Hello Mukunda… Thank you again for making yourself so accessible for inquiry… I have a student, young male about 30 or so, who just underwent a medial meniscotomy… about 10% of a flapping piece of meniscus/cartilage removed using arthroscopic surgery…the surgery happened on Wednesday, October 23rd and he has now been back practicing for one week. He feels gluteus react. What he finds helps the knee is to stretch the muscle chain from the minimus, to the IT band. The initial injury occurred about two years ago while in India attempting janusirsanasa …he has already underwent surgery for it…any suggestions on helpful hip openers or whatever else would be most helpful. Thank you again … namaste d
D - It is not clear from your writing what he feels in his body. This is always important starting point with making personalized recommendations. Know and understand anatomically what they feel and make sense of what helps and what doesn’t. Surgery for medial meniscus is often a sign of tightness in the lateral thigh especially at the IT band of the tensor fascia lata. Optimal is to check for normal range of motion of internal and external hip rotation. Lacking this openness at the hip rotators causes stress and pulling in the connective tissues at the knee. In general this is hip abduction strength and hip abduction stretches – poses that do this are the closed hip standing poses of Virabhadrasana I and Parsvottanasana; Gomukhasana – face of light/cow; and Parivritta janusirsanasa. The aim is to generate the specific feelings described above in those poses. If the poses do not generate these feelings then variations must be used. The concept is to adapt the poses to the student not the other way around. Namaste Mukunda