Charting the feet in Reflexology Part 3

quite cool [Music] okay and then you want to get into actually physically touching the feet right so we come over to part two here which is the physical cues okay so overall well touching again check defeat to see if they now feel similar right so they might look all puffy and stuff but when you actually touch them you'll actually find out that maybe they're all muscly or tense right so your first impression of just looking might give you some different information than when you actually touch so this is also very important to to also indicate on your chart because for example um I don't know I'm just kind of going with it here but if you see somebody that looks swollen and their feet look swollen and bigger than they actually are and then when you touch them they're actually quite you know soft and maybe rigid and muscly that can tell a lot about them because so maybe in their life they're getting treated a certain way when they're actually a different way if I don't know if you can follow me there but some people um just from their uh look of themselves right so we're not just talking about feet now we're talking about their overall sort of Personality some people might think they're kind of like edgy or hardcore kind of people but when you actually get close to them and touch them they are quite gentle and quite loving people right so that's just an example of what the kind of information that you could get from somebody's foot right so um check how they feel right you want to just do a quick overview and something else that I like to do as well is I like to hold in three areas um let's see here check temperature so that's the next one that we'll do and I'll show you this little hold so you can it doesn't matter where you start I like to start at the bottom and then you can just hold this way so you hold one hand underneath and you can just kind of feel like that this has given you a good indication I like to take my top hand and just wrap it around this way like what I'm doing and what this does is it tells you the basic lower third of the foot the heel all around there you can get a sense of the temperature right and then you move to up to here okay so I do a little bit of a hold like that and then I'm going to move up to feel the toes right this gives you an indication of the temperature right are the coals the coals the toes colder than the heel or the toes or the middle right so this gives you an indication of different temperatures right of the foot this is also giving you an indication of um what we talked about before was some of the uh texture of the skin right so you can feel around as well and then indication that indicate on the chart that there um check the condition of the calluses so now we have already charted saying calluses are here here but what do they actually feel like so when you actually touch them like for example on the shoulder reflex here it's very common to have um calluses there so when you actually touch it is it a new callus or is it really really thick right so new newer calluses will be kind of like especially in color there will be sort of more red because they're sort of new right there there's been friction that created it and so it's new but it's not deep deep deep layers of skin right it's sort of more on the surface the the top layers are you know sort of building building up to protect itself but there there's not a lot there where it's somebody who has shoulder issues and they're walking and putting a lot of pressure on this area of their foot they're going to have layers and layers and layers of skin that's really thick and hard right so that gives you an indication so just looking again oh that looks like a new callus and then when you go up and touch it oh no no that's really deep and thick and old right so that gives you a more information when you actually are touching the feet right touching the calluses so that's what I do as I feel around for the areas that I've already indicated where calluses are and just check them out physically how do they feel right and then I like to do a bit of a Mobility um sort of procedure and I've written them down here so I'll check the ankle rotation so how do they turn their ankle right is it able to go and I again check both directions right so for example oh it's easy to come in right but as I go out it's really stiff so I'll write that down okay so check dorsiflexion and plantar flexion right so dorsiflexion means pulling this part of your foot towards there towards them right so bringing up and then plantar flexion bringing down towards the bottom of your foot right don't have to know that but just know to flex one way towards their head and away from their head right so there how is the movement there right is it easier to go down or do they resist when you pull push up right so does that that can give you information as well um I also like to check the bones that are in here are they able to move freely or are they really stuck so I'll go down each Valley I'll hold nice and tight here and I'll just shake back and forth check there check there check there and check there right how is that feel is it looser is it you know tight right that's basically what I'm looking for um then we can check the mobility of the toes so I'll kind of move them forward move them backwards the same thing that we did with the feet right okay that's good I'll try to spread them a little bit move them this way just kind of see how they move around right it gives you lots of information as far as that goes right again from the bigger picture down into smaller areas to see how the toes function right especially if you're getting toes that are overlapping and stuff how stiff are they right are they really stuck like that right um and then you just check the entire foot and then notice any tension so I do a little scan okay so I wrote here in Brackets a doc to dot scan what that is is I just go down the foot like this and this is what I'm calling dot to dot so this is dot to dot all the way down and I'm scanning all the way down the foot to feel where those tension areas right like if I'm going along here I go oh yeah okay shoulder area I'll indicate that on the map keep going down oh there's some tension areas over here so I'll indicate that on the map as well on the chart we're making a map really right so um and then you want to look at any type of unique quality so as you're doing this little dot to dot thing you might notice some pops some um kind of gritty areas right I find it really uh common to find some sort of like Sandy gritty poppy areas in the um lung area right so you can write all those down you can feel like maybe their foot clicks weird when you're rotating it one way and only on the left foot where on the right foot there wasn't any of those clicky things so anything like that physically um unique about their feet maybe they're you know maybe they have uh webbed toes right that's a really cool indication to write down right because they're very unique to any other feat right um what else uh bone protrusion stuff like that anything that's kind of you know deformities anything like that right so just Mark that down what's unique about this person's foot as compared to the other feet that you've seen right and write that down because um you can get a lot of information that way as well so that is um a big checklist that I go through and you want to move through it pretty quickly okay and get uh efficient at chartiness because it's going to give you a lot of information and when you chart in a similar fashion to this you're going to notice that you're getting a lot of information written down and you will have as reference for later right so um see if this can uh help you out if you aren't already doing this maybe there's a couple things on this checklist that you kind of left out that's totally fine it might not be that important to you but I find that this is something that I use and it gives me a really big picture of uh the client's feed [Music] so another really useful tip for you to help with charting at least it's been really great for me is to have a couple different colors of pens okay or pencils or whatever you want to use I actually like using pencil crayon Okay so when I have more colors it I can detail it better like I said before I'm more of a visual person um and I don't want to write a lot because it takes me longer and it's something I don't know what to write sometimes right or the descriptions tend to drag out and be really long whereas for me just indicating a line or an area is going to be really great and another thing too is because we're working with such small little areas like the feet um you might notice that for example for example here I can just show you something really quick so in the shoulder area on this side of the foot there is an indication of calluses right so there's calluses and what I can do also with this is I can actually make little areas that are darker than the other area which indicates to me right so you can see there that there is more importance or thicker skin here if we're talking about calluses there another thing I can do is I can actually write with a different color here so I'm actually doing red here right that down at the bottom it's actually quite red and inflamed for example right so that's kind of cool there then there's actually a little mole here right so and then I have over here there's also some kind of squiggly weird lines that come through here okay so if you can see that there right so now the great thing about using different colors is this is all layered and if I had to do this all with pencil it would look completely different right for for example I'll just do it on the other side here you can still see it right it's fine to chart this way but I prefer this because right away I can tell sort of the more detail by the charting right I find it I think these are similar they give me information but I'll know that you know for here I'll put a I don't know a mole right up here is a mole right so I just find it really useful and I like using different colors it gives me more information and it's easier for me to chart and see later um a visual representation of the actual feet right for me and again you doesn't need to be perfect right you can just do little indications but that gives me an idea that yeah the importance here in this session was working on their shoulder reflex and then later on maybe um I'll find that it's faded a little bit and so I will only use the orange color for example right so that's just a little tip that I think can make your charting really um even more easy to understand for later right [Music] so I know we didn't go over and chart somebody's foot uh one by one but I wanted to make this video because I think it's really important to have a checklist and everybody's foot is different and if I show you on somebody's foot this is how you chart a foot um I don't want that to be solid for you right I wanted to make this video so that you can start doing it now and getting the the checklist and just working through it that way so that you can do it maybe in other videos I might go through in a little bit more detail about what clients and what I think is important in feet but when you go through this checklist and write down as many of the stuff that shows up under each category you're going to have a really well charted Foot Right feet [Music] this can be a really good Learning Resource for you so all these little indications work into different parts of reflexology as well it's like some people in reflexology they're really focused on the structure and the process of working on the feet other reflexologists are really into you know reading the feet what does every little thing mean what does this mean in their life um so they're you know like uh foot readers right so they're really into that so what you can do after you've charted your feet really well is find out like is you know do these things relate to your structure to your posture right is is there something that they can be corrected by their Footwear or is there exercises that you can recommend them or you know is there something in their life emotionally bothering them right um these indications are you know showing up what does this line mean as far as you know being able to swallow your truth or things like that like what does this line mean as far as reading the feet right so there's so many layers to this so even if you are a foot reader person and you do all the the charting and or if you're more of a structural um person more interested in that these the lines and indications and all the charting that you did work in both ways so that's a really cool thing about charting the feed really well and so this becomes a really good resource so you can look back at what you've charted and they can be great learning tools for you and so I have kind of a rule too that if something keeps showing up three times and I don't know what it is I will go and research it because it's I feel the feet the feet uh the universal feet are telling me um that I need to learn this right so if I see a line that shows up on three clients or it's commonly showing up I will go out and find out what that line means foreign so there's a lot of books out there right now on the topic of reading the feet right and one of my favorite people that I go to there's a couple of them but uh my first one is Chris Stormer and she just has a couple any book by her is great because she just goes right into talking about what the the meaning behind all the lines and and the feed and the directions of the toes and all that right so if you haven't if you're not familiar with her um go pick up a book of hers uh in the description below I'll recommend my go-to one is my favorite book so far she has a bunch now which is the language of the feet um and I have the second version which is really great another person who's really amazing is Sam Belia and his book is called foot reading reflexology primer on foot assessment so that is a really great book that I got a lot out of and he has a new one out as well that goes even further in depth and um it's it's amazing uh I can't even understand it it's so good but um so yeah those are the two that I would really recommend if you're interested in learning about all the different parts and language of the feet I'm sure you have some that you'd like as well if you do put a comment in the in below so other people can find which ones you think are really great I also have a bunch of videos on YouTube that talk about you know what the colors of the feet what temperature are the feet means and things like that so you can go back into the archives of all the other videos that I've been doing and find them that way so yeah so anyway I hope this was useful for you um foot charting can be quite a boring process but I think it's fun and I really like it and later on I can get so much information about it and it becomes a great resource for me for learning more about reflexology so um hopefully it was helpful for you so anyway thanks for watching today um all the stuff that I talked about hopefully I'll link it in the description below um yeah so until next time remember to keep those feet happy and chart them well take care bye-bye if you're interested in learning more about reflexology you could subscribe to the channel below it's also very helpful to hit that like button and feel free to share it with anybody who you think might be interested in it you can find my online courses reflexology charts and other reflexology goodies over on my website which is balancingtouch.ca thank you so much for watching today and if you have some more time you can check out some other videos till next time this is Adam Thomas from balancingtouch.ca see you later [Music]