Yoga for Knee Injuries
Meet our Pro-Spirit(s)-Lifter, Natalie Minuto! Follow her on IG at @natty_yogini.
It’s mid-March: the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown. Some baked bread, some slathered their homes in fresh paint, I started running--famous last words, right? Three weeks later, a hilly six-mile jog left my right knee in agony. I’d overstepped a boundary. I ignored my knee telling me to stop running at mile four and continued to betray her for two additional, hilly miles. She was simply giving me a time out and demanding six weeks of rest. Well, “simply” doesn’t quite capture it.
Meet our Pro-Spirit(s)-Lifter, Natalie Minuto! Follow her on IG at @natty_yogini.
As an enormously privileged person blessed with good health on top of it all, I won’t say that quarantine was hard. I will say that it was a major adjustment. I’d come from a fast-paced life in New York City working a corporate day job, moonlighting at a restaurant, and teaching and practicing yoga on a very regular basis. I didn’t have a minute of free time. I didn’t want a minute of free time. I was surfing a wave of New York’s rushing current--in its lifeblood, swelling through subway tunnels--somewhere on a six train, running “exactly on time” for my next task. I’d hear the syncopated clicks of the train wheels amplify the city’s heartbeat on the rails below as conversations in various languages carry on in the background. “I love this place,” I’d think as I breathe the urine-scented air and accept my co-citizenship with rats the size of my face. Most people scoff at New York’s poorly-hidden quirks, but I think they’re secrets I’m in on. I get to see the city without makeup, smell its morning breath. I’ve become that New Yorker. It takes a certain person...this is why I do need yoga.
Then: New York got sick. The restaurant closed. My studio closed. I was laid off from my corporate job. New York didn’t need me anymore. My schedule was only free time. All I could do with my energetic momentum was run and work out. I didn’t know how to sit still.
But with my injury, I had to sit still. But I needed yoga. I needed to practice yoga because my mind was bonkers and my body was restless. I needed to teach yoga, but on zoom, which means demonstrating the entire class. I felt like I wasn’t being healthy because I wasn’t doing cardio, but I had to remember that rest was healthier than cardio for me at that time. I really had to play my cards right or I’d be buying my knee more jail time.
You know what? I made it work.
Yoga is a beautiful thing because part of the practice is listening to your body--actually, most of the practice is listening to your body. If Miss Knee tells me to GTFO of warrior 2, she’s the boss. That is yoga. We must treat our bodies the same way to avoid injury as well. Pain isn’t an obstacle to power through to achieve success. Pain is your nervous system telling you that a part of your body is in danger. Think of your body like another individual. If another individual says, “ouch, that hurts, please stop,” you would stop! Why do we let our egos get in the way of respecting our own bodies?
Here’s what I learned from my experience:
Repeat after me: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. RICE! It’ll save your wet iphone AND an injury! Except one’s a grain and one’s an acronym. Unfortunately, a bad knee demands the wordy one and not the carbs, but no one is saying you can’t have rice while you rest, ice, compress, and elevate your knee.
Repeat again, and louder, for the peeps in the back!^^
Learn exactly which movements feel okay and which ones don’t. Knowing these details will help your doctor understand your injury and will help you work with it.
When your doctor tells you that light activity is okay, continue to listen to your body. Things will feel different (my balance was so off after recovering that I once fell out of mountain pose while teaching a *sober* yoga class on zoom to a decent number of people--it was vvvvv cute, you should’ve been there). But isn’t that kind of cool to think about? How my brain adapted to my asymmetrical state--exacerbated by my brace and limp? And there I was, simply readjusting to symmetry. Mind-blowing, really. Good job, self!
Enjoy the journey! The healing process is kind of really impressive. Our bodies can fix themselves and we can help them heal by paying attention to pain and leaning into what feels good.
My biggest regret is that I didn’t embrace the journey. Healing is one of the most impressive things our bodies can do. I was so fixated on not being able to run and not being able to bend my knee in certain positions that I didn’t get a chance to embrace that my modified yoga practice was still a yoga practice, just one unique to a chapter of my journey where my body had a quirk. It’s the difference between falling out of a posture and being down about it versus falling out of a posture and laughing because our ever-changing mental and physical states make us who we are. Quirks are freaking cute, babygirl! Own them!
And if you’re still struggling, add some wine to the mix! Take the edge off! Make it a party! Drunk Yoga is an excellent way to access that blissful, carefree, state in a safe space where you can twerk in Downward-Facing Dog and modify all you want. Yoga, unlike most other forms of exercise, is designed to manipulate the nervous system to achieve a happier, more peaceful state--when we add wine, dancing, and an amazing community to the mix, we make magic. Love your body for what it can do (and what it can sip) and let go of the ego that’s preventing you from being your happiest self. I’ll see you on the mat!
Peace out!
Natalie
Tagged: yoga, well-being, health, injury
