On Your Knees

Yoga can either strengthen your knees or blow them out. It all depends on your alignment.

By Julie Gudmestad

If you've ever experienced knee pain—or, worse luck, a chronic knee problem—you know how frustrating and limiting it can be. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for yoga students to practice asanas with small misalignments in the knee. Repeated over months and years, these small misalignments can contribute to pain and long-term joint problems. On the other hand, yoga poses practiced with conscious good alignment of the leg bones and joints can be a wonderful tool for building strong, healthy knees.

The knee is so vulnerable and sensitive to alignment because it is a shallow, basically unstable joint. Picture two long columns stacked atop each other, and you've got the thigh bone (femur) and the shin bone (tibia). The flat surfaces of the bones make the knee dependent on ligaments (which join bone to bone) and tendons (which join muscle to bone) to hold it together. Any side-bending or twisting forces endanger these supporting tendons and ligaments.

For example, standing poses done with improper alignment can put great strain on the knee. The best indicators of knee alignment in standing poses are the relative positions of the foot and kneecap. The foot acts like a pointer showing the rotation of the shin and lower leg, while the kneecap shows the rotation of the femur. In Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), for example, the front leg kneecap should point over the center of the foot. If the kneecap points toward or even inside the big toe, you know that the columns are twisting. In Trikonasana, all yogis need a strong outward rotation of the femur bone in the hip socket to align the femur with the shin and foot.

Bent-leg standing poses can also stress the knee. As the knee bends, it should function like a hinge, with no sideways movement. In Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II), a common misalignment is for the front knee to point inside the big toe. In this position, the columns of the leg are not only twisting, they are also bent to the side at their junction. This widens the gap between the bones at the inner knee, straining the ligaments there, and compresses the outer knee, which abrades the joint surface and contributes to arthritis. As in Triangle, a strong outward rotation of the front leg femur is needed.

Divine Alignment

To learn proper leg alignment, it can be helpful to practice first in a simpler exercise before incorporating the action into more complex yoga poses. In both of the following exercises, standing in front of a mirror will help you monitor your alignment.

In the first exercise, lean back against a wall, with your heels about a foot from it. Slowly slide down the wall; as the knee bends, make sure the kneecap points straight out over the center of the foot.

In the second exercise, stand with your left hand on a counter or the back of a chair. Put your right foot on the broad side of a yoga block. Make sure that the right knee stays centered over the foot as you step up onto the block and as you set the left foot back on the floor.

Especially if the knee is displaced inwardly, bending and straightening it over and over can cause pain and injury. Practice of this simple exercise can help train the muscles to hold the leg in proper alignment, preventing repetitive damage to the knee ligaments and cartilage during standing poses—and during everyday activities like going up and down stairs.

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