Maureen Cowen

Benefits

Reflexology boosts the body’s own system of self-healing using energy zones that run throughout the body and reflex areas on the feet (and hands) that correspond to all the major organs, glands and body parts. Gentle pressures are applied to the reflexes to produce a state of deep relaxation and helping the person return to a state of balance and wellbeing. Reflexology can increase circulation, assisting with pain relief and elimination of toxins, and help the feet become more flexible. Reflexology works on the feet to help heal the whole person.


Origins

Ancient texts and illustrations show that the early Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Russians and Egyptians all used therapeutic techniques for working on the feet to promote good health. In the early part of the twentieth century Dr William Fitzgerald developed modern zone theory and in the 1930’s Eunice Ingham, a physiotherapist working with Dr Joseph Shelby Riley in America, used zone therapy in her work with patients. She found that the feet were the most responsive areas for working the zones, and she mapped the entire body reflex points on the feet. She discovered that alternating pressure on the various points had therapeutic effects, beyond those of pain reduction, and modern reflexology was developed from her work.


Zone Energy Channels

Each zone is a channel for life energy, called chi or qi in Oriental medicine. Stimulating or “working” any zone in the foot by applying pressure with the thumbs and fingers affects the entire zone throughout the body. For example, working a zone in the foot along which the kidneys lie will release vital energy that may be blocked somewhere else in that zone, such as the eyes (known as referral areas).

Good health depends on the balancing of the natural functioning of all body systems but excessive stress disrupts this balance. Reflexology alleviates the effects of stress by inducing deep relaxation. Circulation is improved, increasing blood flow and oxygen to the cells. As in acupuncture or shiatsu, energy pathways are opened up, and the subtle energy that accompanies neurological and circulatory functioning can do its work. Harmony is restored as the body's seven energy centres, known in Eastern medicine as chakras, are unblocked.

Reflexology does not claim to cure, diagnose or prescribe.