Pain Below Kneecap With Seiza Bench

[Jan Odvarko]

Hello everyone!

My daily schedule includes two hour-long sits on a seiza bench. Recently my knees started to hurt outside the meditation periods every time I stand, with the pain being located just below the kneecap. I tried to put some padding below my shins so that the knees don't touch the ground, but the pain returned. Maybe it's the thighs pressing on the knees causing the bones to be slightly dislocated even after meditation. I don't know.

This quite worries me, I don't wan't to permanently injure my knees. I always believed seiza to be one of the safest postures, but now I'm not that sure.

Any similar experiences or advices?

Thank you!

[Leo Gura]

Use more padding. But those benches are pretty uncomfortable no matter what after 2 hours straight.

[Markus]

I used to sit on a kind of a custom-made seiza bench, where I'd put two large couch pillows on both sides, and a plank to sit on in between them. It started hurting my knees, and no matter what sort of padding I used, it kept getting worse. Then I tried going back to cross-legged or burmese lotus but both hurt my knees as well, though they really hadn't before. My knees were really bad for like a month, with sharp pain on the inside, as well as occasionally below the knee cap or on the anterior. 

I imagine my problem was with the medial meniscus. Essentially, if some muscles are too tight, the shin gets pushed sideways, resulting in the meniscus being twisted between the thigh and shin bone. It's definitely not worth it to continue sitting on a seiza bench if you have joint pain - I imagine it could fuck your knees up pretty bad. 

It would probably help to work on bettering the external rotation of the hip joint, as well as foam-rolling your leg muscles. The pain with strong determination sitting is obviously bad regardless but if you're specifically experiencing joint pain, it's an indicator you're damaging the body.

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

It's one of the most damaging postures to the knees but for some people it works. Most of us arent Japanese so we haven't learned to sit like that since we where fucking 5 so don't worry if it dosn't work for you.