On This Journey: Hope

On this journey, I send you a blessing:

Whenever you touch someone, may you show them love.

In your work, may love, mercy, and justice shine forth.

May it guide and protect you.

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As a reflexologist, whether I heal, teach, write, speak, or dowse, my intentions are the same.

I want us all to become more conscious of ourselves.

It’s time to take charge of our healing.

We can make necessary changes appropriate for us now as we offload things we no longer need.

As we do this, we discover what’s important to us.  We learn things about ourselves we never knew.

We find out things about ourselves we once knew but forgot.

We see some items which we may have felt weren’t necessary.  Now we know they are.

My job is to help you find your feet.

My goal is for you to know yourself better.

Once you know the truth about your feet, you become aware of your soul.

Things fall into place.

You may empower yourself to assume responsibility for your healing.

A better self-understanding emerges.

You are on a path to deeper consciousness.

Feet are essential.  They have been crucial since the beginning of our existence.  Our feet carry us wherever we need to go.  They are part of our lives spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Reflexology has been with us since the beginning of time when its history is shrouded in mists.

If you travel to Egypt, you’ll find wall paintings referring to feet dating back to 2399 BCE in the Historical Physicians’ Tomb of Saqqara, Egypt.

In Nara, Japan, the Medicine Teacher Temple has a stone carving of Buddha’s feet dating to 790 AD.

In India, the paintings of Vishnu correspond to some reflexology points.

Ancient Chinese writings describe pressure points on thumbs and toes.

Ayurveda medicine incorporates foot reflexology.

When I see a person’s feet, I feel as if I’ve found a book filled with stories, all waiting to be told.

Your feet speak to me.

Before, during, and after a session, your feet change color, texture, and weight.  Lines on your feet shift.

Health issues are messengers telling you to seek out and deal with spiritual causes.

When you visit a reflexologist with your health issues, you focus on your spirit.

You may also want to experience an hour of self-care.  Or, you may want to bliss out for a short time.

Whatever the motivation, a reflexology session offers a window into homeostasis, the balance of all body systems.  Reflexology is all about self-healing reflexology.

Your body changes daily – and continually changes throughout your activities.  Whether sleeping, dancing, or taking out the trash, your body tries to maintain a health balance – homeostasis.

When you seek a reflexologist, you may be trying to deal with one or more ongoing persistent health problems.

You seek a solution while saying to yourself:  “I may have to learn to live with  fatigue (insomnia, constipation, headaches).”

When a person brings a spiritual issue to my table, I go to the chakras.

This is an opportunity to dowse them.

With chronic disease, the chakras commonly seize up.

Balancing a chakra with spinning helps.  First, I remove the negative energy, then I spin the chakras.  I always work the weakest chakra first.

Trauma clogs the chakras and turns them gray.

A reflexology session reveals things for a client including:

sleep

deep relaxation

more regular bowel movements

instant relief of tired, sore, achy feet

a mild detox

homeostasis

increased circulation

relaxed tension

Conflicting information constantly bombards us with information about our health.

What’s good.

What’s bad.

The bottom line is we’re complex beings.  Good health involves the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual body.

We heal five different ways.  Healing is physical, symbolic, mythical, energetic, and spiritual.

Physical Healing is undeniable.  Your body fights disease by overcoming symptoms, boosting your body systems, changing you DNA.

When a client comes to me in pain, we have a conversation about the situation.  This is Symbolic Healing in action.  I ask questions:

How long have you had this pain?

When did it begin?

Is it constant or intermittent?

What makes it better, and what makes it worse?

Where does it hurt?

What does this pain feel like?

What does it look like?

What color is this pain?

Can you describe the sound of this pain?

How does it smell?

What is your pain’s size and shape?

What other symptoms follow this pain?

Once the sound is identified, I invite the person to make a chant using this sound.

Symbolic healing works through words.  Talking with a psychiatrist or psychotherapist is symbolic healing.  Speaking with a physical therajpist about your shoulder pain is symbolic.

Guided meditation is symbolic healing.

Energetic Healing does not rely on words.  Energetic healing is meditation, massage, reflexology, Reiki, chakra healing, or other bodywork.

Blended Healing happens when chiropractors, physical therapists, and physicians work on your symbolic level during consultations.  Describing your health issues with a physician is symbolic healing.

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Illness is real.  Accidents happen.  Medicine and healing can help.  They create meaning.

Recent global events spread uncertainty, insecurity, and grief.  How we approah our health and wellness is forever changed.

It’s up to us now to keep ourselves and our loved ones well.  At some point, you may need to choose a reflexologist or other healer.  Not all healers and practitioners are alike.

A 9-word vocabulary clarifies this for you:

Administer – Reflexologists don’t administer anything.  We read feet and offer sessions.  We have provided noninvasive sessions to our clients the world over for ages and ages.

Advise – Reflexologists support client partners in their healing path.  This work supports homeostasis.

Cure – Reflexologists offer our services and empower client partners to control their health as they heal and embrace wellness.  This can be a very different thing depending on the issue.

Diagnose – Reflexologists do not diagnose.  Physicians diagnose.  A disgnosis is essential because it’s much easier to overcome a health issue if it has a name.

Dispense – Reflexologists dispense nothing beyond the sessions we offer.

Examine – Reflexologists read feet, hands, or ears.  We notice the locations of our findings.  We work the feet, hands, or ears to facilitate healing and homeostasis.

Patient – Physicians and nurses have patients.  Reflexologists have clients or client partners.

Prescribe – Prescriptions are allopathic tools.  Reflexologists do not prescribe.  We rely on our hands and hearts to tell us what we find to encourage healing, and wellness, to facilitate homeostasis.

Recommend – We work feet, concentrating our energies to facilitate healing.

What is suffering really about?  Why are we going through this?  What is the purpose?

Getting well is sometimes very tough.  These are the spiritual questions:

Do you want to be well if getting well hurts?

Do you want to be well if it separates you from your old identity?

Do you want to be well more than you want to stay the same?

A good model for healing involves four steps:

Several years ago, I had a pain in my shoulder.  First I met with my health care provided for a diagnosis and whatever else I needed to get over this pain.  This was important.

Her diagnosis helped me overcome my problem.  An old saying goes like this:  It’s easier to slay the .dragon once I know its name.

I had overworked a muscle in my shoulder .  I removed the environmental cause of the problem by not lifting anything else until the pain was dealt with.

Then, I set about correcting my painful situation.  I scheduled 8 physical therapy sessions and went twice a week for four weeks to physical therapy where I received massage, exercise, ultrasound, and heat treatment

My physical therapist taught me the proper way to lift boxes weighing 40 pounds each.

I scheduled four weekly reflexology sessions to correspond with each physical therapy session I received.  A sesion was scheduled to be within 24 hours of each physical therapy appointment.

The reflexologist used her sensory skills to work my feet.  She found crystals, resistance, hollows, and mushy tissue.

Her findings gave even more clues.  Because my situation was acute, she found a lot of “clues”.

She found crytals that varied from tiny salt crystal size to crystals that felt like broken glass to feeling like beans.  Some places on my feet felt as hard as rocks.

Others felt spongy.

Meanwhile, I felt things, too.  I felt tenderness, shooting pains, throbbing.  My feet felt sore, achy, bruised, and tired.

I also experienced incredible grounding and relaxation.  I slipped into a deep, sleeplike state during each session.

Taking steps to keep the situation from happening again, I learned the proper way to lift 40-pound boxes.

More than anything, I followed my truth.  I had a “conversion” when I understood the changes I needed to make and the things I had to do to be pain-free and to function well again.

I realized something:

As hard as we try to stay healthy, sooner or later, we all get sick.

Acute illnesses can be cured.

Chronic illnesses are another thing entirely.  We live with chronic illnesses.  They each have spiritual implications and overlays.

The role of the mind, the state of your health, and your spirituality connect to three things:

What happens in your life.

How you feel and think about what is happening.

What happens in your body.

These three things are the stress created by your situation.  Stress is your response to an event and how you perceive and react to it, not what happened.

Stress is a deadly health crisis.

We each have a spiritual core needing encouragement, support, and protection.  Your inner core helps you travel through life with the fewest bumps possible.

When guidance, nourishment, and protection are deficient in some way, you risk losing self-confidence.

Give yourself a boost.  Life is easier with a solid inner core.

Begin by thinking positively.

Before you get out of bed each day,  ask yourself:

“What makes me happy?  How can I be happy today?”

Happiness is one thing that only you can give yourself.  It doesn’t depend on how much money you make or how much education you have, or how tall you are.

Happiness depends on your inner self.

Listen to your body.

When you listen, your body will tell you what you need.  It will tell you what to keep, what to avoid, what to give away, and what to leave behind.

When you understand what your body says, you have a chance to heal life.  You can change your life if that is what you want.

Tune in to your body several times daily.  Do you have pain anywhere?  Is your spine aligned?  What is your energy level right this moment?  Are you hungry?  Thirsty?  Tired?  Joyful?

Good health is a priority.

When you value your good health, you love your self.  You believe you are a valuable person.  You expect yourself to be in excellent health.  Your thinking can change.  Your life can unstick itself.  Claim your wellness!

Your emotional self is a best friend.

Your feelings are an opportunity.  You can never expand or grow until you own up to the feelings your body sends your way.  They help you release pain, extra weight, sorrow, grief, fear.

When you release some of these painful things, you can experience joyful health, peace, grounding.  You will find room in your soul for a better quality of life.

Connect with your community.

Volunteer or join a local group such as knitting or hiking.  Get a parttime job.  Read a local paper.  Use your library.  Work at a food pantry.  Join your local church or synagogue.  Teach someone to read.

Include exercise of some kind every day.

In 1513, Ponce deLeon discovered the Fountain of Youth in what is now St. Augustine, Florida.  The Fountain of Youth still exists and keeps people everywhere healthy and fit.

There is at least one branch of it in your neighborhood.  It’s located on a sidewalk or roadside where you can walk every day.  If that branch is inconvenient for you, another nearby branch is in a local fitness center.  You’ll be much healthier when you visit your favorite branch regularly.

Reflexology and Reiki

Include a session of Reflexology, Reiki, or other nourishing bodywork every week.  It doesn’t matter whether you have a health issue, or whether you just want to get on a healing table and bliss out.  What’s important is the self-care you receive.

Review your situation

This last year has been stressful for everyone.  I don’t know even one person who has escaped grief.

Now is a good time to write about important moments in your life.  You don’t have to focus on what happened in your life.  Focus, instead, on what you did about what happened to you.

Write short stories, essays, poems, or keep a journal.  Whatever you choose, if you need help, you may get it at your library.

Learn Reiki Therapy

Reiki is one of the oldest healing modalities on our planet.  When you take a Reiki class, you learn a healing tool to positively impact your life.

Reiki is adaptable to many different situations.  It is easy to learn and use.  We all need more Reiki.  Every time I hear about a new class forming or a Reiki circle happening, I rejoice.

Get Creative

The fun thing about creativity is that it can be anything you want it to be.  When you get creative, you relax, laugh, explore, inspire and imagine.  You add more color to your life.

Creativity is an empowering tool.

When you get creative, you are open to positive lifestyle changes.  The possibilities are many:

You may develop a working relationship with your healthcare professional and your healer.

You may become more aware of your body and how it works.

You have a basic plan for conquering and preventing disease when you combine quality sleep with healthy eating and physical activity.  I have written much about these things in my blog posts, my books, and on YouTube interviews.

When we are in the presence of someone suffering from something we can do nothing about, the first reaction is to run away as fast as possible.  It’s frightening to be around suffering.

Feeling helpless in the face of anguish and pain is complex.

A Healing Community

To be part of a healing community, we learn to be with those suffering even when we feel helpless.

Make no mistake.  We are not helpless.  We offer hope for one another as we keep the faith God, or the Universe, or whatever word you want to use, is working even when we can’t see how.  To be part of a healing community means we are not alone.

That makes all the difference.

When you are part of a healing community, you can change.  You can experience your life differently, made to feel whole, even as your physical abody falls apart.

Touch can heal you from fear, even when you remain sick.

Healing is about creating meaning.  Ask yourself:

What is suffering for anyway?

Why are we going through this?

What is the purpose?

Getting well is sometimes very tough.  Do you want to be well if getting well hurts?

Do you want to be well if it separates you from your old self?

Do you want to be well more than you want to stay the same?

This is a all to change.

Since ancient times, healers and physicians have worked with patients to achieve a cure, a restoration.

Healing takes many forms:  physical, mythical, symbolic, and energetic.

But, what happens when there are no options?

From the time a person is diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening illness, we must try to make some sense of the days and months left.

Healing appears in many forms, including antibiotics, chemotherapy, and morphine.

Reiki, guided meditations, favorite music, and listening are appropriate.

Whatever form healing takes, flexibility is essential.  Any number of situations may arise.  A nurse may arrive to do routine and necessary are.  A family member may enter.

Let the process unfold in whatever way it happens.

In the end, we offer a smile, an ear, a touch, an embrace.

Sometimes it helps to remind yourself that, even though we’re grieving, death is about the person who is dying.

The rest of us are there to help say “goodbye”, do the laundry, and serve a cup of tea to someone to someone who needs it.

Finally, our job is to let the person go.

Thanks for reading this article.  Please forward it to your preferred social media network and share with a friend.

A final note:  The third edition, Wellness for All, is now available in a paper edition for $15. with $5. shipping.  This third edition is enlarged and expanded, with over 300 pages of information.  www.thurmangreco.com

www.reflexologyforthespirit.com