I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.
Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.
These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you’ll have to start all over.
Hey, I know another type of stretch for this!
I had to go to occupational therapy a while back due to pain in my ulnar nerve (same nerve that acts as your ‘funny bone’). It was getting compressed from jamming my elbow against hard plastic armrests that were in a too-tall fixed position on my cheap old office chair. I was having burning and tingling pain and numbness radiating from my elbow into my ring and pinky fingers. It sucked. Honestly, I found it worse than carpal tunnel, because a rigid elbow brace makes life way harder than a rigid wrist brace.
Anyways, the main exercise that my occupational therapist had me do was called a nerve glide. The stretches OP describes help improve flexibility, but the nerve gliding exercise helps move the nerve out of the pinched spot so it can move more freely.
Here’s the best diagram I can find of it:
It’s a little confusing, so have some extra description on the weird parts:
Step 3: thumb side moves down and towards the front.
Step 4: hand rotates out and around, pinky side first.
Step 5: nothing fancy here, just straighten your elbow.
Step 6 (not on diagram, but recommended by therapist): with arm in the same position, tilt your head towards the opposite side for a few second (works as a stretch).
Ulnar nerve compression (aka cubital tunnel) is apparently super common, but I had never heard of it before I started having issues. If you lean forwards on your desk or armrests a lot, I’d suggest giving these a try. It feels kind of weird because you can feel the nerve, but it shouldn’t hurt at all.
