Walking Away From Knee Pain.

The knee is composed of two bones (the femur and the tibia) balancing on one another and lashed in place on all sides bymuscles and connective tissue. It is the only weight-bearing joint in the body with this design. And that makes the kneeprone to arthritis, injuries, and pain.

While it is important to check with your doctor about any suspected knee injury or long-lasting pain to rule out serious damage to the knee, effective treatment may not necessarily need to focus on the knee joint.

"Often, the conventional medical approach to treating knee pain is to focus attention solely on the area that hurts the knee itself," says Sharon Butler, a certified practitioner of Hellerwork (a structural bodywork and movement therapy) in Paoli, Pennsylvania. "Proper pain-free function of the knee relies on the balance of all muscles, tendons, and ligaments that wrap the knee joint. When one or more of these elements is tighter or more restricted than the others, knee pain is often the result."

Butler first evaluates the alignment and balance of the ankle joints. "If the ankle joints do not support the weight of the body evenly, by rolling either inward (pronation) or outward (supination), the bone of the lower leg becomes twisted, leading to strain in the soft tissues at the knee joint. This leaves the knee at particular risk for injury, especially in sports activities that put unusual strain on the knees, such as tennis, basketball, and jogging.”

When ankle alignment problems are evident, Butler often chooses the following exercise to teach her patients how to walk properly and to help restore balance to the soft tissues of the knee.

EXERCISE: Walk a Tightrope On the Floor
"This exercise helps align the ankle over the foot and the knee over the ankle, eliminating the type of structural misalignment that can cause knee pain," says Butler.
Find a place in your home that has a long, unobstructed area without any turns, such as a long hallway or a large room. Put two parallel lines of masking tape 6 inches apart on the floor.
In your bare feet, walk on the lines of tape. As you take each step, align the center of each heel and the second toe of each foot with the inner edge of the tape. Just walk back and forth for 5 minutes two or three times a day, recommends Butler.
"This gently corrects knee pain by educating you in a walking style that transfers weight more appropriately through the knee joint/' she says.

WALKING: Watch Your Step
When you're out for a walk, look down every once in a while to see how your feet are "tracking," says Butler. Are your toes pointing outward (a common habit)? Consciously use the foot position that you use when you "walk the tightrope," she says.

REFLEXOLOGY: Treat the Knee Reflex Point
Your feet have many reflex points, each of which corresponds to a particular part of the body. "Stimulating a reflex point with a therapeutic-grade essential oil can relieve pain in the corresponding body part," says Terri Moon, a certified massage technician and director of Touched by the Moon holistic health center in Santa Rosa, California.
To find the knee reflex point, run a finger down the outside edge of your foot. You'll encounter a protruding bony area midway between your heel and little toe; the reflex point is right below that spot on the bottom of the foot.
For ligament pain, mix one drop of lemongrass essential oil with four to five drops of vegetable oil. Or, to regenerate nerve tissue, Moon suggests substituting geranium oil for the lemongrass.

On the foot on the same side as your painful knee, put a drop of the oil mixture on the knee reflex point and rub it in by gently rolling your fingertips over the oil, advises Moon. If you have trouble finding the reflex point, you can apply the diluted oil all over your foot.
Use the oil once or twice a day until the pain is gone. After a few days, the pain should be gone for good.

ACUPRESSURE: Keep Your Knee Pain-Free
An acupressure point in the middle of the crease in the back of the knee, called the commanding middle point, or BL54, releases a lot of inflammation from knee injuries, speeds healing, and helps prevent subsequent injuries in people who have already injured a knee, says Alexander Majewski, a licensed massage therapist and director of the Acupressure Institute of Alaska in Juneau.

"The results I've been getting with this point are tremendous," he says. "I treat a lot of snowboarders, who twist and turn more than most folks and usually run into knee problems. When they use this point, their injuries heal more quickly, and they're less likely to reinjure themselves."

To find the point, bend your knee and place your thumb in the crease located exactly between the two sides of the knee. Apply firm, steady pressure not so hard that it's painful but not so gently that you don't feel
it for 30 to 60 seconds. You can also use your fingertips to rub gently in small circles around the area of the point. You should treat the points onboth knees. Majewski recommends doing this throughout the day as needed to relieve discomfort.