The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › Ankle and knee injury
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Hi! I hope I can get some help here, I’ve really missed doing yoga. I have a serious ankle injury, my left ankle, and my right knee has also been injured since I am compensating with that leg (I was also on crutches for a few months). I would like some ideas for poses I can do to stretch my hamstrings and exercise my upper body. I can’t really do any of the standing poses, these all have to be seated or reclined. I could use some strengthening in my upper body and arms, since I walk with a cane and it strains my arms and shoulders.
Thanks so much 🙂Hello ‘Madfishmonger’ (I hope that’s not your real name!)
I have a few questions for you:
>> Do you and your medical team believe you’ll always be using a cane?
>> What movement or movement restrictions do you have in your left ankle?
>> Will you (or are you working toward) getting full range of motion back?
>> Are you practising at home doing anything at the moment?
>> What happens when you put weight on your left foot?That’s enough for now. We can get moving now (!) as soon as I hear from you 😉
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Hi, no it’s not my real name 😛 It’s the nickname I’ve been using online for years.
The doctors aren’t entirely sure what’s wrong, I’m on a very long waiting list for an MRI, but there might not be a lot they can do for it anyway if I have cartilage damage or something.
I am off the cane now, but I am still in pain and having a hard time being on my feet for long periods. I have almost my full range of motion, but I still have a lot of pain whenever my knee goes over my ankle. I have seen a physiotherapist briefly (again, a long waiting list) and I have some exercises I’ve been doing to strengthen the muscles. I can put some weight on my foot, but if I am standing for too long it gets quite sore, and there is pain whenever I extend my knee over my ankle. It’s injured in two places, so I am also in pain when I have to balance on my left ankle. I have a very hard time with walking on uneven surfaces.
Thanks for your help 🙂Hi mfm 😉
Can you weight your foot progressively while you’re sitting? In other words can you sit, rise up on to your left toes and move your foot around in all directions? And if you can do that, are you able to try more and more weight on it?
Still piecing it all together :cheese:
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Yes, I have fairly good range of motion when I am sitting. I am slowly working up to putting more weight on it for longer but it’s taking an infuriatingly long time to heal. I hurt the muscle on the outside of the foot, one of the tendons that helps you balance when standing and walking (I tore the ligament there years ago and it aggravated the old injury), and suffered a compression injury to the top of my foot, basically my shin bone was pushed straight downward into the soft tissue at the foot joint. I can move it around when I’m sitting, but there is a bit of pain when I overdo it. It is getting better, but so, so slowly.
Hi mfm
It really sounds very frustrating to have the movement but still experience the pain.
Excuse the ignorance but how long does one have to wait for an MRI or a physio? I was surprised that you would be waiting significant time. Just wondering where you might be where the system is not able to accommodate you even to the point where you would simply know what’s going on with what appears to have been quite a serious accident.
If I can assume that you have an amount of scar tissue around the injury then breaking through that would be important. One way to weight it more while not standing yet is to do your exercises while sitting (as you already do). Then to change the loading, sit more and more to the edge of chair. Your body will learn balance again.
The next thing after that is to change the height of your chair. Make it higher until you’re using a bar stool.
I asked you on Nov 8 if you were practising yoga at all. Are you? That would help me understand where to go with my next thoughts. If you are, what style of yoga are you practising? And if you are, what poses are you avoiding?
Namaste
Gabrielle -
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