Ep 97: What’s the Deal with Knee Pain in Yoga Classes?

In this second episode of our pain-focused series, I'll explore what it really means to support students with sensitive knees across a few different yoga class formats.

I’ll discuss how weight-bearing in vinyas, alignment expectations in Iyengar, deep/long holds in yin, and prop use in restorative can either aggravate or alleviate a student's knee discomfort. You’ll learn why:

• knee pain is rarely just about the knees themselves
• how the hips and ankles influence knee health, and 
• how nervous system sensitivity can make even “simple” poses feel unsafe for a student.

Most importantly, this episode gives you solutions. You’ll walk away with ideas for variations that make yoga accessible without isolating students or making them feel "less than." And you’ll learn how language, sequencing, and your compassion can empower your students to trust their bodies and their practice, especially while they're dealing with chronic pain or injuries.

Transcript

Monica: 0:00

Imagine a student comes to your class with knee pain. Knee pain can be one of the biggest roadblocks to students feeling comfortable and confident in your classes. In this second episode of our pain focused series, we. Let's explore what it really means to support students with sensitive knees across a few different yoga class formats. We'll talk about how weightbearing in vinyasa alignment expectations in Iyengar deep, long holds in yin and prop use in restorative can either aggravate or alleviate knee discomfort. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers Podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you. If you are a yoga teacher, you're looking for support. You love to be in conversation, and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you. My life as a yoga teacher, the lessons I've learned, my process for building my business and helpful ideas, tools, strategies and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover a diverse range of topics that will help you, whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt and you wanna dive deep and set yourself up for success. I am so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously, so expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now let's do this together. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here we talk about the anatomy, the injuries, the nervous system insights, plus all the real life knowledge you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training. Welcome back to part two of this series on teaching yoga to students with pain in part one. Last week's episode, I discussed hip pain, and today we're gonna talk a little bit about knee pain, which is just as common, if not more so in yoga classes. The knees are one of the most talked about joints in yoga because they are complex vulnerable. Often caught in the middle of what's happening above and below them at the hips and the ankles. When a student tells you they have knee pain, it can mean a number of things. It could be discomfort from cartilage wear arthritis, or an old injury like a torn meniscus or ACL. It could also be pain that's actually being influenced by. The hips, the ankles, or even a nervous system that's sensitive. What's important for us as yoga teachers is to not play the role of medical professional, but to acknowledge the pain, create options, and understand how yoga, sequencing, and class environment can either aggravate or support the student's needs. Let's talk a little bit about the anatomy of the knee joint. It is a hinge joint, but it's not a simple hinge. The joint allows for flexion and extension, but also a small degree of rotation when the knee is flexed. This is why certain yoga poses like Lotus Heroes pose or even deep lunges can be problematic. These asanas ask for combined movements like hip rotation and knee flexion that may go beyond what a student's knee is able to tolerate. Recognizing this complexity will help you resist automatically placing blame on a student's tight hips or poor alignment, and instead see that some knees simply don't appreciate those ranges of motion and therefore poses look and feel different in their bodies. In the last episode, we discussed how hip pain appears in different yoga formats like vinyasa and restorative. So let's do the same with knee pain. First. In Vinyasa style classes, transitions are often the biggest issue. Stepping forward from downward facing dog into a lunge can be tricky If the student's knee doesn't track well or if their hip and ankle aren't cooperating, or if a student is thrusting the movement as opposed to controlling it. Repetitive warrior poses can also place strain on the knee if the stance is too wide or if students feel pressured to go deeper than what feels supportive for their individual bodies. It's an excellent practice as a yoga teacher to normalize. Shorter stances, emphasize stability over depth and remind students that their knee doesn't have to stack in some perfect way or alignment to be safe. If you're teaching poses like Lotus, which requires hip flexion and external rotation and knee flexion and some rotation, I'm sure you realize how challenging this. Is for students. Hip external rotation is hard enough, but think about teaching knee rotation to students who have never consciously performed that movement, have limited range, or who are experiencing any number of knee injuries. I'll be honest, Lotus Pose is not one that I still teach these days, and I take a good look at the mechanics needed in other poses and recognize when they aren't appropriate for group class settings. Now let's look at Iyengar style classes. Here we know the focus is on alignment, and that can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the props and the attention to detail are wonderful for giving student support and ways to access poses. On the other hand, the rigid rules like insisting that the front shin be perpendicular in Warrior two can make students feel like they're failing if their knees don't cooperate, and these strict. Alignment based classes, the way you use your language is key. Instead of dictating what the knee must do, you can invite exploration. You could say, notice how your knee feels in this stance. Could shifting your foot position or adjusting your stance Make your knee feel more stable. This kind of language reduces fear and gives students agency and is especially important in these types of rigid alignment focused classes. If you're a yin teacher, you know the knees are particularly vulnerable, long holds, imposes like saddle. Dragon or even butterfly can create strain on ligaments or compressive force on the meniscus. As a yin teacher, you can emphasize that discomfort in the knees is not the goal and should not be tolerated. Encourage your students to use bolsters under their thighs, blankets behind their knees, or to swap out poses entirely. Yen is not about chasing sensation in the joint, but about accessing stillness in a way that the body can sustain for longer periods of time. Finally, in restorative yoga, knee pain often arises when joints aren't supported. A simple supine position with the legs extended may feel uncomfortable if the student has knees that tend to hyperextend, Providing a rolled blanket under their knees can help to ease strain, similarly in legs, up the wall, bending the knees slightly with. Bolster can make the pose more accessible for those with knee sensitivity. Restorative practices are particularly supportive because they allow the nervous system to downregulate. However, if a student is in pain or discomfort, it's difficult for their nervous systems to shift to a more regulated state because they don't inherently feel safe. students who experience pain also tend to carry anxiety about movement and restorative yoga can be helpful in reminding them and their nervous system that rest and safety are possible. But we have to work to help them find safety in our classes. Now, beyond the class formats, it's also important for me to highlight the nervous system's role in knee pain. Pain isn't always a direct measure of tissue damage. Sometimes a knee can look fine on an MRI and still. Feel painful in practice. This is where your role as a teacher goes beyond biomechanics, offering students choice, reminding them that it's okay to step back or modify. And creating an environment where their nervous system feels safe can reduce the intensity of pain and help them reconnect with movement in a positive way. One of the biggest fears I've found that yoga teachers have is. What if I have multiple students with knee issues in one class? This is where adopting a flexible mindset matters. Instead of thinking, I need to create a completely separate sequence for each of them, you could think, how can I make this class accessible for multiple bodies? That might mean offering a standing option in place of kneeling, providing chairs or walls for balance, or allowing students to either opt out or reduce the range of certain transitions. It won't make your class less effective. It will actually make it more inclusive, but you have to be willing to shift your thinking on pain injuries and the nervous system. Your students don't expect you to heal their injuries. What they need is a teacher who is calm, confident, and flexible in their approach to teaching. It's your sequencing choices, your language, and the way you set the tone in class that contribute to whether students with knee pain will feel excluded, or empowered. In the next part of this series will move on to the shoulders, which often carry the burden of both mobility and stability issues. In yoga. I'll talk about how shoulder pain shows up in different formats, just like we've done in this episode and the last, and how to approach load bearing poses, like downward facing dog and Chaturanga, and how nervous system regulation ties into the experience of shoulder pain for now. Take what we've discussed about the knees and think about how you'll apply it in your classes this week. Encourage your students to explore their own ranges, normalize variation, and above all, remind them that yoga is about meeting themselves where they are not about fitting into a rigid mold or looking like every other student beside them. Understanding anatomy, biomechanics, and the effects yoga Ana have on the body helps you help your students. If you've been enjoying these episodes, I know that you're a yoga teacher who's ready to teach with more intention and less fear around injuries. Now let's continue to raise the bar for how yoga supports real bodies in real. Life. It's so important for us to have this conversation so that you remember that students of all shapes, sizes, alignment, and abilities come to your classes and you can serve all of them. You know that my goal is for you to love the yoga teaching life. It's important to understand movement and the issues students come to your classes with. Subscribe to the podcast so you're always in the know when a new episode drops. And share it with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversations. And finally, thank you for helping to spread the word about this podcast. Alright, thank you for listening. That's it for now. Bye.