Keeping the Front Knee Safe in Pigeon

8/18/2013

When coming into pigeon pose, if a student is unable to laterally rotate the thigh at the hip joint sufficiently they may inadvertently overstretch the ligament on the outside of their knee (the LCL) and/or compress the soft tissue on the inside of the knee (the medial meniscus). In the video below we explore how this might happen, and offer a few suggestions that can remedy the issue.

This post brought to you by: Jason Ray Brown

6 Comments

Lisa link

10/21/2015 05:48:55 am

Thanks for this video! very clear & informative!

Jason link

10/21/2015 10:38:48 am

You're welcome, Lisa - thanks for stopping by ;-)

Andrea Freely

9/22/2016 01:06:31 pm

I really struggle with pigeon. Do you have the front knee directly in front of the hip? Or more lateral?? I feel a better stretch in the outer hip/piriformis by staying upright and NOT folding down. I kind of stopped teaching it cos I'm no longer sure what the right way is - I know there is "no right way" cos of different bodies etc but I don't even know how to cue it anymore. Help!

Jason link

9/27/2016 07:52:50 am

Hey Andrea - I usually start people off in the Z-sit, and encourage them to make the front leg parallel to the top of the mat. Or I'll have them do sukhasana forward fold and develop flexibility there. In pigeon, I feel that to effectively stretch the piriformis we need to ensure a couple of things: 1) that the thigh is laterally rotated, and 2) that the knee is kept safe. Placing the front leg (tibia) parallel to the top of the mat ensures that lateral rotation. If the foot slides close to the inner thigh, the femur medially rotates and you lose some of the potential stretch on piriformis. But it's not easy for most to place the leg (tibia) parallel to the top of the mat... in which case they could either skip pigeon and do the Z-sit, or they could prop up the pelvis and front thigh over a large bolster, such that the tibia angles downward from the knees to the foot... which lessens the lateral rotation and keeps the knee safe. We go over this quite a bit in the home-study skeletal anatomy course, when we cover the knee. But hope this helps a bit!

Andrea Freely

10/1/2016 01:05:26 pm

Thank you, that's helpful. I guess I have to register for your online course... I'm not a fan of online, I much prefer "live" trainings...

Arista

9/16/2017 12:30:29 am

Hi Jason, thank you so much for the video which helps me to understand pigeon in detail especially the z sit to help for beginner. But I'm still confused with whether the front feet should be flat or it doesn't matter? Sometimes I feel that front feet flat helps me in reducing the knee pain but what's the anatomy behind it? But sometimes I don't feel the difference. Would you please help for the anatomy with the flat feet to protect knee in?? Thanks a lot!!

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Keeping the Front Knee Safe in Pigeon

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