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| Hi everyone. i have being doing bikram for about 6 months 4 times per week. Twice now i have had really sore right knee on the inside. Sometimes i feel my left knee tweaking out too but not as bad. The pain is so bad i sometimes struggle to get through the day.
It appears to me when i try toe stand i get the pain the next day. I do feel the inside of knees tweaking as i go down in toe stand. Usually i just do tree stand. The pain lasts for about 2 weeks!
I went to the doc 2nd time and he said it is bursitis which it could be but i also think it may be the tendons or ligaments in that part of my knees protesting loudly!
I am 44 and very active. Just before my 2nd spell out with sore knees i was jogging and cycling too getting ready for a 5k.
I really like my yoga and it has done incredible things for my body and i have never ever felt stronger or better. My teacher just said not to do toe stand but to come into practice. My knees have hurt so bad that i feel i need to let them recover and heal.
Please help me out if you may have an idea about what happening to my knees. |
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| Bikram is supposed to say "You can f*** with the gods, but you can't f*** with your knees." Very good advice. If you have pain in your joints, back off! Practice the poses within the context of NO joint pain. You will build up muscle strength to hold the joint in place correctly and you will be able to do the full expression of the pose if you work slowly. If you try to rush it, you will only injure yourself, putting your entire practice back. There are a lot of A type personalities who are attracted to Bikram yoga. Try to put the pushing and striving to succeed aside and work slowly and consistently as you are re-building your body. You re-build your body one cell at a time. Many people are either pushers or pamperers. If you are a pamperer in your yoga, your progress will be slow or not at all. If you are a pusher, you will probably injure yourself. Try to find balance. Find your own personal balance in your yoga and use it in all aspects of your life. All extremes require force and are violent in their basic nature. Balance is peace. A peace that is active and aware, not lazy and asleep. |
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| Great advice from jimg.
I've had a similar, ongoing problem with my right knee, also on the inside. The last time I really tweaked it was from trying toe stand. I'm now working through that injury, and it comes and goes. In class, I do nothing that feels like it could risk the knee. Since this extra care puts a limit on depth in several poses, I try to compensate by concentrating even harder on having perfect form within my limitations. It's been a very interesting, but sometimes frustrating, ride.
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| Um... WORD to both these guys!!
Bikram yoga is specifically designed to be very theraputic for the knees. So my personal philosophy is, if your knees are hurting, sometimes the best thing you can do it GO TO CLASS. If it's bursitis, I think that the yoga is supposed to help. But keep an eye on the knees and don't aggravate them. Stay out of toe stand. Be careful in awkward pose - don't let yourself drop down any lower than you can come out of with control. Be careful of fixed firm and all the kneeling positions. Stay in the first stage of fixed firm if you need to. And DEFINITELY ask your teacher to check out your standing postures and see if you are "locking your knee" correctly. When you learn to use your thigh muscles correctly in those postures, it's incredibly good for the knees, but there are a few common ways that it can go wrong. Someone would need to see you in person to check it out.
Good luck!! |
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| sfpfc,
I started practicing Bikram about 3 months ago and came into it with years long knee issues. After about 3 weeks of Bikram 3-4 times a week, I developed knee pain in both of my knees that caused me quite a bit of discomfort pretty much 24/7...sometimes it was terribly painful just walking around. After much googling and talking to teachers about the issue, I determined several things:
I was not engaging my quads enough in the balancing postures and even hyper-extending a bit when locking, thus putting unnecessary strain on my knee joints. To resolve this, I focused strongly on my quads as the foundation for the postures, properly "locking my knee" and creating one straight, solid pillar.
My foot/knee/leg alignment was off in these same postures - I allowed my feet to stray from perfectly straight ahead because my balance felt more stable with them pointing away from center, largely due to the fact that my regular walking alignment been off in this way for many years. I then began really concentrating on making certain that my feet were always aligned perfectly perpendicular to each other and straight ahead so that my knees naturally followed suit.
Toe stand also caused me the most problems, mainly because I was not doing it correctly. I was attempting to lean forward into the posture with a locked knee which caused me worlds of pain every time! When one of my studio owners pointed out that this is not a locked knee pose and that I should bend my knee joint slightly while reaching and bending forward for the floor, it changed everything! Now toe stand is not painful at all and I am slowly getting closer and closer to getting my hands to the floor.
Part of my problem all along has also been the incredible inflexibility in my hamstrings, IT band, gluts, et al, which has always been one of the main contributors to my knee issues to begin with. Naturally, with the yoga, I am very slowly improving on this.
Your experience perfectly mirrors mine! I have gone through loads of worry and disappointment dealing with my knee pain and thinking that I would not be able to continue with Bikram, which has made me feel better and stronger than I have in so many years. I really love the practice!!
Through all of this, though, I have continued practicing 3-4 times a week, always focusing on my alignment, properly locking the knees, and always completely backing off on anything that caused me even the tiniest bit of pain. I have also been icing at least a couple times a day, especially after yoga.
Now I have absolutely no pain during practice and only one of my knees still bothers me constantly outside of the studio, although it is getting better every day as my quads get stronger and I continue to gain flexibility.
I have had pain and issues with this part of my body for so long and I know and feel that the "growing pains" that I have been going through are only a natural byproduct of the realignment and retraining that my entire body is going through.
Keep plugging away and things will get better but ALWAYS avoid anything in class that causes your knees any pain...don't be afraid to back off or even sit out of any posture with the knowledge that eventually you will be able slowly ease your way back into it as your knees heal and become stronger! |
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| Great words of advise from everyone! especially ubiquito as he is in a similar place to me. I get so upset at the thought of giving up Bikram, i just need the right advise. Its a new studio so i am not getting a lot of feedback per se.
I too think my legs are beginning to realign as my knees do not touch together naturally for me, but after six months yoga they are visibily closer than before. I just really worry that i will have this pain forever.
I will take this advise to heart and go real easy on my knees for the next 6 months. I am an A type person and am very competitive, now i am beginning to realise that bikram yoga is a lifelong journey not a sprint! Bless, Jed. |
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Very Painful Knees
