Step 2 - Beer Bottle Reflexology

Many people, like me, suffer from restless leg (muscle over-use), foot, knee, and lower back stress from sports, repetitive use and injuries. About a year after my lower back injury, I began working in a warehouse on concrete floors... within 6 months both my knees swelled and were so stiff and painful I couldn't kneel. I felt an exceeding amount of pain in my feet (between the concrete and competitive dancing); and I remembered a trick my sister (the college track star) taught me, using a frozen water bottle. Instead I used glass bottles, beer bottles being the perfect size to get a good stretch on the arch.

Sitting or standing, with as much weight as you can put on it, start out with long strokes rolling from toe to heel.

It doesn't feel like much to begin with, but after 90 seconds you'll start to feel the odd spots in your foot that are tense. Then start doing shorter, quicker strokes on those areas.

Then start rolling along the outer side of the foot in long, slow strokes.
Then on the inner side of the arch, heel to toe - feeling for those tight spots, and working them out with short strokes.





 give yourself about 5-15 minutes (I often do it while sitting at the computer - like right now), or however long you feel like. As soon as you stand on your foot again, you'll notice an immediate difference.

For me, within 3 days of doing this twice a day for a couple of minutes, and getting the pharmacy arch supports, the swelling and pain in my knees went down, and the pain I usually endured from dancing went away. No pain-killers, who'da thought!?

Since I mentioned restless muscles, I wanted to say that I only ever suffer from it when I stop stretching on a regular basis. The quick fix is bathing in icy-hot, but it is not nearly as affective as spending a few minutes in a seated forward fold... but! more on that later.