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Your knees are complex and incredibly important joints. In addition to holding you upright and carrying you through the world, they also help absorb the shock from everyday movements including walking, running, jumping, or moving from pose to pose in your yoga practice.
Maintaining the health of your knee joints is critical. If you’re experiencing pain, it can help to strengthen the muscles around your knees including your hamstrings, quadriceps, abductors, adductors, and calves.
Safety Tips for Practicing Yoga for Knee Pain
Help ensure the safety of your practice with these considerations from Heather Otterbine, owner of OmBodies Yoga in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
1. Make Your Teacher Aware
If you’re attending an in-person class, Otterbine recommends arriving at the studio a few minutes early to alert the teacher of your pain so they can suggest variations throughout the practice.
2. Do Your Research
Otterbine also recommends doing your own research on the right pose variations for your body. It can help to consult a professional such as a physical therapist.
3. Don’t Force It
When practicing yoga for knee pain—or any pain, for that matter—listen to your body and only do what feels comfortable.
4. Use Props
Otterbine says you may want to pad your knee with a blanket—or choose not to practice certain poses, such as One-Legged King Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana), which put pressure on the knee joint.
Yoga for Knee Pain: 5 Poses for Relief
These poses can help stretch and strengthen the muscles surrounding the knee joints. Move mindfully and stop if you feel any pain. As always, consult with your physician any time you experience pain or limited mobility.
1. Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) With Ankles Crossed
By crossing your ankles in this pose, you’re able to stretch those (very) tight IT bands, which play a critical role in stabilizing your knees. “If [the IT band] gets too tight, it can kind of pull the knee out of alignment,” says Otterbine.
When practicing this variation on Standing Forward Bend, Otterbine suggests placing your hands on blocks or the back of a chair for added stability. You can also opt to bend or straighten your knees as much as feels comfortable.
2. Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III) With a Bent Standing Leg
This pose can help strengthen the abductors on the outer hips, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus, says Otterbine. The abductors play a key role in supporting the knees. If the abductors are weak, they allow your knees to collapse in—something you want to avoid.
By bending the standing knee in Warrior 3, you work to stabilize your pelvis and strengthen the muscles around your pelvis and knee.
3. Wide-Angled Seated Forward Bend (Upavistha Konasana)
Otterbine says it’s crucial to stretch the adductors of your inner thighs in order to support the health of your knees (and all of your leg joints). If these muscles get tight, they’ll pull the knees inward and strain them. You can sit straight in this pose with your fingers on the floor (as shown), or walk your hands forward any amount to feel a more intense stretch. Not a fan of the Wide-Angled Seated Forward Bend? Otterbine says Squat (Malasana) provides similar benefits.
4. High Lunge With Arms Extended Forward
This variation of a classic still works the quadriceps on your front leg, a key muscle group that supports the knee joints, Otterbine says. When your quadriceps are weak, it can hurt the functionality of your knees, she adds. Tilting your chest forward in High Lunge to create a diagonal line from your back leg all the way to your head. Keep your arms alongside your head or sweep them alongside your thighs, with your palms facing the mat.
5. Low Lunge (Anjaneyasana)
In addition to strengthening your quadriceps, Otterbine says it’s important to spend time stretching them. She recommends practicing Low Lunge, which can help release tight quadriceps. In a similar way to the adductors of your inner thighs, tight quads can pull on your knee joints, potentially leading to damage, she says. You can also opt to stretch them through a modified Bridge Pose (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana) with a bolster or block under your sacrum, she says.
This article has been updated. Originally published April 22, 2022.
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