How to use your feet better to get rid of knee pain

People who walk barefoot rarely experience knee pain. Now there’s a clue.

Although, getting rid of knee pain is a big subject which really needs a whole book to do it justice, how you use your feet is a very important part of it.

So let’s look how you use your feet

Most people use their feet as though they were just plates of meat that they plonk down on the floor — and they expect that dead meat to hold them up.

Far from being dead meat, your feet are really very delicate organs. As such, they require plenty of brain power if they are to do their job properly. The best way to get into a mindful, joyful connection with your feet is learn how to apply the Tube Principle to them too.

How to apply the Tube Principle to your feet

Your feet have several natural arches that span the spaces between their support points. The support points of those natural arches are the pads of your toes, the balls of your feet and your heel.

Examining those arches gives you a big clue on how to apply the Tube Principle to your feet. You do remember the Tube Principle don’t you? (If, like most people, you find it difficult to understand, don’t despair, there’s help at the bottom of this article).

How does the Tube Principle apply to your feet?

In your feet, as everywhere, your tendency is to over-tighten the convex part of the bends in your body-tube. In your foot, the convex part is the top of your foot. Tightening the top of your foot, you bunch it up and that pulls up your toes and lifts your heels off the ground. It also splays out and flattens your arches. Then what happens?

What then happens is that you end up teetering around, precariously balanced on the balls of your feet. (I bet you don’t realise that’s what you really do but it is indeed what most people do).

From possessing a very well-designed foot architecture that gives you strength, grace and sensitivity in all your movements, you gradually degenerate into a heavy hulk, clumsily supported by stiff, lifeless plates of meat. Fortunately, you can reverse this degenerative tendency and re-acquire those marvels of natural design, real live feet — and the ease and fluidity that they can give you.

The ease and fluidity comes back when you apply the Tube Principle. Applying the Tube Principle to your feet is as easy as allowing the top of your foot to soften and spread. That softening and spreading means that you once again have two things: your weight mainly on your heels, and firm contact between the ground and the pads of your toes.

When you have that firm ground contact with your toes, the whole sole of your foot comes to life. We could say it becomes an integral part of your living soul (if you’ll forgive the pun).

For now, let’s look at what happens to your big toe.

Your big toe becomes a major pivot

It becomes a major pivot in all your foot movements. When you step forwards, the forwards movement of your knee peels your foot off the ground, heel first, leaving your toe to guide and control how your foot moves and where it lands next. When you move in this new way it becomes, for instance, virtually impossible to trip over a raised paving stone.

Do you not believe that it could become almost impossible to trip? Well it did so for me and it does so for my pupils too.

From this, you can see why it’s only recently that paving stones have become such a major tripping hazard. When there weren’t paving stones to trip over, our ancestors nimbly avoided jutting rocks, tree roots and rabbit holes. When paving stones arrived on the scene, even the raised ones were trivial to avoid in comparison with those obstacles. But now people have lost their feet and gained instead a couple of stiff pieces of dead meat. No wonder they trip up on anything and everything.

As your feet come alive again, your big toe starts to work even when you’re just standing or sitting. Your toe’s new aliveness guides your stationary leg and ankle into a better co-ordination. That better co-ordination then also requires your little toes to have an active, living contact with the ground.

That’s your toes. How about your heel? I have often mentioned that good balance requires most of your weight to fall through your heel. That remains absolutely true. What’s new is that you can now see that there’s more than just a simple balance between heel and the ball of your foot. Now that your turned up toes are turned up no longer, they’ve become a vital part of the balance of your living foot.

For your feet to come alive and work properly, you don’t only need fine motor control of them: you need acute sensitivity in them too.

Regaining feeling in the sole of your foot

Most people associate more sensitivity in the soles of their feet with discomfort when walking over stones.

Actually, the reverse is true, the more sensitive your feet become, the better they’ll be able to accommodate any sharp stones: your feet will adjust so that the stones no longer dig into them.

On a personal note, while I still find stony ground a little uncomfortable to walk barefoot on, it’s already a lot more comfortable than it used to be. What I’m sharing with you is still new to me, so I’m still finding out how much more pleasant it is to have sensitive, living feet.

You can’t appreciate how like dead pieces of meat your feet are until you see the difference when you let them come back to life. So start using the Tube Principle for your feet too. Start remembering to allow the tops of your feet to soften and spread. Then you can begin to share the exquisite pleasure of being more nimble on your feet.

Not to mention sorting out that awful knee pain as well.

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The Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique
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