How to Practice Yoga with an Ankle Injury with Michael Henri

0:00 You have chronic pain. That's usually from Scar Tissue. It's a built-up. It's basically it's an injury that's caused a different type of tissue to form which restricts mobility. And so, at the ankles, this can really come up with vajrasana when you're sitting on your feet, sitting on your heels. Welcome to the going pro yoga podcast, nugget series. My name is Michael Henry, and I'm Byron de Marseille in these short 15 minute episodes.

0:26 We're going to be answering some of the most common questions in the yoga industry. And so that you can walk away with the answers in a short period of time. That's right. Michael with each topic, that we choose will be discussing it from two different perspectives, the teacher, and the student. I'll be approaching these questions as a physiotherapist or physical therapist with over 10 years experience, treating some of the most common and complex injuries. And my guidance will be from the

0:48 perspective of having taught 7000 classes, roughly 10,000 hours over 10 years. Welcome to our podcast. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the going pro yoga, paws. Test, my name is Michael. Henry. I am your Anatomy specialist injury. Specialist guy that's going to tell you about the body and then across the table from me.

1:09 We have Byron de Marseille. And in this one we're introducing a series called the how to practice yoga with an injury and part one being talking about the ankle, which is what we're going to do today. So Byron, where should we start?

1:23 Well, we're starting with the feet because we like to build from the ground up as all sound structures are usually built. Starting with the ankle. Let's talk about set separate this into two sub categories will start with number one category, being as a student. In other words, if you hurt your ankle and you want to practice yoga, how are you gonna navigate through that class? And then we'll do a second subcategory of teaching yoga to people with an ankle injury and

1:52 how to communicate? What to maybe give little tidbits of advice and modifications things like that. So, Sounds perfect. Cool. Alright, so let's talk about the students perspective. So what is something to think about, what are some obvious situations or poses, possibly wear an ankle injury, might need to be considered. So we talked about maybe the compression force of, you know, maybe our body weight pushing into the ground in a funky position like even sitting in

2:18 kutsu Casa de or cross-legged position or something. Even like Lotus might be intense and the angle of the position of the foot and then just the pressure putting through it. Sometimes can be uncomfortable for some people especially if you Have an injury, whether it be an acute injury, a recent injury, or maybe a long-term, chronic injury.

2:35 So talking about the difference between those two situations. When you're talking about chronic, you're talking about scar tissue in the ankle. I've experienced this. So, fortunately, unfortunately, Michael and I both have experience with injuries, quite a few.

2:50 So we'll offer our personal experience. But then also at least Through My Lens, I'll give you the the teaching perspective there, multiple conversations over the years of Parts of the body that maybe I don't have experience with and also body types that are not my own.

3:05 So going back to the ankles, you have chronic pain, that's usually from Scar Tissue. It's a built-up. It's basically it's an injury that's caused different type of tissue to form which restricts Mobility. It creates kind of a good call. It patterns of movement that aren't natural. And so at the ankles this can really come up with vajra Asana when you're sitting on your feet. When you're in a sitting on your heels, this comes up. It also can come up in.

3:34 What Michael mentioned, cross-legged seated position like a double seated pigeon pose. He could come up there as well. But in those poses, you can flex your ankles. We're in this one. It's a passive stretch for your ankles.

3:46 So you're passively sitting on your feet, trying to stretch them. This if you're a little more knowledgeable about the, the yoga teaching and the anatomy of it upward facing dog, if you have restricted, Ability in your feet, that is affecting the whole back.

4:03 Bend the ability to straighten your elbows, how much the lumbar is going to curve. So if you can increase the mobility in your feet, it's actually going to increase the mobility in your spine. So, how do you, how do you deal with this? Michael?

4:18 I'm going to let you take over. You have a good philosophy on hurt versus something harm. Yeah, exactly. So talking about that, chronic condition where you have a long-standing injury. This extra tissue, which is kind of like Like a built-up connective tissue Scar Tissue, whatever you want to call it, that restricts that Mobility.

4:35 So if you're in these poses that by and was talking about with vajra Asana sitting on the heels or an upward facing dog with your feet, basically our Point toes pointing. So you're kind of resting on the top of your feet that can put a lot of extra pull on these potential Scar Tissue areas, which can be a little bit uncomfortable.

4:55 Sometimes it can feel like a sharp pain or can feel like you may be hurting yourself. So the question is, Do we know if it's hurting us or if it's harming us? Well, what's the difference between those two words? Hurting us is usually with regards to kind of a good sensation. And again, this is my perspective. My principal around it or not as a My principal, but I'm repeating it within the context of hurt. In this case means, you know, it's a good feeling in the sense that it's pushing you beyond a

5:18 certain limit, not so far of a limit where you're actually end up with harming yourself. So actually causing physical damage tissue damage to the area. So when it comes to doing, Movements or Mobility with regards to an ankle injury and it's a long-standing one and we have Scar Tissue built up in there.

5:35 We actually want to achieve that hurt perspective because we want to push ourselves a little bit to be able to create that space move that that facha around and ultimately break up some of that scar tissues to improve the mobility of our ankle.

5:48 Which ultimately will improve our own physical practice and just general day-to-day moving. Right. Awesome. Very helpful, and I can now speak from experience of someone who has broken through the scar. Shoot in their ankles. A lot of athletes like myself.

6:04 I've sprained their ankles. So I come to yoga, and I think it was a Budokan class actually know if, you know this, but Cameron Shane and just in case, you know, you know, Budokan the inventor of it, the Creator, he has, you sit on your feet and body Asana for ten minutes about ten minutes before you do anything else. And I was at year into my yoga practice. At that point.

6:24 This is Martial Arts, yoga flow. So it's very yoga like but with very strong martial arts. Like, movements in approach and the discipline of sitting on my feet was gonna be unattainable for more than two minutes. Maybe one minute, at a time.

6:38 I would stand up on my knees. Look around the room and wonder how the heck people did. That wasn't until I'm gonna go with like four years ago. That I really cracked my feet open. I had a teacher named Skyler, Grant. Thank you, Skyler, creator of Wanderlust Wanderlust festivals and Studios.

6:55 She really took me on as a project and looked at my body and was like, Scar Tissue, you can fix that. So, I did it was very painful. It didn't happen in one set session. It happened in my own regular practice by sitting on my feet and veg Asana by focusing on opening the tops of my feet in upward facing dog and essentially any pose that could think of even lifting my heels just getting mobility. And my feet toe balancing pose, things like that. Okay.

7:22 So that's the scar tissue conversation The Chronic. Now, let's go to the fresh injury, the fresh ankle injury, the acute and actually, Right. Before we jump into that. I just want to mention something with regards to tackling that hurt versus harm concept with regards to scar tissue.

7:38 Or those chronic injuries is understanding or learning about the hurt versus harm principle, even though I talked about it very quickly. This is something that takes time for you to kind of learn and understand so that when you're actually doing these movements, particularly if it's chronic you shouldn't have so much of an issue because you're going to be moving towards that hurt.

7:54 But at the same time, if it is chronic, you could be pushing a little bit too far and moving into that. Harm territory. So how do we know the difference between the two? Well, this is the thing. I can teach you that, we can't talk about it through a podcast.

8:06 This is something you're going to need to intuitively, download and learn from yourself a little bit. By testing your own boundaries and knowing what your limits are. So that's something that I encourage you to tune into particularly, when you do have an injury and playing around with it being safe, but not too safe. But that being said, moving into an acute injury. We're going to be approaching these movements, these poses, these things with a little bit

8:29 more. Safety because it's still fresh. It's still a little bit raw. So, where should we go from? Well, I think, and now you pointed it out. Fresh injury needs time to heal. So if you're dead set on practicing and the first, you have to make that decision, should I practice, or should I not practice and my better resting? Let's go into that analogy of a wounded animal with the wounded animal do yoga that day.

8:53 Probably not as a joke, right? The wooden animals going to go, rest. And so, To decide that for yourself. If you're not going to rest, how are you going to cope with turning your foot flat on the ground? For, let's say, warrior to any warrior pose for Yerba Johnson has 12 where you turn especially if you're angling the foot slightly in like a lot of us are queuing and Warrior one. That's putting a lot of pressure on your ankle. How are you going to seal the

9:21 edges of your feet and grip with muscles that are so tender inflamed and sensitive. So my advice is stay with crescent. And if you're dead set on practicing Crescent being neutral foot, so you're not angling the toes at all. They're facing forward or even the lowest lunge with your knee on the ground on Janae Asana.

9:42 You could just skip that completely with the, with the foot Distortion. This is going to affect you in your skin Dawson has when you're bending one knee, a lot in the wide straddle and coming down to your ankle. Normally, you might not even use your hands to do that.

9:57 If you're going to do it, just go slow, use. Hurt, you know, helpful and hurtful principal. Sorry, I butchered that hurt versus harm hurt versus harm principle that Michael. So, eloquently described a second ago. You can use that here to you don't, but in a way where you're not going for hurt at.

10:13 All, right, stay away from hurt. 1 million percent as we're with the chronic Scar Tissue, you have to get through the scar tissue. You have to actually find a little bit of hurt. That's that's the most quick information. I can give on the ankles.

10:30 Yeah, and that's from the students perspective, for sure, and just to speak on the acute part is very clearly. And as you put like, we don't really want to push it, right? Even something as like balancing on one foot when it's an acute injury. Meaning, its recent.

10:44 It was in within the last, you know, depending on how bad it is a couple days, couple weeks, maybe even month if it's still fresh and raw, you know, and there's swelling down in there, putting any kind of additional pressure, whether it be like scanned, Asana or sitting on the Heels, like, in vajra Asana, that extra pressure is going to add in addition to the pressure from the swelling and just cause an irritation.

11:07 We don't want to do that. So we're not chasing hurt here. We're chasing more caution when it comes to ankle acute injuries. So if you do want to practice, you can totally jump into that. It's just the mountain. Maybe not jump into it, but you can, you can move into it a little bit more gracefully and just recognize what your limitations are and being okay, with moving out, or, you know, sitting out on a few things and not actually practicing some of

11:27 the poses. If you're in a class. Or if you're just doing it at home yourself, you can just, you know, Skip those things. You can still practice yoga with an ankle injury. Just keeping in mind. You know, what you're actually doing with your ankle.

11:39 And the last thing I'll say about it is just that the warrior poses I think is important, generally speaking and I'm going to say nine times out of ten when someone has an ankle injury. It's because they rolled it pretty straightforward. They roll.

11:51 So that the the bottom of their foot moves towards the inside of their bodies or towards the midline. So they're rolling on the outside of their foot. That's, I would say, nine times at a Most people's ankle injuries to some degree. So if this doesn't apply to you then, you know, you can you can assume that this isn't the same with regards to the anatomy. But ultimately, when you roll onto the outside of your foot, you're going to be pulling a tendon on that side of the foot. So you can imagine when you're

12:17 putting your foot back into Warrior Two or, you know, reverse war or whatever, any of those types of poses, where your foots, basically, in that same position, except you're just not rolling on the outside. You're just putting the pressure on the outside of the foot. So that's going to put a little bit of tension on that, ligament there and we don't really necessarily need to do that when it's an acute injury because it's already a little bit tender.

12:36 It's a little bit fragile. So that's why we'd probably want to either avoid that altogether or maybe just shorten the stance. So, the pressure on that external or the outside of the ankle isn't quite as intense. And that being said, with regards to balancing poses.

12:50 Ultimately. It's just a stability thing, right? You're going to be balancing on one foot and you have a recent ankle injury, maybe a little bit of swelling in their your overall stability, balance and Proprioception which is a big fancy word for just a sense of awareness of where your body is or your limbs are within space and time is affected. So balancing on one foot balancing in general, will be affected.

13:12 So if you are with an ankle injury, that is a cute. Maybe you don't balance on that one foot or at least for not very, for very long, because you might start to feel a little bit of strain or hurt potentially even harm, and we want to avoid those in this situation. Yeah, and I was just, I'm glad you brought that up just to finish off the, the student perspective. Practicing with an ankle injury.

13:31 My experience with my heard ankles is a little bit of that one-legged balancing stuff. Seems good. It's like, it's tightening up places that might protect the vulnerable parts of my ankle. So if you're wanting to Target the ankle, not just practice for the rest of your body, and your mind and the purposes of yoga. But to actually focus on the ankle and helping it. I would consider a little bit of balancing on one. Leg is good.

13:56 Not big poses. Stay away from, you know, thinking Warrior 3 is dancer and think more of long, the lines of tree pose things like that. Okay, amazing. Okay. So now let's move into from the teachers perspective, talking about the ankles and how to kind of approach that situation to be honest.

14:15 It's probably pretty quick conversation. And I think it's basically basically helpful, if, you know, beforehand, if someone has an injury and the only way you can do that, is if someone actually approaches you before class and mentions to you. Hey, I have an ankle injuries.

14:26 There's something I need to know something, I need to do. Can I even take Take your class. So on and so forth. So you have that Insider information. Now, you can apply to your class. So if you're going through and you're planning on starting and bajra Asana sitting on the ankles, and you know, that this person has a recent ankle injury and they're concerned about it.

14:43 You can just say a modification. So we're going to start in, Fajr Asana sitting on your heels. If you have an ankle injury, sit on a block or a bolster, or you can sit in sukhasana. Boom. Not only does the student going to feel seen and heard, but you're going to protect them from that perspective of the injury, and I think that's really Important and helpful if you get that Insider information, but otherwise, how else would we be able to support

15:05 someone with, you know, ankle injuries recent and or old I think is probably the more so related to maybe using some props encouraging use of props generally speaking. If you can't speak directly to that person. Yep, I'd say get creative with the props.

15:18 The blocks are huge. When it comes to any seated position. You want to give them Alternatives. So if you're in a hip opener, that their ankles really messed up and it's a fresh injury, even pigeon pose. This is too much not going to be able to do pigeon on lie on your back right be creative lie on your back. No pressure on the feet whatsoever cross your right ankle over your left knee, thread the needle pigeon pose. So mostly that's the conversation you're having with these students.

15:45 Keep your eye on them. Make sure they're not cringing at the face. Not pushing through something. They shouldn't be for not, not everyone will be able to turn their foot to Warrior Two. Some people will be able to some people Crescent toes. Might be a little more painful than In the foot depends, on the way.

16:00 The injury is on the ankle. That being said, keep your eyes on your students and use nurturing language. Right? Let them know not to push through this. Use your language, you know, compassion. Try to put yourself in their shoes. You've been there before they really want to have this great class.

16:16 They think that accomplishing. Everything you say is going to give them this experience of Enlightenment. Let them know. That's not the way to do it. Okay, perfect. All right. Well that wraps that up for this, how to practice.

16:29 Yoga with an injury series part 1 ankles. Thank you so much for listening. Everyone. Have a beautiful beautiful day and we'll see you next time.