Yoga Poses or exercises for bowed legs correction

Hello naquadaq (C!)

I have had success with an approach with people with your issue of bowleggedness and also with folks who are pigeon-toed.

It has to do with addressing the muscular imbalance in the legs and hips (as requested in your post!) and applying it to certain poses or movements.

May I ask you what yoga you are practising? Is it the Bikram or similar hot yoga series? It will help me directionalise the answer. If you don’t then I will have a tad more explaining to do (that’s OK!).

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Naquadaq

Hot yoga mostly has static poses where it’s easy to do what I will suggest below. Maybe you could be inspired to attend a hot yoga class! Who knows?

Get yourself a foam yoga block, not a wooden one. The block will be positioned between your knees. As the block is rectangular there are 2 distances apart your legs can be. Make sure your feet are positioned at the same distance as your knees.

The ideal pose to try this is with Utkatasana or Awkward pose. This is a 3 part pose in the Bikram or static hot yoga series. Please take a look at this photograph of part 1 of this pose.

You are going to need more instruction for this pose. There are 3 parts. In each part you would put the block between your knees and squeeze your knees for the duration. Parts 1 and 2 I would put the block at its longest length between the knees. Over time you would see if you could get more advantage by rotating the block to its narrower orientation. For Part 3 I would try it at its narrowest (particularly because of your bowleggedness). I do have some resources for you to look at. In order for me to give you all the details of how to do this pose it would take a tremendous amount of description. The idea is that you would find an equalisation of muscle use.

I don’t like directing people in the forum to purchase anything but on rare occasion I find it is the best thing. If you feel comfortable with the above advice then I do have an app with visual and onscreen written instruction. It’s inexpensive. You can navigate directly to the pose (Awkward or Utkatasana) and learn it (and maybe learn other poses too!). You will see how the pose is done and see how to avoid mistakes. You would add the block in as described above. You will note I do have a book with step-by-step instructions for all the poses with even more detail but honestly at this stage, unless you are going to explore more of the series, then the app will give you sufficient detail for the time being! 🙂

If you need more instruction than that then please come back here. The images on this app will be superior to me describing what to do, simply because you are not familiar with the poses, and the Utkatasana pose I am talking about is different to Utkatasana in other styles. There is great advantage in seeing the images on the app as the technique on the photos is correct and if mistakes are shown then that is clearly marked with a red ‘X’.

I know this technique has helped other people before and I have even helped people with a similar approach (with a slight variation) for those with ‘knock knees’.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂