health

Q:  Here is a question for you.  I was practicing Utkatasana Tuesday and as I sat down into the pose I got a twinge in my inner left knee.  (Slightly forward of the seam line, between the upper and lower leg bones.) I straightened up and repeated the pose squeezing a block between my knees. The little pain was gone. How did squeezing a block between my knees change the alignment of the knee? A:  Utkatasana, mistakenly called �Chair Pose� by some, comes from the Sanskrit root word utkata , which Richard Rosen defines as �exceeding the usual measure, immense, gigantic; richly endowed with, abounding in; drunk, mad, furious; excessive, much; superior, high, proud, haughty; uneven; difficult� (from his book Original Yoga ).  If you have spent any time in this pose, you can certainly get behind the difficult part, but we try to avoid it feeling uneven. (We like to call it "Powerful pose.") Whenever you have pain in a joint in a yoga pose, look not only to that joint...