The osteopath gets her hands on my feet

The last time I went to see my osteopath, Jane Kaushal of Hands On Health, she seemed rather keen to get her hands on my feet!

I felt too nervous last time, but in the last fortnight my feet seem to have improved a lot so I thought that yesterday I'd allow her to have a go at them.

Because the orthotics woman had really hurt my left foot (see this post for details) Jane decided just to look at my right foot.

She massaged the arch of the foot, or more specifically, the plantar fascia muscle that runs under the foot. I know that muscle is really tight as just pressing on it with my finger is painful, so it was good to have her expert hands on it.

She spent a few minutes on it at the end of my usual session, so it was only a quick massage, but it made a big difference - my feet felt really different afterwards.

Encouragingly, Jane said she felt that my midfoot was much more flexible than she had expected. I'm hoping this is because I've been doing my exercises and looking after my feet, but it may simply be because I am highly flexible.

The midfoot is the blue section in this picture. The grey section is the bit of the foot up to where the toes start, which I guess is called the forefoot, and the white bit is is the toes. I assume medical people also call those toes, lol. (You can read about foot anatomy here.)




I have borrowed this picture from this website. If you click on the link, you may notice, as I did, that the foot used in the video on the page has a bunion! They are EVERYWHERE and I plan to do a post on that at some point as the more I look at feet in magazines and images, the more I see bunions.

But I digress.

So, Jane was generally happy with how my feet are recovering, which is great to hear as I really respect and value her opinion. I also plan to let her loose on my feet again, and hopefully both of them, as it made a big difference to my right foot and I think will help speed my recovery.

So far, my recommendations for good recovery are:

Decent trainers (*sad face*)

Toe spacers

Exercises (see here and here)

Physiotherapy

Osteopathy

Plenty of rest for the first weeks/months

Gentle mobilisation when you are ready

And most important - LISTEN TO YOUR BODY and do what it tells you. Don't push it too far.

One final point. Jane felt it was important for me to spend some time without the spacers in. I do already take them out at night (keep meaning to post about that) but now I'm going to incorporate some spacer-free time in the day too, and walk around without them. Jane said it would help with the muscle mobility, which may be hindered by using the spacers all day. (Jane, if you're reading and I've not explained that very well, feel free to email me a better explanation I can post on here.)