Your Body’s Owner’s Manual for Structural Health – Part 1: Feet, Legs & Knees

Part 1: Feet, Legs and Knees

Featuring Mary Hilliker, RDN, E-RYT 500, Certified Viniyoga Teacher & Yoga Therapist

To be strong, our bodies need their own owner’s manual for structural health. But how do we start to trouble-shoot what needs work or routine maintenance? This 3-part series will walk you through the interconnectedness of our structural health, and how yoga practice can address and support structural health.

One of the most important things we can develop by doing yoga asana (postures) is awareness to sense and to feel what’s going on. Sometimes that can be hard, especially if you have had an injury, accident, or chronic pain. Our instinct is to try to escape the pain. Through doing yoga, you can often develop the ability to witness something without reacting to it and amplifying it. In witnessing what’s present, we can often make intelligent choices about how to manage or reduce pain. In other words, what’s helping and what’s hurting this area of my body?   

I tend to grab a cup of coffee and go to my mat early in the morning. It can be like a choir that’s just formed. No one knows their part and there’s a bit of chaos before there is a harmony. Posture by posture through repetition, then eventually staying in a posture, all the parts harmonize by doing what they do best. If we can maintain an attitude of curiosity, we can often sense the signals that are present and take our asana in a direction that will be helpful. 

Conditions like arthritis may present with stiffness, an ache here, or a pain there—like a choir member singing too loudly! The aches, pains, and stiffness may move around from day to day or act up with certain kinds of activities. A condition like arthritis can often be managed with the right type of yoga practice, one that is specific to what you have going on. On the other hand, an injury or more persistent pain in one area that doesn’t change no matter what you do is often something that should be evaluated. A visit to a healthcare professional to evaluate and treat helps you focus on what will be most helpful.

Yoga and Building Strength 

There are brilliant connections and networks that help the body move through time and space and the forces of gravity. What happens in one place may impact another site. When we start at the base with feet, knees, legs, hips and low back, we have an opportunity to see how work there may impact upper back, neck, shoulders, and jaws. We can focus on one area but still consider what’s above and below any troublesome location to mobilize a broader network of support.  

Yoga teachings recognize the interconnectedness of our structural health. If your knee is persistently achy, it’s worthwhile to incorporate movements for the feet, ankles, knees, hips and low back. It is like the difference between a solo performance and the whole choir. Attending to the whole choir yields a more satisfactory experience, because it gets at all the supporting parts.    

Yoga postures that address muscle weakness help shore up the support system for the knees.  Movements that work at chronically contracted muscles help give the major joints of the body the space they need to work properly. Addressing imbalances between the sides of the body helps reduce the stress that may be occurring in one specific area.  

Strength is one of the most important structural benefits from doing regular yoga asana. While yoga is often touted for flexibility, the strength aspect should encompass more time within practice. When we consider the lower body, strength in foot, ankle, and lower leg muscles help walking gait, integrity of the ankle joints, and balance. Strength in muscles on the front, back, inside, and outside muscles of the legs helps the alignment of the knee joints. Strength in muscles that support the hips support the knees too. Movements that strengthen the hips typically assist the low back.  

A Practice for Feet, Legs and Knees

Yoga practice for the lower body might start in a supine (on-the-back) position so that you can mobilize (motion is lotion for the joints!) and strengthen in a non-weight bearing position. We often feel the chronically contracted muscles better in this position. Strengthening work can be done one side at a time so that all the muscles involved in activities like walking have an opportunity to do their job so that one part of the choir doesn’t have to overwork.  

Prone yoga postures are helpful for strengthening the back chain of muscles that affect knees, hips, and low back.  

Kneeling postures are often helpful for the hips and lower back. These can be easily modified to be done in a chair or standing if being on your knees increases pain.  

Standing postures are a great strengthening addition to practice when your feet, ankles, and knees feel ready for more transfer of weight into those areas. Attention to how you are doing standing postures can be important if you have movement patterns that increase pain. A private session with an experienced yoga teacher or Yoga Therapist may be helpful so that they can help you identify movement patterns that are helpful or ones that increase stress into specific joints. 

A small bit of practice daily is often extremely helpful no matter what you have going on.  Focusing on the lower body might be something you do several times per week, especially if you are managing pain or trying to get stronger.  

Getting Started

If you have any health condition that may have movement contraindications, let your yoga teacher or Yoga Therapist know in advance so that yoga asanas can be adapted for your needs.  

If you’re new to yoga, consider taking a beginner, gentle or therapeutic class where you will get a lot of help with how to do the postures. Being in an in-person class is helpful so that the teacher can help you work with movement patterns for the optimal integrity of the joints. What you practice on the mat often transfers into the patterns you use in daily life. 

We discussed several important things related to yoga and feet, ankles, knees, hips and low back:  

• Use your yoga asanas to develop awareness of what’s helpful and what’s not.
• Non-weight bearing postures are the best place to start for the lower body. There you can begin to strengthen muscles that are weak and release/stretch chronically contracted muscles that may be contributing to less space in the joint (especially important for knees and hips).
• Have a yoga teacher or Yoga Therapist observe what you’re doing, especially in standing postures.
• Take what you’re learning in yoga postures off the mat into daily life. Become aware of how different activities impact your body. Notice how your yoga practice supports doing activities that you enjoy.  

Enjoy the Journey of Discovery in Your Yoga Practice! Blog Video Practice To Cultivate Better Structural Health Focusing On Your Feet, Legs & Knees, view here 

This 30  minute practice focuses on refreshing the legs (after a long day of standing or intensive training day) and strengthening and lengthening muscles that support the feet, ankles, knees, hips, and low back. 

If you don’t have a Punch Pass account with 5 Koshas, you can get access to the video by setting up a free account HERE

This video practice is also available in Week 4 our Video on Demand Get Your Game On Program. Ready to build greater whole body structural health? Access the whole Get Your Game On Program? 6 Month Access for $29.99! More Details & Purchase HERE