Your Foot on your Knee in Tree.

What’s cool is we can change our opinion when presented with new updated info.

I’m here to tell you I’ve been to the land of putting foot to knee in tree pose (vrksasana) and nothing bad happened! There is plenty of advice online and in yoga studios about how dangerous it can be to put your foot on the medial (inside) knee, but it’s gonna be ok! For the knee to be a truly resilient joint, it needs to be able to withstand multi-directional loads. Jenni Rawlings recently wrote a really good piece that unpacks what’s going on with the knee in tree pose as supported by movement science and biomechanics. The small amount of pressure that your knee would receive by placing your foot there is not enough to create an injury all on its own.

Yoga cues are often handed down from one teacher to the next and recycled till what’s being said becomes the accepted fact. I know I use to say (and believe) putting the foot on your knee was bad/should be avoided. The power of suggestion is real (placebos) which is why it matters what we say and how we describe movement. This also holds true when negative expectations are placed on a persons movement. It can create a nocebo effect - which are more negative symptoms/effect than it otherwise would have. The power of suggestion is real. Our words matter. Yoga teachers shape what practitioners believe by way of our cues.

I’ve been playing with this sneaky slide your foot up the tree movement. My foot stops right at my knee. Hello active range of motion. While teaching tree pose this month I made mention of putting your foot wherever you want on your standing leg. Someone said, “you’re the only teacher to ever say that’s ok.” Reclaim your knee in tree!

Turns out it’s not as dangerous or injurious as we all thought.

TRISHA.YOGA