409 on page 233 of Your Upper Body, Your Yoga by Bernie Clark. One standard deviation for women is 7° while for men it is 10°. The amount of extension or flexion of the wrist also depends upon whether the forearms are pronated, neutral or supinated.

³ Hasegawa M, Tone S, Naito Y, Wakabayashi H, Kojima Y, Yamamoto S. Whole-body patterns of the range of joint motion in young adults: masculine type and feminine type. Journal of Physiological Anthropology. 2016;35:23. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5045662/pdf/40101_2016_Article_112.pdf  See also Fan S, Cepek J, Symonette C, Ross D, Chinchalkar S, Grant A. Variation of Grip Strength and Wrist Range of Motion with Forearm Rotation in Healthy Young Volunteers Aged 23 to 30. J Hand Microsurg. 2019 Aug;11(2):88-93. doi: 10.1055/s-0038-1676134. Epub 2018 Dec 24. PMID: 31413492; PMCID: PMC6692155. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6692155

⁴ Hasegawa 2016.

⁵ I have written often about tension and compression and how they limit our ultimate range of motion. Here are just a few links you can visit to learn more:

https://yinyoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/What-Stops-Me-by-Bernie-Clark.pptx.pdf

https://yinyoga.com/what-stops-me/

https://yinyoga.com/at-the-edge-understanding-end-range-of-motion/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWAXZoEokdg

https://yinyoga.com/the-fourth-international-fascia-research-congress

⁶ Tension can be caused by a large number of factors: from shortened muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules to neurological inputs, scar tissues and psychological guarding instincts, to other issues in the tissues.

⁷ To learn more about tenodesis action, read the article Should hands be pressed flat on the floor or should fingers be arched. https://yinyoga.com/hands-flat-in-yoga-yes-or-no/

⁸ Specifically, the edge of the distal radius may be coming into contact with the carpal bones. Depending upon the shape of the radius, its “palmar tilt”, you may reach compression earlier or later than an average person. See Your Upper Body, Your Yoga page 210 for details.

⁹ Said another way, “We don’t use the body to get into a pose, we use the pose to get into the body.”