Today I had an emergency phone call from a dear friend who said she was at work and the pain in her knee and ankle was at a 7 on a scale of 1-10. She is deeply involved in moving her office to another building: packing, carrying, sorting, etc., and she didn’t have the time to be in agony (who DOES have time to be in agony!).
She didn’t have her car so I picked her up (she is a friend after all) and drove her to my office. She told me that her knee felt like it was totally out of joint and the outside of her ankle was on fire. She started to cry when all I did was touch her thigh muscle – this is the muscle that normally causes knee pain, and when I lightly touched her lower leg, her sobs were heart-wrenching. I knew I needed to treat the muscles, but it was so difficult to cause a friend pain that I wanted to stop. I didn’t, but it sure wasn’t fun for me either.
It took a bit of exploring since no matter where I touched her, it caused horrible pain. Yipes!! So, I asked my Source to direct my hands, and closed my eyes…and I found that I was soon asking her to lie on her “good” side so I could treat her painful side. I found multiple spasms that felt like jelly-bean size bumps all along the outside of her thigh, and her lower leg felt like one solid mass with no give at all. But the biggest pain was when I touched a muscle named Tensor Fascia Lata (TFL) which is on the very outside of the hip, right where the side-seam and pocket of your pants would be. When I put my fingers on her TFL she screamed (trying to muffle it, but it still was sharp enough to startle me) with the pain.
I found a spasm that was truly as hard and as big as a carrot going across the entire muscle. It was so painful that for a long time I simply had my fingers across the spasm, trying to send some warmth into the fibers. Then gently rubbing in a circular pattern, trying to melt that huge spasm. I alternated between her hip (TFL), her lateral quadriceps, and her entire lower leg. Initially it was like massaging blocks of wood, but gradually the muscles started to soften. The TFL is well-documented as referring pain along the entire outside of the leg, into the lateral knee, and then right down the outside of the leg and into the outside of the ankle. This was exactly my friends pain-pattern.
It took over an hour to soften the muscle fibers, but they did finally release. I suggested that my friend get some arnica gel to rub on the muscles when she got home, and some Epsom Salts so she could soak in a hot bath to draw the H+ toxins out of her muscles.
I’m telling you all of this so if you, or someone you know, ever have severe pain and burning in this area.you’ll know what to do. Start gentle, don’t go for the gold, pretend that you are working on rock hard taffy that needs to be made soft and pliable.
We can’t eliminate the pain while we’re working on the muscle fibers, so start of very light and gradually build up pressure – but no pointed pressure, only full and flat hand pressing down into the muscle.
I’m really happy to say that my friend felt 90% better – the other 10% will come from continuing the self-treatments I showed her, soaking in the Epsom Salts bath, and frequently rubbing arnica all over the muscle. I hope you never experience the pain my friend was having, but if you do, you’ll know what to do about it.
Wishing you well,
Julie