If you have stiffness in your ankles or pain in the arch of your foot, this article is for you!

My client Pat had told me about the pain that ran from her hip to her foot.  We had worked on the muscles of her lower back and hip in previous sessions because those muscles can “refer” pain into the foot.

Those muscles can also press on the nerves that run to your foot.  Releasing or relaxing the low back and hip muscles can get rid of foot pain.

That helped but when she came in again, she still had some pain in her foot and a bit of the old uncomfortable sensation in her hip and leg.

Well, sometimes your pain comes “from the bottom up.”  Sometimes it comes “from the top down.”  I got a sneaking suspicion that maybe the pain in her leg and hip was coming from her foot.

So here’s what I did.  I had Pat lay on her back and I sat at the foot of the massage table.  I warmed the muscles and tissues around her foot and ankle with pressure and rubbing (massage.)

And then I began pressing into the areas where her arch muscles attach to bones.

Yee-ow!  Tender!

I worked my way around the painful foot and ankle, on top of her foot and underneath.  I pressed into the long tendons that attach way up toward the outer side of her knee.  And since she also had complaints of a different sort on her other foot, I applied some massage and pressure to parts of that foot and lower leg, too.

Even as we were working, Pat said she could not believe the difference.  She said she used to rotate her feet years ago but they had become stiff and she could no longer move them.

Now she could. 🙂

You can do your own foot and lower leg massage if you can get into a comfortable position.  Or, you can go to a professional massage therapist who understands where the attachments for your muscles are.

There’s a self-help trigger point book by Claire Davies available at Amazon or your local library.  It will help you understand which muscles are causing your foot pain and where you can press (and how) to get relief.

You will find a Massage Category here with info about how to find a massage therapist who can help you.

You can also use a tennis ball or golf ball or similar ball to press into your arch.  Look in the Foot Pain Category for more information on that.

Now that Pat’s ankles no longer felt stiff, she was rotating them around and around.  I reminded her to do that daily to keep them in that condition.

You can rotate your ankles in circles.  You can apply pressure to your arch with a ball.  But, in my opinion, NOTHING helps relax your muscles and get them back to normal faster than a good therapeutic massage or working directly with your muscles.

P.S.  Did I remember to tell you that I LOVE therapeutic massage? 😉  So do muscles!