Help me achieve padmasana!

September 2, 2008 5:29 PM

Yoga poses which rotate the femur without straining the knee?

I'd like to learn to sit in the yoga lotus posture, and this requires a large range of femoral rotation within the hip. The poses I've found for rotating my femur put a lot of strain on my knee because they use the lower leg as a lever. I have seen references to poses which rotate the femur without putting strain on the knee by using straps somehow, but I haven't found any explicit descriptions of them. Anyone know how to do this?

posted by Coventry to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

Can you sit in it for one second? I did not do any specific other poses to train for it, just started with a few seconds, then I'd do it longer and longer and now I can sit for 40 minutes without too much trouble. I imagine that if you sit in half-padmasana for a very long time that should help you with full padmasana.
posted by rainy at 7:33 PM on September 2, 2008

By the way, it is dangerous for the knees so you might want to first do poses that warm up and stretch the knees before it, for instance the 2nd most common sitting posture where you fold your legs under yourself, or standing on one leg. I think most yoga classes never tell you to do padmasana precisely because it's dangerous.
posted by rainy at 7:37 PM on September 2, 2008

Response by poster: No, I can't even come close, at the moment.
posted by Coventry at 3:04 AM on September 3, 2008

I have arthritis in my hips and do a lot of these exercises to keep my flexibility up. If you're even contemplating yoga then you're a lot more flexible than me, but look through them and see if some of them meet your criteria.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:54 AM on September 4, 2008