Knees again

My knees have been giving me a bit of bother on and off throughout the last year. At a yoga day just over a week ago I aggravated the left knee by going into maricyasana from a sort of half squat (didn't do the pose that way on the right!). I decided to take a rest from postures that involve flexing the knee combined with external rotation as that causes me pain. It seems that fate had other ideas. Last week some electric sliding doors tried to kill me. My left hand and arm were struck as the doors suddenly closed. I was spun around and then the door caught me on the right side of my forehead. So now it seemed weight bearing on head and hands were out too. The list of postures available for practice was rapidly diminishing. A little voice in my head suggested that this might be a good opportunity to explore (or continue to explore) the relationship between the foot, ankle, knee and hip.

Over the years I have heard many yoga teachers advise students experiencing inner knee pain to put something like a folded sock or a small sponge behind the knee as you flex it to "keep the joint open" whatever that means. This doesn't help me and I feel that it isn't really addressing the problem - just trying to get around it. Another option sometimes adopted is to not do the movement at all. That would avoid the pain but not help the body to wholeness. Wouldn't it be better to find a more intelligent way of working so that you don't need to resort to tricks or avoidance? After all I want my practice to inform my daily life. So using pain as a feedback mechanism I continue my exploration. I have had glimpses of understanding. To summarise - the ankle, knee and hip work as a team. There is a relationship between them that must be respected. When I respect relationship I can flex and rotate in a pain free way (and it's OK that the knee is not on the floor!) when I don't, when ambition takes over then there is pain.

I remembered a poem that I read years ago. It was by Swami Sivananda and was about pain being a great teacher. I couldn't find the poem but here are a few quotes from Sivananda on the subject:

Pain is an eye-opener

Pain is thy silent teacher

There is no teacher like pain