THE HISTORY OF Reflexology
First recorded in the tomb of Ankhmahor in Egypt around 2,330 BC, pictorials show hand and feet massages being given and the words ‘give strength’ and ‘do not cause pain’.
No tools are shown so dismissing the theory that it could have been some form of manicure or pedicure. Padabhanga or foot massage is an intrinsic part of Ayurvedic medicine in India and dates back 3000 years. The Chinese also believed in life forces or energies and that they ran through 14 channels in the body. Foot massage and it’s benefits to overall health were also part of the oral history of tribes from Africa and North America.
Reflexology is based on Zone Theory in that an imbalance or blockage in one part of a zone can be dispersed by working on another part of the body in the same zone. The core theory of reflexology is that the hands and feet are mirrors of the body and that using pressure on specific mapped areas can restore homeostasis or balance to the person.
Reflexology was first written about in the C16th by Drs’ Adamus and Atatis. Early pioneers such as the Englishmen Henry Head, a neurologist and Sir Charles Scott Sherringham discovered respectively that zones on the skin related to specific organs, that massage and heat was beneficial and in Sherringham’s case won a Nobel prize for his work on spinal reflexes and neurophysiology.
However it was an American, Dr William Fitzgerald who founded Zone Therapy in its current form. He discovered that pressure on specific points during minor surgeries and procedures alleviated pain in the corresponding internal organ. He worked out that the body was divided into 10 longitudinal zones.
Others started to develop his theories and one of them was Eunice Ingham who is the mother of modern reflexology. In the 1930s she mapped the body onto the foot placing all the organs into the zones. She also developed her theory on crystals and how to disperse them.
It was not until the 1960s that Reflexology came back to England when Doreen Bailey, a nurse who trained under Ingham reintroduced the practice. Now increasingly accepted as a beneficial holistic therapy by the medical profession and awakening the curiosity of an enlivened generation the belief and practice of reflexology is spreading as is the general belief in the importance of holistic therapies.
CONTACT & BOOKING
©2022 Naomi Queree
powered by WebHealer