Like many people in the early ’70s, trauma forced me to question what life meant to me. My particular trauma at age 27 was being left with two young children after the death of my first husband, David. This was during a time of consciousness expansion when events like the war in Vietnam, the shooting of students who rebelled against it in the state of Kent, birth control and the sexual revolution that led to the children of the flowers and love, they got us going. Many people began to test the waters of what we could experience: drugs, sex, and rock and roll. After David’s death, I broke out of my protective shell and went looking for my own answers because what I knew no longer made sense; I became a seeker. I knew I would marry again and I wanted to marry an educated man, someone who liked to travel, was domestic and, although I didn’t make it a requirement at the time, was spiritually inclined.
I put Bill. He was a meditator, also a widower, had a young son the age of both of my children, and due to his trauma after the death of his first wife, he was open to alternative approaches to dealing with stress. He had taken the meditation and introduced it to me. I was captivated by meditation once I learned it and wanted to learn more so I signed up for a Yoga Teacher Training course at the Toronto Yoga Center where the old school of yoga teaching still existed, honoring the ancient philosophy of yoga and instructing according to this philosophy. In those days, there was no Hot Yoga, Power Yoga or Yoga for weight loss. Hatha Yoga, Pranayamas, Meditation and Yoga Philosophy were taught.
PRESSURE POINT WORK AND MAGICAL RESULTS
One of my teachers, Jay Bixby was his name, came up to me after his class and said, “Stay after class, Danielle, I want to show you some healing techniques.” I was lucky at the time to have menstrual cramps and Jay proceeded to do pressure point work on me. He pressed along the collarbone area, thumb walked down both sides of the spine, hit points in the hip area, did some pressure work on the spine in the thumbs and toes and for me surprise, my cramps disappeared. I could feel this current of energy enter my abdominal area and dissipate the cramps. I thought, “Wow, this is better than taking a Midol pill.”
I shared this experience with Bill and we decided that I would take my first pressure point course – Vita Flex from Stanley Burroughs’ book called “Healing for the Age of Enlightenment”. It was 1977 and Mr. Burroughs had been around for a long time as a pioneer in the field of healing arts. He was way ahead of his time and had been arrested for “curing” people, which threatened the medical model, but that didn’t stop him from spreading the word. His book included the famous Master Cleansing Diet, yoga poses (designed by Jay Bixby), color therapy which I love, and his wonderful Vita Flex pressure point methodologies. This is my favorite book of all time and when I find copies of it I grab them and pass them out to students when they take my advanced lower leg or upper body circulation workshops which include some points Life Flex.
When I took Vita Flex, Bill’s son had been diagnosed with a curvature of the spine. We were instructed to take him to Sunny Brook Hospital for x-rays, which showed that his femur was incorrectly fitting into his hip socket, causing him to push his hip out and end up with a curved spine and a 1.5cm shorter leg. than the other. They asked us to come back in three months to see how he was doing.
I took my stepson to the Vita Flex teacher and asked if he could lengthen his legs. (Actually I was kidding because I didn’t think it would be possible). He said, “Yes, in fact, there is a point to lengthen the leg in the collarbone area.” The teacher taught me what to do, and I went through this two-minute ritual every morning before I sent the kids off to school. I just pressed on the collarbone area, thumb walked down each side of her spine and did the spinal areas on the thumbs and toes. The teacher had said that it would probably take about three months to normalize the leg.
That was all I did and then we took him back to Sunny Brook as requested to have him x-rayed once more and to our amazement he was completely normal! Well, you can imagine that we were very, very impressed with this result and totally delighted with our son, as he was only ten years old and could now go on with his life with a better skeletal system.
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER
That got us hooked on the healing arts and I think I took every course that came to town in those days. Wonderful courses with Dr. Bernard Jensen on Whole Foods and Iridology, Dr. Alzner’s Deep Muscle Reflexology, Werner Erhard Training Seminar known as EST, which was pretty awesome back in the day, and while I loved the Vita Flex method, I passed I was certified by the Reflexology Association of Canada in the early 1980’s and soon after became a teacher.
At the time, doing all these alternative things wasn’t as close to the mainstream as it is today: reflexology, yoga, and vegetarianism were still silly, and our kids’ friends thought we were a little weird. Kids would come home from school and I’d be in a headstand, or corpse pose, or askew like a pretzel. Visiting children used to tell our children that there was never anything normal to eat in this house. We really were post-dormant hippies raising new-age kids in a very confusing age. We had no road map to follow and were making it up as we went. We would have visiting yogis, psychic healers, people from other planets (so they said), tarot card readers, and many wonderful experiences in that home. This is what our children were exposed to. alternative living workshops and ideas.
Because our children were exposed to reflexology at a very young age, they often asked to have their feet operated on and were used to thinking of the body traced in the feet. Once, at a doctor’s appointment, the doctor said, “Let me see your stomach” and my only daughter started taking off her shoes. I had to hold back a few smiles.
We learned more yoga teachings from our yoga spiritual teacher, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra, who was the most charming yogi anyone could find. We were very fortunate to have been exposed to his teachings on the philosophy of Ayurveda and personal doshas (tendencies), yoga chakra healing, and various practices for cleansing.
I also continued my education while raising children and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a graduate degree in human resource management. I discovered that I had a strong interest in personality theory and training in the use of the MBTI® (Myers Briggs Type Indicator). I’ve worked for a couple of companies giving workshops on using a behavioral model and trained more on temperament personality theory. I was having so much fun learning all these wonderful things for self-understanding and healing.
A WHOLE HEALING SYSTEM WITHIN OUR REACH
All of these learning experiences led me to put together how to think about ear, hand, and foot reflexology. I realized that with the temperament theory of personality (similar to the mind-body system of Ayurveda), we can think of the human instrument as a holistic system consisting of a Mind Side that acts as the Dreamer in us and produces our feelings. Ideas; a Social Side that acts as a Catalyst in us and generates our Connections; and a Physical Side that acts as the Builder in us by providing feedback that helps to manifest and consolidate ideas and connections.
Because I was lucky enough to teach all three reflexology courses to the students (foot, hand, and ear reflexology), I asked them what their experiences were and how they felt the three modalities differed. It was from my students that I united the knowledge of Ayurveda, personality temperaments, and reflexology modalities into a complete system at our fingertips. The benefits expressed by the students fit very well with the principles of Ayurveda and we determined that by making the ears we feel calmer; when doing the hands we felt that our emotions cooled down; and when doing the feet we felt that the body was stimulated. I was so excited about how this all came together and tried to capture it in The Well-Tempered Life, a book that summarized my experience with yoga, personality theory, and reflexology.
• If the Mental principle is unbalanced, do Ear Reflexology to calm the mind.
• If someone is frustrated, upset or angry, do Hand Reflexology to cool down the emotions of the Social principle.
• And if someone is tired, lethargic and bored due to too many time constraints and no time to rest and repair, practice Foot Reflexology to stimulate the Physical principle.
MOTHER NATURE IS THE HEALER
Like many reflexologists, we know this is powerful work we’re doing and we get excited when people tell us about the impact of our pressure point work on their systems. I always tell my students, “You are not the healer here; your job is to push buttons. Mother Nature is the healer and each person’s body has its own intelligence. It will take what it needs from your pressure point work and will use it however it sees fit. Your job is just to push the buttons.”
For me, it is better not to label an imbalance in the body but to think more along the lines of Traditional Chinese Medicine guidance. View the condition as an energy imbalance and strive to bring the system back into balance, back into homeostasis. Whether in the mental aspect with worry or anxiety; in the social aspect with frustration or anger; o Whether it’s the physical aspect of fatigue and toxins, we must strive for balance and help our clients achieve it with whatever tools, skills or knowledge we have to share.
Reflexology, to me, is one of the most valuable tools we can have to help ourselves, our families and our clients and I am truly grateful to Jay Bixby, wherever he may be, for my first experience of natural trigger point healing. Pressure. It really helped shape my life. I love to share, teach and transmit information and I love to share my background and experience with others.