My First Yoga Injury

Last week, at Wednesday evening Ashtanga Primary Series, I was doing a vinyasa between seated poses and noticed my right knee hurt. Uh oh...what did I do to it? At the moment, I was thinking about what I should do to keep myself from hurting it worse. Now I wish I had paid more attention to which pose it was after and what I did that caused this pain.

My first guess was Trianga Mukha Ekapada Paschimottanasana. My quads aren't very happy in this pose and pull on my knee if I'm not careful. I usually do it with my hip on a block, but I forgot to grab a block before class, so I did it without one. The more I thought about it, the less that made sense. If I hurt my knee during that, I would have felt it and backed off before hurting myself. It was drilled into my head at teacher training to never tolerate any pain in the knee during a pose.

Then I remembered that I botched up one of my jump throughs...maybe the one before I noticed the pain? I don't remember. I can't jump all the way through, so I always jump to cross legged. That time my feet hit the floor earlier than I'm used to and because of my super grippy mat that's awesome in down dog, my feet stayed put and my knee took the momentum of my jump. Oh right, oops.

My knee wasn't injured terribly, but it hurt enough to make sure I didn't forget about it. I decided to keep practicing on it, since wasn't a severe injury. I sprained my ankle pretty bad a few years ago, and this was nothing nearly that bad. Thursday I rested, iced, compressed, and elevated it while watching some Star Trek in bed, but Friday I went to an Anusara-ish vinyasa class. I didn't do any jumps, but camel was fine on my knee. Lunges and warriors were a little scary, but I could do them without hurting myself. Saturday, I was able to do jump throughs and jump backs without a problem. It was a good reminder to land lightly as I always should. Sunday, my practice was back to normal. My knee hurt a little, but didn't slow me down. Afterwards we were playing with acroyoga stuff and "flying." I would have tried to be the base if my knee were perfect, but holding the weight of another person on my legs and arms seemed like a bad idea in those circumstances.

Today it feels almost completely normal. Yay! Injury is very scary. I'm glad that mine was very minor and healed very quickly. It reminded me that I'm not invincible and that I need to be mindful in my practice. :)