To think yoga can really hurt you?

[LadyMoglet]

I have been practicing yoga for over 4 years and love it so much. I initially took classes along with home sessions and often use youtube. 2 years ago I had six months with a private teacher so have a decent grounding.

I have always tried to be mindful of what I am doing, never pushed myself and taken as much care as I can. But something happened recently that has really upset me - and I have no idea how I've done it.

About 8 weeks ago I noticed a mild pain on the inside of one knee when in certain poses (cross-legged, lotus, pigeon and butterfly). For those who don't know, these involve bringing the knee inwards so that the foot comes towards the thigh). I have never overstretched or rotated my knee to my knowledge, but something must have happened.

I rested then carried on, taking care to monitor it and not push anything. The pain came back whenever I did yoga, so I then rested for a full month. On returning it was exactly the same as if no healing had occurred.

It is now worse, as the pain has spread to the entire knee cap and I am off the seek medical advice next week. In the mean time I won't be doing much, so hope it calms down a bit. It does not affect me in every day life and my range of lotion is fine unless I pull my leg inwards.

it's not looking good is it? I have a horrible feeling I won't be able to continue yoga, since I can't locate how I hurt it in the first place.
I would have put this in the yoga section but it doesn't get much traffic. I would really like to know if this has happened to anyone else, and if they were ever able to resume.

Thanks everyone, I will seek professional advice. I wanted to hear in the meantime if this was common. I have been very careful over the years and never do anything that feels even slightly harmful. So I am a little surprised considering how gently I usually take it. Have always been careful in tree pose, etc.
I am resting now with a drama series with my leg up on a yoga sausage. Running hurts it but all other 'normal' movements are fine. It is definitely worse since today's practice though.

@LadyMoglet I don’t know your age but many people start to more easily pick up injuries during peri menopause, I’ve struggled so much since my 40’s sadly, hrt has def helped but I have to be very careful these days.

The reason why I would be more concerned about the spiritual impact (than the physical) is that as a Christian I would not want to participate in any spiritual practice linked to another religion, in this case Hinduism.

@LadyMoglet of course - all injuries feel dramatic because we all think we are super human and it’s a shock when we aren’t!

If it’s worse from today you might have some inflammation that’s now giving you bother. Heat and cold therapy and rest and if you are so inclined an ibuprofen or two to bring it down.

Sadly one of the drawbacks of being more active is more likelihood of injury - also a side effect of getting older!

Try using your yoga practice to focus on healing and not worrying yourself over whether you’ll be able to do yoga again.

Once you are back on the mat, looking at some functional and mobility training might give you more confidence about protecting your hinging joints. Yoga and any kind of strength / exercise training is a life long practice as your body changes, so don’t blame yourself that you’ve done something wrong to cause this.

Thank you, this sounds like a good approach to it, will do that x

Bit overdramatic - probably just need a physio. I’ve done a lot of yoga over a lot of years, and it really needs something alongside it - weight bearing, which can be weight lifting or running, even. This builds strength and stability in the joints.

I recommend Tom Morrison’s mobility training, Google the knee exercises, for strength. I’m sure it will get better quickly

I attended a mixed ability yoga class 5 years ago, for just 3 sessions, and still do the stretching/warm up asana first thing in the morning.
However i heard a few weeks later that the tutor/instructor cancelled the class, due to a hip injury.

I tore a ligament in my knee doing yoga - totally my own fault as I felt pain in the pose but kept pushing which was obviously not the right thing to do!
It did not stop me from doing yoga as for me, the benefits far outweigh the risks. It took a long time to heal properly so I was doing very gentle yoga for a while, but eventually I could practice as normal. I can even do the pose that broke me - though I'm far more careful getting into it now

I wish I could identify which pose hurt mine.
It just seemed to be there one day, although slightly aggravated by pulling the knee inwards then down - like you'd do in lotus. Straight on bending does not hurt it.
I have no idea if it was from a warrior sequence or bound angle pose, but bound angle hurts like hell right now so will be leaving that out for a good while.

@LifesTooShortForYourNonsense will look him up, thanks.

Swop those out for something else. Virtually every yoga pose can be adapted. Sometimes I do everything sat down cos I'm too tired to stand up 🙂

The exact same thing happened to me, and I ended up having 8 weeks of physio.

A year later, I’ve just started running again, and I’m very careful about extending my knees the ‘wrong’ way.

Good luck OP.

most injuries can be from going too far too fast or not doing asanas in a good flow, or doing only stretching and flexibility ones and skipping the strengthening ones

And no body is biomechanically perfect so when you do something beyond the usual daily use or through an extended range of motion, you are at risk of injury.

Also, YouTube yoga might be ok for a beginner but for you to go from being a beginner to trying the more advanced asanas you need detailed hands on training from an experienced teacher.

Ah, thinking of the above, there was a yoga with adrienne session I did a few weeks ago, which was at my experience level, but I experienced a few issues due to her talking through the poses.
Often, when she talks, you are stuck holding a pose beyond capacity, even if you are using the breath correctly.
Not her fault as she only has her voice online to communicate, but I do think that can work against us sometimes, as she wasn't 'flowing' naturally, and was taking a lot of time to discuss the pose.
A few times I had to drop out of it and do something else to counteract the stress on my knee in a low lunge.

I sometimes wonder how beginners cope!

I have the same injury. I see a chiropractor who’s been amazing. Icing helps the inflammation. Important thing is to keep the knee straight (ie don’t let it wobble in or out) and don’t put too much pressure on it (limit balance poses). Keep microbend in knee and tense the quads when doing tree pose. I do reclined figure of four instead of pigeon. Anything to build the quad muscles is good - cycling in particular. Low impact sports only. Good luck, hope it heals quickly.

Ah now that's my kind of yoga too 😀

I went to classes but I found that my wrists and knees just couldn't take a lot of the poses being done. Plus it was hard to find a beginners class and after the first 5 minutes seemed to cater for the most experienced ones in the lesson.

So i looked up 'easy on the wrists' yoga poses and ended up down a huge yoga class rabbit hole on youtube.

For about 6 months i did a daily session at home. Followed Adrienne videos which were specifically easy on the wrists. Then some other beginner lessons.

I didn't have the time or patience for doing it for hours at a time, so eventually i just fashioned my own 20 min routine out of bits of it all which didn't hurt and i've done it every day for 2 years now. Even on holiday. I've got a few arm weights and crunches thrown in now. It seems to have strengthened my previously VERY fragile back and i'm a lot more flexible. I like to bung on some flute music and some incense and it grounds me for the day.

Often, when she talks, you are stuck holding a pose beyond capacity, even if you are using the breath correctly.

in Yin yoga, the first principle is "find your edge" which it seems you need to consider so that you decide what your body needs, only taking the posture to the point of challenge but not pain, and you decide when you want to come out of the posture, rather than holding on for grim death waiting for the teacher to tell you to come out.

Western forms of yoga have become increasingly competitive (completely counter to the yoga ethos) in studio classes, where nobody wants to be the first person to come out of a posture.

That’s a good point @daisychain01 - yin might be a better practice for you for a while @LadyMoglet. As well as being more restorative, the use of props, finding your bite point and allowing yourself to settle into a pose at your own pace rather than keeping time to a faster flow, can be really helpful for finding where your resistance points are and stretching more gently into the stiffer parts.

What a lovely self-care practice you've made for yourself @Laiste

Interesting to hear about the Yin yoga principal. Seems i've been practising a real yoga type ! And it sounds a lot better than ''chickening out of the pose when it hurts a bit'' yoga 😂

I have very similar knee pain, and recently saw a physiotherapist about it. The actual cause was an earlier injury that weakened my hip on one side, which has affected how I use the offending leg. It hadn't occurred to me that that could be the cause.

Ironically, I think there's a good chance that the issues with my hip were caused or exacerbated by an overly hardcore yoga instructor applying physical pressure on me when I was doing a particular hip stretching exercise in his classes. (My hips are just incapable of much range.)

If you have been careful and haven't had any psycho instructors, it may be that there's another underlying issue that has led to your knee pain. Good luck, hopefully it will improve with the right treatment.

@MrsGhastlyCrumb thats a good point too. A lot of pain can be referred pain or caused by a weakness elsewhere that needs another body part to over compensate.

I had a lower back problem that felt like a slipped disc but was actually a muscle adhesion issue that caused me to put pressure on my lower back to protect the muscle.

I have deep tissue massages now that I am more active, every few months, as it seems to nip imbalances in the bud by keeping everything aligned. Cheaper than physio!

My yoga habit died out with Covid but I used to go to studios a lot.

I did Bikram hundreds of times and never had an injury, but did Ashtanga less than 10 and got a hip injury that took over a year to heal.

Some yoga sequences which originated in the 1960s/70s are unbalanced and will cause injury if you do them repeatedly. The original Ashtanha sequence has too many external hip rotations and will lead to injury just by doing it as it’s taught.

I found generic Hot Yoga classes also often have too many external hip rotations. For example grabbing your extended foot above your head and turning it out to the side.

I also heard of yoga teachers tearing shoulder muscles and having all kinds of injuries from over practice.

Ideally you need to be doing other forms of exercise like weights and cardio. Yoga on its own will stretch but not actually build muscle.

I would definitely see a physio and get a proper assessment of what the issue is as a first point. They are very skilled and often the issue is not where you think it is (for example unbalanced hips/pelvis putting strain on other muscles/tendons in my case). They can also advise on what exercises to strengthen and what to avoid.

See a physio get it sorted and carry on with yoga!