Cortisone injections for knee pain in the news

This common pain treatment for knee pain is now shown to cause faster arthritis progression, plus it's only a very temporary solution. In my experience, bioengineering healing for knee pain can bring long-lasting relief.

I treated my first meditation injury today ...

I've treated all manner of injuries before, including rollerblading, martial arts, and even yoga injuries, but never before have I run across an injury sustained in meditation. It was a repetitive stress injury, caused by using a clicker to count the times the meditator said "om mani padme hum".

It presented as a pain in the upper arm and caused the meditator to be unable to raise her left arm beyond shoulder height. The pain was persistent and dull, and became sharp as she tried to lift her arm.

Immediately after I began treatment, the pain moved down the client's arm, and located itself in her wrist. Pain moving during bioenergy treatment is a good sign. Bioenergy practitioners maintain that pain is caused by "stuck" energy, and conclude that pain moving during treatment signifies a movement of energy.

After a few more minutes of treatment, the pain moved up to the elbow, and consolidated there. At that point I commented that it was like tennis elbow, and jokingly asked the client if she had been playing much tennis lately. She laughed and said "no", and then asked herself what she had been doing that might have caused the repetitive stress injury we call tennis elbow. Within minutes out came the clicker, and she tested it, and concluded that it was the root of her problem. I then treated the tennis elbow, and within about 15 minutes the client said her arm felt normal. She was even able to raise it above her head without pain.

I love this work.

If you are reading this ...

If you are reading this post, it's either because you found your way to it on the internet or because someone who cares about has directed you to it. You most likely have knee pain, probably severe enough that it's interfering with your life. You may have difficulty getting up or sitting down without supporting your weight with your hands, going up or down stairs, of even walking. The pain may be sharp or dull, intermittent or, as one of my clients put it, "like a permanent toothache". You may have consulted a professional such as a doctor or a physiotherapist, or both. You may have had cortisone injections that gave short-term relief. You may now be waiting for a knee replacement and worrying about it, most likely about the chance of a negative outcome, the length of the recovery, and the cost.

No matter what stage you are at, I can help. As a bioenergy therapist I have made many knees feel better. The best part of bioenergy therapy is that it doesn't have to be hands on -- it can be long distance. So long as we connect, on Skype or by phone, I can work with you. You will know right after the first session whether it worked, because if it has, there will be noticeable change. Generally I recommend four sessions. Some people need fewer, some more.

Feel free to browse through this blog to see what is possible, and then if you want, get in touch. Your first session is by donation, so you really have nothing to lose but your pain!

See also the story of three clients who lost their knee pain.

Shout it from the roof-tops: "Up To A Third Of Knee Replacements Pack Pain And Regret"

Here is the link to the article, and here the meat-and-potatoes part of the article:

Research suggests that up to one-third of those who have knees replaced continue to experience chronic pain, while 1 in 5 are dissatisfied with the results. A study published last year in the BMJ found that knee replacement had “minimal effects on quality of life,” especially for patients with less severe arthritis.

The article references a study entitled "Impact of Total Knee Replacement Practice". The study concludes:

The practice of total knee replacement as performed in a recent US cohort of patients with knee osteoarthritis had minimal effects on quality of life. If the procedure were restricted to patients with more severe functional status, however, its effectiveness would rise.

There are supposed to be 3.5 million knee replacements a year by 2030. A third of those patients, more than 1.1 million people, will continue to experience chronic pain. That's insane. Surely I can help a few thousand of them not to need this painful and expensive procedure in the first place!

Read my post How You Get Chronic Knee Pain.

Three grateful clients who lost their knee pain

Liz is a life-long boater who will be turning 80 next year. She developed a sharp pain in her knee that made it difficult for her to get on and off the dock and her boat. Bioenergy treatments made the pain lessen to the point that it was almost non-existent, but she had to come back one more time because she stepped "wrong" and the pain returned. After this last treatment worked, she did not need any more for the rest of the summer. It helped that she figured out the movement that made her knee "go out" and changed the way she exited her boat.

Joyce is in her seventies. She learned to live with her knee pain because her doctor told her that it was osteoarthritis that could only be relieved by painkillers and cured through a knee replacement. It was particularly painful for her to do stairs. Immediately after her first bioenergy treatment she was surprised to walk upstairs pain-free. She did not need a second treatment.

JoAnn, in her sixties, is a meditation teacher. She too developed a sharp pain in her knee, but hers was more acute than Liz's, and she began to keep a walking stick in her car just in case she needed it. Stairs caused her a lot of pain and getting into her usual meditation posture on the bench became almost impossible. Her pain lessened greatly after one treatment, and vanished altogether after a few more.

All three have given me permission to tell their stories.

These stories may seem difficult to believe, but they are real. I have now treated enough knees to know that bioenergy is an effective way of treating knee pain. It may not work for everyone, but it seems to have worked on most of the people I treated. The client and I know both know whether it is going to be effective after the first treatment, because there is usually immediate change. The change sometimes lasts indefinitely, but another pattern that occurs is that there is a fluctuation in the amount of pain and relief over the next few treatments, with the pain decreasing significantly over time.

See also my post: How you develop chronic knee pain.

Are you curious what I might be able to do for you?

How you get chronic knee pain

I've now treated many people with painful knees, including a large number whose pain has been both long-lasting and excruciating. The diagnoses these clients had received included osteoarthritis, torn or missing cartilage, and patellofemoral pain syndrome (pain in the front of the knee caused by overuse, wear and tear, or misalignment of the kneecap). In most cases I was able to make the pain abate or go away in (up to) four treatments.

As a martial artist and part-time karate instructor I've also had my own experiences with knee pain. My pain comes from patellofemoral issues: overuse and misalignment. Overuse means that I've done too many deep stances in a karate class; it's a dull pain that passes over a few days. The experience of misalignment is occasional: sometimes I wake up with pain or get up after being seated for a long time and suddenly find that my knee hurts. When that happens it's a sharp pain and something feels clearly out of place. But here is the interesting thing that I found: if I stop and immediately deal with the pain of misalignment, it quickly goes away. But if I can't stop to deal with it, the pain continues for days and becomes much more problematic to heal.

So here is my theory of how a minor issue of misalignment becomes chronic pain. You suddenly develop a pain and something feels out of place (many people I've treated used those exact words: "something is out of place"). Not having the tools to fix it, you get up, walk around on it, take it to a doctor who diagnoses something and gives you a pain killer, then you take it to a physiotherapist who gives you exercises for it. The whole time the something that is out of place remains out of place, you keep putting your weight on it as you walk, it keeps being stressed, and of course the result is inflammation and more pain. The pain killer makes the injury even worse by deadening your body's danger signals and allowing you to stress your knee even more. And as the tissues around the problem swell, your body has ever greater difficulty resolving it. In the end the pain and inflammation become your new normal as your body and your mind get used to having them. Hello, chronic knee pain.

Even if you don't have the tools of energy healing at hand as I do, there are things you can do. When the pain develops I immediately stop and try to set the knee right. I will do some calf stretching exercises then sit down, lift my leg and straighten and bend it, trying to get the knee to track properly. If I have to, I'll massage it. Then, when I go to bed, I will put up a rolled up towel under it so it is not fully extended while I sleep. So far I've been able to fix the problem almost every single time with these simple steps. I only use energy healing if the other things I try prove to be insufficient. I have not yet needed to see a doctor or a physiotherapist.

But what about arthritis, you now ask. Or torn cartilage? Or cartilage that's so worn away that your knee is grinding bone-on-bone? Or torn ligaments? These are issues that are more severe than "something being out of place". These are structural changes that go under the heading of "chronic knee pain" and most people believe that only knee surgery can solve them. These are the conditions that have developed over years of "something out of place" not being treated and being allowed to exist in a continual state of stress and inflammation. I've treated all these conditions, or rather I've treated clients who have been diagnosed with having these conditions. (If you scroll down through the pages of this blog you will find many instances of successful treatments.) I always wonder whether the success of these treatments is because the "something out of place" goes back into alignment and the continual irritation stops. In fact people have told me that they have felt something shifting inside their knee as I treated them. And this has happened even after the condition has been bothering them for years.

So my suggestion to you would be to try to deal immediately with any suddenly arising knee pain before it becomes chronic. And to try energy healing for any knee pain that you can't deal with on your own. Here is a caveat though: if in addition to there being pain your knee is also unstable, you likely have a torn ligament. That might need surgery, but energy healing will still help you with the pain and with the recovery.

Healer, heal thyself (2)

No idea how it happened, but Saturday morning I woke up with a pain in my hip that had me limping. It was most annoying, as I had just signed up for a two-day yoga intensive. Luckily it was restorative yoga, but I still had to get there (and back) on public transit, and that translated into more walking than I thought I might be able to do.

I had had SI joint issues before, and had been given exercises for it by a physiotherapist, so I began by doing those exercises, and then I threw in some stretching for good measure. Nope. That didn't work. Next, I tried qigong. I figured standing like a tree for 10-minutes or so might do some good. That didn't work either.

By this point I was getting a little desperate. I am not used to having something wrong with me and I began to think "what if this never goes away? what if it's the beginning of something terrible?" It didn't help that someone I knew had just last year gone through the experience of having what he thought was a pulled muscle turn out to be a rare and nasty cancer. Plus, the clock was ticking, and I needed to go to that workshop.

So finally, in desperation, I turned to my art. I don't know why I thought of energy healing last. Maybe it's because we are often told that it doesn't work as well on self as others. I gave myself a treatment -- and my hip felt better. In fact, I was surprised at how much better it felt. I made it to the workshop (where sitting on the floor made it a bit worse again), then made it home, then treated it some more, and slept with a rolled up towel under my knee. By Sunday evening it was 90-95% better, and on Monday evening I taught three karate classes and a fitness class with no difficulty whatsoever.

Truly, the stuff never ceases to amaze me.