How to.. Each week, our entertainment reporter tries out a new activity. This time, Duncan Hall gets all touchy-feely and launches himself into his latest experience feet first.
How to.. Reflexology
I’VE always been a bit of a sceptic when it comes to alternative and complementary therapies and healing.
For me, holistic healing involves putting quiet music on while trying to club my hangover to death with Panadol.
So when I wandered into Peterborough’s College of Adult Education, in Brook Street, for a Saturday taster session of reflexology, I was preparing my best sincere smile and hoping that the short walk from my flat hadn’t made my feet pong too much.
I was also hoping my slight rumbling headache wouldn’t turn into a raging pain behind my eyes before the end of the morning session.
Instructor Marian Burgess started off talking through the basics of reflexology – an art that dates back to Ancient Egypt, and was resurrected in the 1880s by American Dr William Fitzgerald, who used elastic bands and clips on the hands and feet to relieve pain in other parts of the body.
His work was carried on by names such as physician Dr Joe Shelby Riley and physiotherapist Eunice Ingham, who charted a foot map of the whole body.
The basic principle of reflexology is zone therapy – lines of energy running from the feet to the brain.
By applying pressure to the feet, you stimulate the energy lines which can have a rejuvenating effect on the whole body.
The zones run through the body like slices, with five on each side of the spine.
In the class we learned first of all how to give a foot massage, and then how to give some basic reflexology.
I volunteered to be guinea pig for the demonstration. My feet were swabbed (a little excessively in my opinion!) with wet wipes, and then, instead of using oil, Marian used talcum powder to do some basic massage moves on my feet.
I have to say it was very relaxing and put some of the steadily increasing headache pain out of my mind.
The basic principle behind the class was that Marian would demonstrate a certain method, and then the class would team up in pairs and try it out on each other.
Instantly you felt very close to the person practising on you.
Although I had never met Ray Marshall from Bretton before, we were instantly talking as if we had known each other for years as he practised some of the gentle massage exercises on me.
But it wasn’t until we started doing some real reflexology that I began to sit up and listen.
My headache still hadn’t gone away – partly because I hadn’t been able to initiate my own form of alternative therapy, and partly because of a long-held problem I have had in my neck and shoulders which gives me gip now and again.
I was the guinea pig once more for the reflexology demonstration – which was based around Marian using her thumb to exert small amounts of pressure around and in between my toes.
As I lay there during the demonstration, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in between my big toe and second toe as Marian placed her thumb there.
At first I thought it was her fingernail digging in, but it turned out that she had found one of the acid crystals, or calcium deposits, that collect in the feet and impede energy flow – the blockages that reflexology is designed to clear.
As she took her hand away I could actually feel the crystal, like a large lump of grit or sand, stuck under my skin.
And where did this part of my foot correspond to? My neck – the origin of my rumbling headache.
I had not even mentioned to anyone that I wasn’t feeling well.
As she moved around my feet, Marian found more of the crystals, all in the same sort of position.
And it wasn’t just some teacher’s trick – as when Ray worked on my other foot I could feel him hitting a few himself.
By working on the crystals, they were broken down and went back into my blood lymph systems to be eliminated from my body.
Before I knew it the morning was over and I had to be off, but I walked out feeling better than ever.