Knee anatomy
Your knee is made up of three functional parts. The medial and lateral parts where the femur of the upper leg meets the tibia of the lower leg and the patella or knee cap. All these areas have their own articular cartilage and are all enclosed by a common joint capsule. Muscles and ligaments surround the knee, giving it great stability and strength.
The patella and quadriceps
The patella is attached to both the top and bottom of your knee. It is encased by your quadriceps muscles and its main function is to protect the quadriceps tendon. When your knee moves this tendon slides in a groove located at the front of your knee. It’s like a rope in a pulley. The femur meets your knee at an angle which pulls your patella laterally (to the outside). The quadriceps muscle vastus medialis has the job of counteracting the lateral pull to stabilize the patella so that it will glide in its proper groove. Studies have shown that if you experience pain in your knee, your quadriceps will switch off, the vastus medialis being the first to give up. It’s too painful to bend and flex the knee, so they don’t want to do it. Without this muscle to bring your patella back to the centre where its groove is, it will be grinding away making grooves where there shouldn’t be grooves.
Knee pain
If there is a dysfunction in your muscular recruitment anywhere above or below your knee, excess stresses are being put on your ligaments, muscles and tendons where the bone surfaces meet. If you have one side of your body stronger than the other, one side will be doing more work than the other. This may be creating a twisting effect up through your torso up through your hip, shoulders and neck. Or it could be making your ankle and feet work harder to stabilize each step. You might think that having feet pointing outwards is normal, but it shows that some muscles are not doing their job.
Treating knee pain with pain source release
Whatever the cause of your knee pain, if you can find and activate areas of your body that are not working as they should, pressure will be taken off your knee joint. To treat a painful knee, I would hold your knee and, keeping the pressure on, allow the tissue around your knee to relax and move. As I feel your body soften and move, I can then follow your tightness either above or below your knee. I will rotate your leg gently and hold it where it is tight and allow you to recognize and change your tightness. I sit and hold an area for a long time because it gives you a chance to recognize your own restrictions and what you need to do to correct it. If you change just one thing naturally, your whole body can then belong to that change and continue to improve.
Whatever problem I present with, by the end of the treatment I always feel relief. The improvement continues over the next 24 to 48 hours. You often realise over the next week or so that the nagging pain or weakness that was constantly there is now gone.