Many of the muscles that support the wrists run all the way into teh fingers. doing poses on the fingertips can help to strengthen these and create greater stability in the wrists - i would avoid doing too much here, as this can also strain those muscles.

Alternating with fists can help.... as can the wedge idea, or towel. Another method I learned is to just make a fold in your yoga mat and place it under the heel of the palm.

To train proper wrist alignement, i would also do some less weight bearing poses (cat/cow, cobra) and focus on distributing the weight into the knuckles and spread fingers - over time you might be able to work back into down dog, and the like.

Wrist problems have been discussed on this Tribe several times. Just try searching on "wrist" in the All Yoga search box.

Here was my response to a prior thread:

Use the whole hand in contact with the floor. Press with your finger tips, as if you are clawing the floor. That should create a sense of muscular energy drawing from the under side your wrist up toward your shoulders (as opposed to letting the weight just dump into the heals of your hands). Don't overly spread your fingers in a way that does not allow that "clawing" action.

Also, look at your wrist just holding it up (not weight bearing). When you flex your wrist, is there a bulge near the heal of hand? This bulge is the retinaculum pressing outward because of compression in the wrist joint. Now add a little resistence with your other hand pressing on your fingers and the first hand pressing back. See if you can create an action that draws the bulging retinaculum back in. This is creating space in the wrist joint. This is the same action you should try to create in Adho Mukha and anytime the hand is flat on the floor bearing weight.

Another thing to check is the alignment of your shoulders. It quite often is the case that wrist pain can come from bad shoulder alignment. The arms should be straight with the muscles (biceps, triceps, etc.) toned. In Adho Mukha (downward facing dog pose) the entire underside of the arm up to the armpit should feel as if it is resisting up away from the floor even as the heart moves closer to the floor. The arms draw up into the shoulders and the shoulder blades lie flat on the back behind the heart.

There is the feeling of muscular energy always drawing from the hands up into the heart, even as you organically extend from the heart back towards your hands and up into your hips and through your legs, in the full pose.

Practicing occasionally on fingertips or "ridge tops" (lifting the heel of the hand only) is a great way to strengthen the fingers, wrists, and forearms, but it is not practical in all poses and transitions (e.g. vinyasas with jumping, etc.) The goal should be to practice with flat hands pain-free.

I hope that helps.
Saprem,
Scott

My advise to you is to ask a really good teacher in person. Here's the deal. All wrist pain is not equal. There are several different reasons why you could have this pain. You need to do what's good for you.

In my personal experience I kept pinching nerves in my wrists. I couldn't figure out why. I change yoga's into bikram yoga. In bikrams there are no sun salutations & down dogs, so there is no weight baring on the wrist. I didn't realize at the time how bad my injuries were in my shoulders, arms & upper back. That was what was causing the pinched nerves in my wrist. I had to stop baring weight on that part of my body until I healed the injury. After a 1 1/2 years of bikrams I was able to go to yoga with sun salutations hand stands, & everything without a problem.

It's important to figure out why. If your bones, vertabae, are out of alignment then your jamming them even worse. If you're wrists are week you need to go through the growing pains to strengthen them.

True. I think Katrina nailed here as well. I just taught my beginner class last night and we just did our 3rd class. I have quite a few Type 1 in my class already ;-)