hello massage nerds today i’m going to be bringing you an introduction to foot reflexology i want to talk a little bit about the difference between a foot massage and foot reflexology a foot massage focuses on the musculature and the tendons of the foot and it’s incorporated within your massage you know it’s usually 10 minutes you know after you’ve done a full body so foot reflexology focuses specifically on internal organs they’re all the reflexes to the internal organs and it’s usually done anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes this comes from an ancient philosophy and practice that they believe that we have qi flowing all over our body and through channels and zones so they divide the the feet and the hands and the ears into ten vertical lines five on each foot so we’ll pretend that these are the feet so they have 10 vertical lines between both of them but really five line on each foot and then five horizontal lines dividing the foot so i’ll talk and show you a little bit more on the foot and there’s really just five techniques that you use and one of them the main one is the thumb walking and i’ll demonstrate right here all you’re doing is your distal phalanges of the pollux so what you’re doing is you’re bending and dragging it just small little tiny increments you know you can go up the foot on the side of the foot across the foot so this is one of the techniques another one is finger finger walking you can go between the metacarpals or the metatarsals in the feet you know just going up and you also can go across and then i’ll show you when i’m demonstrating on the model you know the lung the lung press and i’ll show you a couple more techniques but there’s really very basic techniques there’s only five of them you don’t have to get fancy or anything like that and uh another thing i want to mention the benefits the benefits is it’s very important for to you know for people that are stressed out it really helps reduce the stress reduce pain it’s very beneficial to people that are going through chemotherapy or cancer patients that are recovering also women that have painful menstrual cycles it really does help them so you want to stay within the pain tolerance of the client you know i always stress this in all my videos you know this is not about no pain no gain it’s about being very specific and targeting those organs that you want to target so especially in the elderly people you know geriatrics they lose a lot of their padding on their feet so it can be very painful if you’re not careful this is a technique that you don’t use oil with so that’s even better you don’t have to use oil you just do the work dry you know you if if the person’s foot is really dry you might put you know one or two drops on your hands and rub your hands and then use it like that but you really don’t need any oil which is fantastic so this is foot reflexology like i said it’s also known as zone reflexology and if you take a six-hour ceu class on reflexology that does not make you a reflexologist it’s very extensive you know instructions so make sure that you take a reflexology class that qualifies you to be able to do this work this is just an introduction to see if you like it and it’s something that you might want to pursue hello massage nerds okay so this is what we did for you look we drew all the reflexes on here so let me show you that when you put both feet together it makes up the whole body right here we only drew it on one side and this is the side i’m going to be working on but when you put both feet together right down this are your vertebrae the 7th cervical 12 thoracic and all the way down here to the coccyx so they go all the way down and you know the middle part of the foot also has the four curvatures of the spine you know one curve two curves three curves four curves so it goes down just the way the thoracic spine does we’ve got the transverse colon descending colon on this side we’ve got the lung the heart all the the brain reflex the sinus reflex the eye reflex ear reflex let me show you how it’s broken and broken up so every reflex is on both sides however your gallbladder is on the right side so you would have the gallbladder point right here the spleen is on the left side so you would have the spleen reflex on this side so you want to make sure and work you know you need to know your chart obviously so that you’re able to work every reflex but right here we do it for you so that you can see everything that i’m going to be working on okay so the reflexes on your body they are the same as they are you know on your feet so that the the foot is divided into five parts from right below the toes where the metatarsals end and the phalanges begin that’s one line everything above that is everything every reflex on the head from here to right below this line right here this is called the diaphragm line and it almost looks like your diaphragm like your thorax right here okay so it’s everything in your chest you know your your lung your heart everything in the in the chest right here your thyroid you know your trachea and then you have another line right here the abdominal line so this is the upper abdominal which will be your stomach your small intestine your spleen and then you have your lower abdominal area which is your transverse colon and descending colon and your you know your uh colon here but also on the on the right side this would be the ascending colon so you have your ascending colon and transverse colon and descending so somebody that has constipation you want to work the left foot because this is the ascending colon if somebody has problems with absorption then you want to work on the ascending colon on the right foot so some of them will be on the right foot some of them will be on the left foot but mainly they’re all here okay anything below the heel is anything below the pelvic line like your bladder you know your legs your sciatic nerve everything is here this is a mirror image of your body you just divide it into the upper right the diaphragm the abdominal upper and lower abdominal and then below the pelvic area so all the reflexes are here let me show you that the first thing you want to do is start warming up and relaxing you know relaxing your clients foot so you’re going to take your hand you know toes to toe two fingers and then just kind of do a little bit of a movement and if you want to stimulate the uh reproductive system you kind of do a little bit of shaking here right below the lateral and medial malleolus remember the lateral medial malleolus the the medial is from the tibia the lateral malleolus is from the fibula so you just kind of do a little bit of a rocking motion back and forth back and forth okay you can also do some figure eights do you hold at the heel and just do some figure eyes and all we’re doing is just warming up feeling where she might have some tension you know just to feel where she might have a little bit of tension here you know once you’ve kind of warmed up your foot a little bit now you want to start with the thumb technique let’s say i want to stimulate all of her vertebrae you start remember you’re only going to use the distal phalanges and then you’re just going to go up a little bit like centimeters at a time and you don’t lift up you don’t lift up your and lift you kind of drag it so you drag your finger your thumb all the way up let’s say she’s got problems right here in her thoracic area you might want to hold that and when they have a problem let’s say i feel a problem right there i brace with my right hand and kind of push a little bit into my thumb and just hold up for a little bit and then keep going all the way up all the way up let’s say she’s got problems in her neck area the cervical area so i would you know hold it right there these reflexes are the reflexes to the brain so you can take it and just push on it you know each one these are the sinuses so people that have sinus problems people that have headaches you can directly work on the big toe you know you can work directly on the big toe for anybody that has headaches or anything with their head this is the pituitary you know up here the pituitary pituitary pineal gland and now you’re going to go across after you do each toe these are the sinus points at the little tip so you just want to hold it and massage it for you know a minute or so i’m going a little bit fast just because i want to get through the whole foot you can go across also so i start at the edge at the lateral edge and just move across the first line this is the reflex of the eye right here right between the second and third toe right here so i keep moving all the way to the end so this is your first line that divides everything above here is what’s in the head this is your diaphragm line which is very important when you’re trying to relax somebody that’s having problems breathing that you want to slow down their breathing you really want to go across the diaphragm line and the solar plexus the solar plexus is right here again when people are really stressed out i like to hold a little bit you know hold brace the the foot on top and just put a little bit of pressure there right at the solar plexus and then keep moving all the way to the end this is the other this is the diaphragm line here’s the lung you know you can do some extension this is the chest area right here remember this is the chest area where you have your lung and your heart your heart is in the center of your chest however the apex of the heart is leaning towards the left side so you can work the the heart reflex you know right here the lung reflex this is the trachea the thyroid reflex as you start coming down right below the diaphragm this is the diaphragm reflex right here all the way across then you get into the stomach now we’re going into the upper abdominal area so you want to work let’s say the stomach they’re having digestive issues so you want to work all the way across it’s the stomach is a j shaped organ so you want to work right here at the upper abdominal your small intestine is right in between your large and your stomach so you want to go across and you can also go up but i’m just showing you across like right now i’m going to get to the transverse colon and descending colon so you want to go from one side it i would really should be doing it from this side but for the sake of the angle of the camera i don’t know if you can see but you want to follow the way the large intestine goes which is transverse colon and then descending colon descending colon is the one that evacuates is the one that helps you eliminate remember that your large intestine is the one that reabsorbs all the water that has not been uh absorbed in this it’s the job of the large intestine to reabsorb the water so you want to make sure and come down right here down the descending colon and like i said all i’ve done so far is just really use my thumb it is very some intensive guys and this is one of the reasons why i don’t do this anymore because it really got to hurt my thumbs now if you’ve got somebody that has problems with the bladder you know you want to stimulate and like again you can push the the foot you know a little bit more into into that bladder reflex and gently you don’t have to do it really hard also somebody that has sciatic nerve pain you know you want to make sure and work by the heel if they have sciatic nerve pain all of this involves the lower part this is the lower part this will be the legs the knees the sciatic nerve you know goes all the way to the heel right here so you want to make sure and get to the tarsals okay these are the metatarsals and then the phalanges so it’s the tarsals metatarsals phalanges and so as you can see here’s the lung the heart the stomach again the small intestine large intestine continued small intestine and then the vertebrae right here the eye reflex the shoulder reflex sometimes some of you might ask well when do you know you know when do you know when to do reflexology one of the things that i say let’s say somebody had was in a car accident and they they injure their shoulder and you can’t really work on it because they still have you know hematoma still have you know uh an injury there so this is the perfect time to go to the reflex when you cannot work directly on that shoulder then you go to the reflex you go to the reflex of the shoulder somebody had eye surgery well you can’t work their eye you go to the eye surgery i mean to the eye reflex you know somebody uh you know is really having too much pain where let’s say in the sciatic you know coming out of the lumbar area and they can’t even handle any pressure well then this is the perfect time to go to the reflex i always say if you can actually work that muscle go to that muscle and work that muscle however there are times when you cannot work that muscle so you go to the reflex on the foot this is very appropriate to use where you cannot work that reflex you know on the body then you go to the foot and remember foot reflexology targets internal organs a regular massage foot massage is when you’re working the muscles and the tendons okay another one that i want to show you is the lung press you put your a soft fist right at the at the at the chest area put your thumb in between right here grasp the foot and then just press this is the long the lung press so putting your thumb in between gives you a little bit of more pressure and you’re using your knuckles this is another one of the techniques the lung press so you’ve got the thumb walking the finger walking is mainly done on the top on the dorsal part of the foot so you’re just walking in between all the metatarsals right here you’re just walking down and this also targets the lung the upper the chest area on the top of the foot so you just walk all your fingers down the top of the foot another one too that you can do is the dorsiflexion and plantar flexion you know dorsiflexion and plantar flexion this will also help to start loosening up the foot and if you need to use a little bit more pressure and remember this is you don’t need oil this is going to take this is a whole treatment guys this takes about an hour to just focus on everything you know every reflex of the of the body they’re also called zones you know like somebody that’s got a you know a lot of uh meaty part right here on the heel it’s hard for them to you know to get to their sciatic reflex you might want to use your your knuckle you know just get in there and hold it there and always make sure you tell your client to breathe and after you’re done you know i also like to do some spreading you know spreading the the metatarsals open and some cross fiber here you’re trying to get movement and target certain uh trigger points and the vertical lines you know i talked that up at the beginning that they divide you know the vertical lines five on each foot so it goes from in between each toe all the way down and these coincide with the ten meridians you know the lung meridian and all the kidney meridian you know so uh oh i forgot the spleen the spleen would be on this side right here on the left foot and the gallbladder would be approximately right here on the right foot because the gallbladder is on the right and the liver is on the right you can work it from here but it it’s better if you work it on the side that it’s on so it was better if you work it on the right foot but there you have it this is all the reflexes to your body are right here at the bottom of your foot also on the bottom of your hands and they’re also on your ears so this is an ancient you know philosophy and techniques so i hope this helps you and helps you decide if you want to become a reflexologist if this is something you’re interested in it’s really pretty awesome and amazing so until the next time create a great day you
Read More: 5 Basic Foot Reflexology Techniques | Reflexology
