How Iyengar yoga helped this 68-year-old Hong Kong man overcome ‘end-stage’ knee arthritis
Reynaldo Espineli took up Iyengar yoga after crippling knee pain and a stage-four osteoarthritis diagnosis. Now he’s got his mobility back
A diagnosis of “end-stage” osteoarthritis usually signals the termination of an active life: the end of mobility, the inevitability of surgery and the narrowing of life’s possibilities. But Reynaldo Espineli was not going to let it slow him down.
The 68-year-old Hong Kong finance professional has spent the last two years proving that severe bone-on-bone joint degeneration does not have to spell physical decline.
In his coming book, The Fifth Stage: Living Beyond Stage Four Osteoarthritis, Espineli shares a view rarely heard from the doctor’s office – a deeply personal blueprint for outmanoeuvring a debilitating diagnosis and reclaiming a full, active life.
“Stage-four osteoarthritis is not the end. It is a threshold. Beyond it lies a lived stage, the fifth stage, where degeneration remains, yet inhabitation widens,” Espineli says.
Movement from an early age
Originally from the Philippines, Espineli was raised in San Diego, California, and has called Hong Kong home for more than three decades.