While this article was created in response to a question from writer Rick Skwiot about how yoga might help him heal his painful knee, many of the principles and practices will apply to the healing of other joints and conditions as well.

1 > First: STOP whatever activity is aggravating the joint and causing the pain.

One of the most difficult challenges I face when doing therapy with tennis players to heal a bad back, twisted knee, or tennis elbow is to get the person to stop playing long enough for the painful joint to heal.

If you are young and have not had a painful knee for very long, there is a good chance that you are dealing with a temporary condition, which will heal fairly rapidly, if given a rest from more aggravation along with proper Yoga Therapy.

If you are an older player with a long-term chronic condition, and your doctor has told you that your knee is damaged to the point of no return, there is no cartilage left, and the knee is in bone-on-bone condition, complete cessation of tennis may be necessary to stop an on-going destruction in order to allow the joint to return to a healthy, pain free condition.

If you find a lot of resistance in yourself to stop playing tennis, then you need to ask yourself why you want to continue an activity that is not just creating pain and preventing healing, but which may end in future crippling.

Perhaps it may help you to deal with this better if you treat this as an addiction.

You may find yourself saying, “But exercise is healthy. I need to exercise, don’t? I really enjoy playing tennis.”

How can any exercise be healthy when it is damaging your body?

THINK!

From a yoga perspective Any activity that you continue to do that is damaging to your body or mind can be considered an addiction.

Instead of wondering about other people’s addictions, Yoga Science teaches us to deal with our own.

2 > Elevate the legs up a wall to improve circulation and reduce swelling, inflammation, and pain.

This variation of the Hatha Yoga Shoulderstand Asana (posture) will reduce pain and promote healing. While the Shoulderstand offers more benefits, the ability to hold your legs up a wall much longer than you can or should in the Shoulderstand will somewhat make up for this. The longer you stay in this position and the more frequently you practice the faster the results. You will get many other benefits. Inverted poses like this improve circulation of both blood and lymph, strengthen your immune system, prevent and reverse varicose veins including hemorrhoids, help to reduce enlarged prostate, and much more.

The student I mentioned in an earlier post who ended up with a serious infection as a result of “simple knee surgery” used this practice to reduce swelling in his knee and to get off crutches.

When we started therapy, his swollen knee was huge. I had him spend time at the beginning and at the end of our first session with his legs up the wall. I suggested that he should practice this at home to speed up his healing, since this would help him reduce the swelling in his knee.

He asked, “How long or how often should I do this.”

I said, “The more the better. You can stay in this position for hours without any ill effects.”

The next day he said that his knee felt so much better. When I asked him if he spent time with his legs up a wall, he said he had spent a total of 4 hours with his legs up the wall. Swelling had reduced considerably and pain had diminished.

Surprised, I asked how was able to spend so many hours with his legs up the wall.

He said, “I found that I could put my laptop on my stomach and I got a lot of work done in that position.”

He arrived for the third session without crutches and continued to heal his knee rapidly.

Obviously, this student had a lot of commitment to self-healing. But what important activities in your life don’t require commitment? The same drive that helped this man become a successful businessman, also helped him heal his knee.

3 > Practice Deep Relaxation

Wondering where you will get the time to practice all of these techniques? You can practice Deep Relaxation while you have your legs up the wall.

To the extent that you can relax, you will not feel pain, and healing progresses.

If you have the equipment and know how, you can record a relaxation technique in your own voice to play when you want to practice relaxation. If you do not have the ability to record your own relaxation CD, you might consider getting my Deep Relaxation CD. (Soon available to order online. Currently only from me in San Miguel.)

For those of you who have no knee or leg problems but who want to practice relaxation, you will still receive extra benefit if you practice with your legs elevated up a wall.

4 > Practice visualization and affirmations.

This also can be practiced while your legs are up the wall after you have gotten deeply relaxed.

See how you are saving more time as you do these practices at the same time?

When you are more relaxed, the critical conscious mind is not as active and it is much easier to penetrate the subconscious mind. Then the subconscious mind will come back to influence the conscious mind in a very positive way.

The best times to practice Affirmations and Visualizations are

• when you have relaxed yourself,
• near the end of a meditation session,
• just as you awaken in the morning, and
• just before you drift off to sleep at night.

There is an old metaphysical saying,

Quit seeing what you don’t want and start seeing what you do want.

Visualize your knee healthy and perfect.

See the knee joint opening up, the space between the bones increasing.

Visualize yourself pain free and happily walking, dancing, playing.

Recognize a great healing energy within you.

Visualize yourself removing any blocks to that healing energy.

See yourself getting in tune with that energy, cooperating with it, and enjoying the healing.

Practice affirmations like

Day by day, in every way, I getting better and better

I am happy, I am healthy, I am strong

To really understand the Techniques and Power of Affirmations get this  Great Healing Book by Paramahansa Yogananda called Scientific Healing Affirmations: Theory and Practice of Concentration. This little booklet is the most complete comment on healing that I know of.

5 > Use your knee joint in ways that increase activity and movement without aggravating the condition.

If walking causes you pain, greatly limit. Be careful not to move suddenly or with a jerk, which will aggravate the knee joint. This is why healing often does not come when indulging in sports or activities which require sudden, twisting, or forceful movements.

Substitute activities which are not weight bearing, and which do not aggravate the joint, like swimming and the Non-Standing Yoga Asanas. There are so many Hatha Yoga Asanas that you could do enough non-weight-bearing-on-the-knee poses to fill several hours of practice.

At the beginning of my EASY YOGA for Home, Office, & Studio DVD, I take you through some very simple, easy-on-the-knees, passive techniques while you are sitting in a chair. These simple exercises  are designed to improve range of motion and circulation without stressing your joint or aggravating the condition.

See the free Knee Healing Video post.

Be Creative

Discover movements that will give motion to your knee without causing pain. The more you move your knee joint without pain, the faster the healing.

If you find that putting weight on your knee is not painful, then you may find that you can easily do the Triangle and other Standing Yoga Asanas (postures).

6 > Practice This Technique to Open the Knee Joint

1. Get down on the floor on hands and knees. If your knee is sensitive to weight in this position, put extra padding under the knee.
2. Take your hands and body forward so that the back of your knee opens up. Point your toes back.
3. Place a pillow or rolled towel behind your knee joint. The tighter or more painful your knee feels, the larger the pillow needed.
4. Sit back on the cushion, which now works as a wedge to open up the knee joint. If your ankles are very tight and uncomfortable, place a pillow under the ankles.
5. As always, move slowly into position and stop before you feel pain.
6. Stay in this position as long as it feels good to you.

My HEAL YOUR BACK NOW! DVD will take you to another deeper level of relaxation and teach you how to move to lessen pain and accelerate healing, and how to develop the proper attitude for doing the regular Hatha Yoga Asanas.

7 > Adopt an Anti-inflammatory Diet

I have recommended a healthy, low fat, vegetarian diet in a previous post. This is not a vegan diet because it includes milk, cheese,  and eggs as recommended by Paramahansa Yogananda, and other highly advanced yogis. Yogananda also recommends up to one tablespoonful of Olive Oil a day to keep the joints well lubricated.

Since dairy and eggs are contrary to the advice of many popular doctors who say that no animal foods should be consumed, you might want to study this some and then make up your own mind. (See the post, Peter Berquist on Raw, Low-Fat Vegan Diet, on this site.)

In any case the Yoga Diet, like the Anti-inflammatory Diet, is a plant-based diet consisting of mostly fresh, whole, raw fruits and vegetables with the addition of small amounts of nuts, seeds and whole grains.

This means NO refined, processed, packaged, canned, old, chemically preserved, colored, or altered foods.

No alcohol, meat, caffeine, cola/carbonated/soft drinks, drugs, or strongly salted or spiced foods. And

NO OVEREATiNG.

Understand we are not talking about whether or not you are a good or bad person based upon your eating habits. These are just guidelines to help you reduce inflammation and improve your health.

Now there is evidence from research at Ohio State University in an article published in Science Daily, “Yoga Reduces Cytokine Levels Known to Promote Inflammation, Study Shows”, that Yoga reduces inflammation.

8 > Use Fasting and Detox to Reduce Pain and Increase Flexibility

I have explained the value of Fasting and Detox in my article Improving Your Eliminations Will Improve Your Nutrition.

If this interests you, you might also like to try a yogic cleansing technique given in my article How Lemons and Limes Keep Your Healthy

You can fast on water or fruit juice. You can also take one fruit, such as watermelon, and just eat that for one day. Watermelon will flush the kidneys and remove toxins.

I have always enjoyed how much more flexibility I had and how much easier the Hatha Yoga Asanas were for me when I have been on a fast.

Remember, the Yoga Asanas work scientifically to remove toxins by compression, extension, and inversion.

9 > Reduce Excess Weight

Obviously, if you put excess weight on a sore joint, it will feel worse, and if you reduce the weight on a painful joint, it should feel better. In fact, this is so obvious that you might wonder why it was not listed first.

Or you might be saying to me right now, “I wish it was that easy. Of all the advice you have just given this would probably be the most difficult for me to do. I have been trying to get my weight down for several years now with no success. Now that I have a bad knee and can’t even walk, much less run, how am I going to lose weight?’

Here is the good news:

If you do everything else that is listed above, you don’t have to worry about how to lose weight, your weight will normalize naturally.

10 > Keep Connected to This Website

You can use this site as a resource to help you to heal yourself.

Many of the points that you will be working with to heal your knee will be further explained in other articles. Even the healing of a condition that you are not dealing with can be beneficial because there are principles that apply to all healing.

In the stories of others who have healed themselves you will find inspiration and guidance for your own healing.

Then, hopefully, one day you will share the story of your own healing to help others to heal themselves.

Namaste’

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

Q. What can I do about fatigue? It seems that no matter how little I exert myself, nor how much more I rest, I still feel tired. My doctor says I have no medical problems.

It sounds like you might be going in the wrong direction: resting too much and exerting yourself too little.

One of the Biggest Causes of Fatigue Is Lack of Circulation Due to Too Little Activity.

I know that there is a very common tendency to try to rest more when you don’t feel like you have a lot of energy. But if your tiredness is due to poor circulation, you can actually make yourself feel more tired by resting. These conditions can be compounded in modern living where long sedentary periods seated before a TV or computer, or in an automobile during morning and afternoon work commutes, tend to inhibit the natural tendencies of regular physical activity.

Assuming that your doctor is right and that you have no medical problem that is causing your tiredness, consider these other possibilities.

How Overeating Saps Your Energy

Sometimes in an effort to get more energy from food, you may unwittingly develop the habit of overeating. Remember, even healthy food becomes a dross to the body when taken to excess. Overeating puts a tremendous load on the digestive system and causes an imbalance of energy since so much energy is diverted to the digestive organs. This can create such a drain on the other parts of the body that you can feel very tired as your body attempts to deal with the overload of food.

Notice how you feel groggy after a big meal?

Worse yet is the coronary attack that follows when the energy needed for the heart is pulled away to deal with a heavy, hard-to-digest meal.

Too Much Rest Will Slow You Down

Yoga Science teaches that too much sleep makes you lethargic. One reason for this is that lying motionless for a long time causes a decrease in the elimination of waste material due to lessened circulation. That is a reason why the longer you sleep, or lie around, the less flexible you are upon awakening.

Oxygen intake is cut down due to slow, shallow breathing.

Get Your Energy Flowing

To improve this situation, the first thing that most Yogis do in the morning, besides meditating, are techniques to get rid of waste material and to increase circulation, oxygen, and flexibility. In other words, they prepare their bodies to behave like open conduits for the free, unobstructed flow of energy.

Improve Your Flexibility

If you lack flexibility, it is difficult for energy to flow easily. Because stiffness limits the range of motion of your body, circulation decreases. which increases your stiffness, which further slows your circulation, and on and on in vicious downward cycle. As your circulation slows so does the ability of your body to eliminate toxins, which in turn slows the free flow of nutrients to the cells. When toxins are not completely eliminated, deposits form in your joints, organs, glands, and blood vessels, and your flexibility diminishes.

How Hatha Yoga Asanas Will Help You

To combat this problem the yogis discovered Hatha Yoga, a unique system of Asanas (Postures or Poses) designed to improve circulation, energy flow, flexibility, and eliminations.

What makes Hatha Yoga such an efficient system is that all these benefits come about without the production of a large amount of waste byproduct, as happens in most other forms of exercise. If this waste material is not eliminated, your muscles will feel sore later.

When you do exercises of such a nature or in such a way that your muscles ache the next day, you will find it difficult to improve flexibility. In fact, many runners find that the more they run, the stiffer they become.

On the other hand, when you practice Hatha Yoga correctly, you will find a steady improvement in flexibility, eliminations, circulation, energy, and strength, with a minimum amount of effort, regardless of your age or present condition.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Q. I am planning a fat free diet in order get my weight down. How can I be sure that my diet is totally fat free?

First of all, why do you want such an extreme diet? Unless you are intending to be on this diet just a short time, you run the risk of developing nutritional deficiencies.

A healthy diet includes fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Fats are necessary for their lubricating effects upon the cells, joints and limbs to prevent wear and uncomfortable friction. Fats are a source of energy. And a certain amount of fat in the body is necessary to protect the cells.

Good Health Requires Balanced Living

Whenever you attempt to eliminate any element that is a natural part of a food, you run the risk of upsetting both the balance of the food and of your own system. Foods in their natural, whole, fresh, clean, unadulterated state tend to include all of the elements necessary for their proper metabolism in your body.

If you want to eliminate fats from your diet because you feel that your diet has been too high in fats. or because you are overweight, or because you have deposits in your arteries, use good nutritional sense.

Beware of simplistic solutions that advocate unnatural substitutes. In our rush to find easy answers, we support large industries that supply us with non-dairy creamers, non-cream whipped toppings, and non-butter butter substitutes. A little common sense will tell you that these are not solutions.

For instance, you may have fatty deposits in your arteries but this may not be because you are eating too much natural fat. It may be the result of

Common sense should tell you that if you do have atherosclerosis for any of the above reasons, that the indiscriminate use of fake cream, butter, cheese, and milk substitutes will not solve your problem. Most of these products have replaced the natural food elements with chemicals to color, flavor, preserve, and shape the products. If your body has had a hard time handling the fat in milk, the first food humans are able to assimilate, imagine what it does with the aluminum and whiteners found in some nondairy creamers, or with the hydrogenated oils and artificial butter flavors and colors found in some margarines.

Eliminate These Fats First

If you want to reduce your fat intake and improve your health, begin by cutting down on unnatural fats such as foods fried at such high temperatures that the fats are no longer easily assimilated by the body. Eliminate marbled beef that gives juicy, tender, easy eating steaks but comes from animals that are overfed and not allowed to exercise. Don’t eat any food made with oils that normally are liquid at room temperature that have been chemically treated or hydrogenated to change the oil into solid margarine that the body cannot digest and assimilate, and which clog up the cells and blood vessels.

Your best insurance for a healthy body is still a balanced program of yoga asanas (postures) with relaxation, breathing and meditation, a clean diet high in fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and a cheerful attitude.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Q. What do I need to know about eating fruit? When tangerines are in season, I might eat three or four at one time. Is there anything wrong with this?

Not at all. The only way there is anything wrong with you eating several tangerines at one time is if the tangerines don’t agree with you, or if you are overeating. But this would be true of any food.

Fasting on Fruit

As a matter of fact, Yoga Science, as well as many natural healing therapies, recommend fasting with a particular fruit when it is in season. If you will take nothing but one fruit and/or its juice for several days, you will give your digestive system a rest, and in the process free up more energy with which to clean out toxins, and to heal.

If you are unaccustomed to fasting and consider a whole day on one fruit or juice too severe, you can try just one meal. Or you can try a fruit salad. And if even that is too radical for you, just make fruit a major portion of one meal.

An all fruit meal now and then will give your digestive system a rest. When your digestive system is relieved of its burden of heavy meals, your body begins an internal house-cleaning, eliminating many toxins.

The Part Played by Elimination in Improving Nutrition

Without proper elimination, it is difficult for the body to digest and assimilate the nutrients from the food that you eat. In order for the body to properly process food and utilize the nutrients, it must be free of waste material. When we talk about improving this process, we mean increasing the efficiency.

Think of a fireplace. The purpose of a fireplace is to heat a room. One of the main ingredients in this process is a suitable combustible material. But this is only one. If the chimney is clogged or blocked, for instance, not only will you get heat in the room, but also a lot of smoke and soot, as well as poisonous carbon monoxide gas. If the chimney is open but there is no good supply of oxygen to help in the burning, you will get smoke, soot, carbon monoxide as well as some of the fire coming into the room. If you don’t clean the ashes out regularly, you will have a hard time getting a good, efficiently burning fire.

The same holds true in the nutritional process. It is not enough that you eat good food. The food must be digested and the nutrients carried to where needed. If your arteries are clogged, if your blood circulation is sluggish, if your intestines, kidneys, and liver are loaded with impurities, the whole process begins to bog down and eventually fail.

You can greatly improve your health and well-being by seeing to it that you do not overeat, that your diet is high is “clean” foods, and by fasting regularly. Don’t, however, look at this as deprivation. Think of the benefits. You will find yourself feeling lighter, healthier, more energetic, and younger.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Q. All of my life I have eaten a lot of meat. I have tried to go without eating meat and find that I become very sluggish and don’t feel as good. Is it possible that I am a person who must eat meat to be healthy?

Humans don’t need to eat meat to be healthy. However, if you have been eating meat all of your life, it may be difficult for your cells to assimilate nutrients from meat substitutes. Therefore, make dietary changes gradually. Give the body and mind a chance to adapt to the changes. If you are used to eating meat every day, try cutting back to three times a week. If that is too difficult, try five times. Especially, try to cut out beef and pork. Chicken, lamb, and fish are better.

Q. What’s wrong with meat, anyway? Before I can give up meat, I need a pretty good reason.

There are several good reasons for giving up meat. Even the U.S. medical establishment is recommending that red meat eating be reduced because of its contribution to heart disease and cancer. But let’s examine one seldom mentioned problem created by eating meat: Uric Acid.

The Problem of Uric Acid and Eating Meat

A pound of beefsteak contains about 14 grains of uric acid. The kidneys are capable of eliminating only about 6 grains of uric acid daily and some of that is uric acid the body produces. The excess uric acid can become a source of gout, rheumatism, headaches, nervousness, irritation, and other conditions. When elements not used by the body are not eliminated, they become toxins that deposit themselves in the organs, glands, blood vessels, joints, and muscles. As these toxins build up, you begin experiencing nervousness, pain, lack of energy, stiffness, and possibly so-called degenerative diseases.

Colon Cancer and Meat Eating

One of the main reasons that modern medicine recommends reducing the amount of meat in your diet is that meat eating has been associated with colon cancer. Since meat has no dietary fiber, it does not easily move along the intestinal tract. If your meal also includes  white flour products like bread, biscuits, pasta, and cakes, or other products in which the fiber has been reduced, you will have created a glue like substance which traps poisons in the colon. This means that the residue stays in the intestines too long creating a condition of auto-toxemia. In some cases these toxins remain in the intestines for years. This is why it is so important, if you do eat meat, to include a large vegetable salad with the meal. The vegetable fibers will help the meat residue to move along the intestinal tract to be eliminated from the body.

Two More Reasons to Eliminate or Greatly Reduce Your Consumption of Meat

Two other reasons taught by Yoga Science have to do with reasons less known by western science. The Yogi Masters say that animals on the way to slaughter become frightened and in their panic secrete poisons that are detrimental to your health, when you eat this meat. The second reason is that in killing and eating animals we create some negative karma and lower our own vibrations making spiritual progress more difficult.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Do you frequently wish you could feel better?

Do you wish you had more energy? Are you tired of being tired?

Do you wonder if you will ever win the battle to control your weight? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Drugs? Prescription as well as recreational.

Would you like some simple, easy-to-follow plan of diet and nutrition?

Do you wonder if there is such a thing as vibrant health? An enjoyable exercise program? For someone your age?

Have you at times wondered if there were methods of tension-control that someone like yourself could learn?

Would you like to be free of backache, headache, neck ache, stiffness, muscle and joint pain? Do you long for a restful sleep?

Are you curious about meditation? Are you wondering if it is true that meditation can help you lower blood pressure and cholesterol, heal heart disease and cancer, improve your memory and intuition, expand your consciousness, and help you understand the meaning of life and the existence of God within? Do you need a Guru, or is meditation something you can learn on your own? Do you long for peace of mind?

Welcome to the Science of Yoga

My purpose of writing this blog is to share with you what I have learned about healing, improving, and maintaining health and well-being in over forty years as a student, teacher, and therapist of the Science of Yoga. Using these ideas will enable you to help yourself to better health and happier living. Here you will find workable health tools that will serve you regardless of your present condition or past training and experiences. Since these articles will be in a Question and Answer format, I will begin with a frequently asked question.

An Ideal, Easy-to-Follow Diet

Q. Some time ago I realized the importance of good nutrition for bettering my health and I began reading health books in an attempt to find the diet right for me. The more I read, the more confused I became. Even the experts don’t agree. Can you recommend some simple method for choosing my diet?

Have the better part of your diet consist of fresh, raw, fruits and vegetables with some lightly-steamed vegetables. These are the foods that put the least strain on your digestive system, leave the least toxins in your body, and have the greatest cleansing effect. Also, they are rich in minerals, vitamins, and enzymes. Additionally, they tend to have a more positive effect on your mind, causing neither agitation nor lethargy, as do some other foods. For all of these reasons, you would be better off choosing organic foods when available.

Using fruits and vegetables as the base, you would then add natural whole grains, and non-meat proteins, such as eggs, milk, cheese, nuts, seeds, beans, peas, and avocados. Meat is not recommended because, although it contains high quality protein, meat will leave many toxins in your body and may cause deposits to form in your arteries, joints, and muscles.

Q. You recommed a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables. If I eat more than just a small salad, I get excessive gas. Certain foods, like cabbage, I haven’t been able to eat in years. How can I possibly follow this diet?

Just do the best you can. If you have been used to eating mostly cooked vegetables, your stomach may have difficulty handling much raw vegetables. Try to increase the amount gradually. The food you eat must also be food that your body can handle. From among the most nutritious foods, select the best food for you. Then stick to that diet.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.