Ah, lotus, the great tormentor, Destroyer Of Knees, He Who Feeds Egos Or Consumes Them in their quest for perfection. This pose is a cause of frustration and vexation to every yoga teacher.

Why? Because everyone seems to want to do this pose. Here’s the thing – not everyone can do this pose. It’s a really nice stretch, when you’re ready for it. It opens the hip and feels quite comfortable and nice. But when you’re not, when your hip isn’t open enough to bring to foot in to place, the knee will start to take it.

I had a student that felt he should be doing this pose when it was obvious to me that he shouldn’t. Every day he’d come in to mysore class and try to put his leg in to lotus. Every day I’d scold him and tell him not to. The next day he might listen, but a week later there he’d be again, trying to jam that foot in to place.

I gave him innumerable lectures about this.
"Your hip isn’t open enough yet," I’d say, "if you keep pushing it in there, and the hip can’t turn any more, the only way for the foot to get in to place is for the knee to start turning."

"I know, I need to stretch my knee." He’d respond.

"No. You don’t. You do not want to stretch your knee to get it into this. If you do that you won’t be able to walk a year from now." I tried to explain to him why this is, the damage he could do to himself by continuing to force his leg in place. He’d listen patiently and nod. A week later, there he’d be, jamming it in place again. He just wanted it so badly, he thought that if he pushed hard enough maybe it wouldn’t hurt any more, or it wouldn’t matter if it did.

Well. Eventually his knees started hurting even when he wasn’t doing yoga. He told me about this.

"Yeah, well, that’s what I told you would happen, isn’t it?"
"Yes, but-"
"Maybe you should stop doing yoga until we can get your hips open a little more, huh?"

I’ve gone through this same process with a number of people. It seems that sometimes we just need to learn something for ourselves before we’re willing to take it to heart. Which is fair enough, but still, I’d recommend taking the easy route. If your ego is so concerned with lotus that this doesn’t sound appealing, consider the fact that if you really do want to do lotus, working on hip flexibility until you’re ready for the full pose is going to be the fastest way to get you there anyway.

Or you can screw up your knees…