Spinal Tap on the Feet!

During my initial studies in reflexology, I noticed that for every condition studied there was always some reference to working a specific location on the spine. This doesn’t mean working the actual location on the back but the spinal reflex located on the foot as shown in Figure 16-1 below. It just made me curious as to why we kept engaging different locations on the spine for each condition.

In reflexology, our intent is to work your spine through your feet with the understanding that we are working the nerve endings that come down from the spine to the inside edges of your foot. We work that inside edge of the foot underneath the bones in your toe, then the ball and along the metatarsal and up inside the arch of your foot following the bones as they descend into the heel. If you overlaid a picture of the spine onto the foot as it’s shown in the picture, then you’d be working through the cervical / thoracic / lumbar / sacral vertebrae right to the tip of the tailbone (coccyx). If you’ve had any issues in your neck for instance – say an old injury – there will often be a corresponding pain in the same relative area on your toe and we would work that location on the foot to help the body shut down the pain signals and ultimately relax and repair.

What’s interesting though is that in working with any and every condition we not only support the problem organ (or gland/tissue), but we can also work on the system being affected and finally, the communication network of the body (nervous system) by working the spine and brain reflexes. Let’s say you’re having kidney stones for instance; not only would we work the kidney reflexes, but we would also address the urinary system by including the bladder and ureters and finally, work the location on the spinal reflex that corresponds to vertebrae T11 and 12 (thoracic vertebrae 11/12 where the kidneys are found) and finally, we would work the toes to stimulate brain function. So, we’ve touched on the organ, the system, the messaging centre and finally, the command centre.

This specific focus is applied once we’ve addressed the whole body by working the entire foot. It’s a powerful one-two punch that enables us to support the optimal functioning of our bodies. In some diseases there are multiple systems/organs or glands that are involved and through the practice of reflexology we can engage and support them all. The combination of practical application and practitioner intent gives us to the tools to assist the bodies efforts to heal through something as practical and powerful as a foot treatment.