Hello Elena
Well done for taking the initiative to stay in Part 1 of this pose. It is so vital to listen to your body and have humility – especially when it comes to a critical position such as this one – not to go past a point of correct alignment.
Your issue could be due to a number of things!
1) Your knee may need extra attention on the locking aspect: fully engaging your quadriceps muscles to lift the knee cap. See Lock the Knee
2) The weight in your standing leg may be falling a little toward the back. Press the weight more evenly by spreading your toes, and leaning forward, weight into the big toe more, and feel the back of the knee relax and open up.
3) You may be leaning into your standing leg. Check into your hip positions. What often happens is that students ‘slump’ into the standing leg. This means you may need to lift the hip of your lifted leg to create space and to make your hips square and even.
4) You may not have learned how to sufficiently engage your hip flexors to hold your bent leg up so there may be just a little extra strain on your standing knee to help support that leg. (Try bringing your bent leg up so thigh is parallel to the floor with leg at 90 degrees, foot flexed BEFORE you round down to bring hands under the foot. Sometimes it is great to stand there with leg in position with or without rounding down to work these muscles.)
I really hope that I have given you something to work on. Looking forward to hear what transpires!
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂
