Creating a Safe Healing Space in Reflexology | Interview with Chris Shirley #reflexology

hello and welcome this is Adam Thomas from baling touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today today I have a special guest today who's going to talk about um a really amazing course that uh he's created and I think it would be really useful for anybody to know about it and um anybody who's a reflexologist wanting to advance their skills I think this would be a really great um chance to check out this course so person on the screen here is if you don't know him already is Chris Shirley from the Pacific Institute of reflexology and he's also created um the reflexology resources uh.com which is absolutely amazing if you don't know about that you need to go check it out because it's crazy good um so yeah so Chris welcome the course that you have created is Advanced reflexology um creating a safe healing space so I was just kind of interested in what kind of inspired you to create this course I don't know where to begin um this is there are so many aspects to this um and back back in the day before I got into reflexology I took a program um postgraduate training in counseling psychology at the University of Victoria um and counseling was kind of my thing before I got into reflexology and so communication was really quite important and then at the same time as learning and establishing myself uh with reflexology I got into um a whole realm of energy management and um psychic training um that was really fascinating as well it was really quite extensive um and I continued in that training to learn how to teach the skills and at one point I had a program called getting clear which was uh where I was teaching the courses on how to manage your own energy and how to provide energy healing so that that's kind of in the distant background um now as I'm moving more into retirement I have more time and the whole area of My Body Connection kind of came up and I had I decided to delve down into that I've never really had the felt like I've had the time to do that I found it useful in my practice with clients U some clients greatly benefited from it so I just wanted to get more into it and then the ball started rolling I got into trauma and the whole new area of working with trauma with Gabel mate and Dr Abigail oh I don't know how to pronounce her name Aban um two wonderful people working in the field of trauma um and gradually this came together that I realized that when a person is trained in reflexology they don't learn anything about how to relate to their clients and that's so important um iect I've been guilty you know of really doing a very good job right so this course isn't really Hands-On how to do reflexology it's that's why it's an advanced course it's more about you know working with with clients and how to create like um the safe safe healing space right so exactly um let's see it so we learn how to do the reflexology but how to create a safe space for healing to take place when we're doing the reflexology that is not taught no and that is all about communication what's important and communication this is It's the essence of Health internal communication you know as well as external our relationships with other people and everything in the world in that sense communic is very much about being holistic right yeah yeah for sure and when I took training we never we were more focused on you know learning all the anatomy physiology all where all the points are and remembering all that stuff so yeah we don't we don't um once we start working with clients we don't actually know how to work with them in in certain ways right we know physically how to what buttons to push and all that but um but yeah when we're working with somebody it's hard because we might be pushing other buttons right that might be triggering clients that we're not even aware of because we don't have that as a as our training and I think this is where exactly what you're talking about here is that it sort of fits this this hole in um you know Advanced uh reflexology you really touched on it there Adam um we don't realize when we're triggering other people's buttons because their buttons are hidden they're not obvious to us and we they're invisible um we have our own perspective and we tend to think that everybody else sees the world the same way we do but nobody does yeah nobody no we have a very unique way of seeing the world and so to other people so when we say something or heaven forbid give advice we don't understand how that's being received right we don't realize that we may be pushing that person's buttons and upsetting them more than we're helping them yeah so so is in this course um is that a big component of it is is learning how to see if you've triggered something or or how to listen or like how how do you go about um working with this well this is what's so neat for me anyway is that that training that I had in terms of energy management is a really excellent way to develop mindfulness so that you have a much better awareness of yourself and how you're feeling and when you're having a reaction um so that you can manage that in such a way that that's not detrimental to the person you're working with but also so that you can be more present a lot more present to the person that you're working with so the the course starts off developing and I want to emphasize this the course is very much about training okay so we spend most of our time doing exercises and learning where we don't do so well so that we can improve giving each other feedback and so on um and becoming more aware initially of ourselves um energy management is becoming aware of grounding being centered running your energy there are a number of techniques um that have a a variety of benefits in terms of how you can use them but they really help you to be more present once you're more present then it's easier for you to listen right to the person that you're working with and hear their perspective even though it might rub you the wrong way get you upset you know push one of your buttons because you don't want them to feel feel like what they're saying is bad or not okay it's very important that they get a feeling that whatever's happening with them is okay because it is it's part of their process and we just need to be empathic about that and be there with [Music] them by listening purely listening but that's so easy to say difficult to do right yeah yeah I found in my practice too like um I'll see some great benefits for example in in a client and you know they come in they're all kind of like and then they leave and they you know they've change so much and and that's what keeps me going as a reflexologist but I notic that some of those people are the ones that sometimes end up not coming back and and I it really frustrates me because the they had such a great change but I don't know like maybe there's maybe I didn't create a safe um environment and it was sort of more about like oh look what I did you know like before and after and who knows right but um it's interesting that uh you know this course is sort of creating that because I'm wondering if I was a bit more sensitive to that situation that I would still have the client maybe come back to me you know what I mean like I know what you mean I I'd like to share with you I just got an email from a client that I saw many years ago and she said what she shared with me was that she had pain in her lower back I think it was around her cck it wasn't typical back pain um it's something very specific and she had a a couple of sessions with me and I fixed it in her words I fixed it right and so she didn't come back she didn't need to ah and you know for me I would have had the reaction that you just had oh maybe what I was doing wasn't good enough maybe there's something not right about how I approached her that's why she didn't come back but she didn't come back simply because what I was doing worked so well however she was contacting me because a friend of hers um had a similar problem now and she lived in Australia and could I refer her to a practitioner in Australia that would help her with the problem um so in part when people don't come back it's for good reasons unquote they've had good results but on other occasions yeah I think maybe um unwittingly we've touched on something that they're not comfortable with or they don't feel recognized it's like no that's not me you're you're not getting it you you're not getting me right and that that's the thing about having the skill of listening is uh it's very much oriented it to you getting a much better sense of who that person is and where they're coming from and in the process they get to learn more about themselves because you asking for clarity forces them to think more deeply about what it is that they're talking about and to share that with you and so the process goes on and on and on until they say oh this is stupid and in a sense they let go of the issue so it's a healing process as well right um is this like um if somebody takes this course yeah um like is it good for beginners or is it more experienced reflexologist or anybody um like how how does this information get incorporated into your reflexology session is it a separate kind of like you know entity where you're kind of doing more of a counseling session or are you integrating it in with reflexology or all of the above I I think that's really up to the practitioner and how they choose to utilize it um I not training you to be a trauma therapist right okay um one of the important things about having mindfulness being more aware is knowing when you've reached your limit when when something that's happening you're not comfortable with and it's like at this point it's really important for you to be able to say I'm sorry I don't feel like I can go any further with this maybe we can find somebody else who's trained to work with you therapeutically around this topic so that's one of the advantages of learning to be more aware of yourself so that you're more aware of your limitations um and when they come up um I think when you're working with somebody you're spending an hour with um in your session so it will be important for the practitioner to establish their boundaries it's like our session is one hour long and this is when it starts and ends and if you want to spend more time then you need to book another appointment but when we're working on a person's feet we can also be having a conversation with them about what's where their stress is coming from from you know a good question is what drives you H what drives you what do you mean what drives me well you're working 12 hours a day you're trying to be a parent to your children you've got this and this and this going on what drives you yeah you know um because when we're driven we're not present H we're just trying to get to the next step and the next and the next and the next you know it's like it's that list of things that we have to do each day and trying to get through it rather than being present to what we're doing in the moment and that affects all our relationships and that causes our stress yeah right yeah huh yeah and you know being a reflexologist it's it's the ideal um like situation where you have somebody there in front of you for yeah like an hour andh you know probably different than massage where they're totally zoned out and staring at the ground you know we we can have an interaction if that if the client chooses to and so yeah it's really great to have like what you're talking about these extra tools to be able to go deeper if the client wants to and exactly yeah and I couple of things come to mind as you're talking one is we're touching the client and what I discovered is that when you're touching the client they feel a lot safer a lot more secure I went through a trauma program therapy program with Dr Amy abigan I'm not sure if I'm it's always Dr Amy on I see yeah you know um but and um the first week was learning ways to feel safe well when we're touching the person they feel safe it's like if you hold a child's hand they feel secure they feel safe and people feel safe when they're being touched but also as we work with their feet we discover where they have stress in the body and we can then ask them simple questions like um are you aware of having a lot of stress in your life if the adrenal gland is very sensitive you know or um this part of your body seems really stressed can you relate to to that do you have any idea what that might be about if they've been feeling pain when did that start what was happening in your life when it started these are cues that we can but the questions are open-ended and we're not providing Solutions we're opening the door for the client to look deeper into what the source of their stress might be right and then they have the ability to resolve it in whatever way they decide is most suitable yeah and I think that we when we have that presence with our client and we go into those intimate places with our client we build a very strong relationship I think that client's going to be coming back much more than just having us to a bandaid on their stress which reflexology I'm sorry to say to a large extent is it takes away our anxiety it takes away the pain in the short term without addressing how that got started and stopping it from coming back right yeah oh does that make sense oh yeah makes a lot of sense yeah yeah okay so I I'm very excited about this but I've been trying to communicate this through email and in speaking conversation when when somebody is speaking there are three parts to what they're saying MH there's the content the words right there's the nonverbal cues my hand gestures and there's the verbal [Music] cues if I'm feeling kind of depressed or if I'm excited or you know the various the way the person is saying what they're saying those those add so much to the content of the words and I put out emails about this course and I I'm feeling frustrated that I'm not getting across to people you know the the value of the course they don't feel like they're seeing it right of course you can't see it in the written word because the written word doesn't have the verbal on the nonverbal cues and that's something that we learn about in the course right is learning about those verbal and non-verbal cues the problem with them is that they're unique to each individual their gender different different have different ways and they're also cultur different yeah yeah so that means if we're not sure what the person means we have to ask them to clarify but that's a good thing because as they clarify they get clearer for themselves when I teach my basic course we learn about the intake interview right excuse me as I adjust my seating here um and the intake interv you is your opportunity to establish your relationship with the client and so it's important for us to be aware of that right yeah the other thing about verbal and non-verbal cues yes we want to be aware of them when we're listening to the what the client is saying but we also want to be aware of the nonverbal cues that we are putting out yeah yeah so if we're sitting there with a my my son just went for an interview for a job and he said the guy was really stoic he didn't say anything he was like a statue I couldn't get any sense of of you know how he was receiving what I was saying and if unconsciously that's the way we are with our clients they're not going to feel very secure he didn't feel secure in the interview the moment he's waiting for the results but um we want our clients to feel secure so we need to let them know that we're we're hearing what they say and we're you know we're taking it in right yeah and then you know also I noticed with my clients as well we you know I do the intake as well and and that sort of thing but there's it's sort of like um there's kind of a very surface level like how are you doing today oh fine and it's like okay then why are you here you know like it's it's really interesting so I think you know this course what I'm hearing is is it sort of go goes beyond that of you know oh I'm fine and and all that you you're able to actually um learn how to see and how to hear um the deeper level of what's being said yeah very interesting so POS of of course is how to integrate this into your reflexology practice right um to know about the client well partly it's listening but also you might want to know about their marital status or their economic situation or what kind how secure they feel in their job or whether their job is just paying the rent or if it's a you know a career or you know people have many facets but we don't see m and so if we're going to be a holistic practitioner we need to see those different facets of a person in order to help them or yeah well it it's a little bit tricky we don't want to interpret and put them in a box right you know we we don't want it to be restricting but we do want to get a handle on where they're coming from um so that's where the listening is so important uh so instead of giving them advice we would ask him a question like how do you think you can handle that what what do you think would be the best way to cope with that right and see what they come up with we can throw out some suggestions as possibilities but not as advice not like well I think you should do this right you know Carl Rogers was the creator of um client centered therapy and the whole skill of listening um and he was the hot man when I went through my counseling training um he really revolutionized the whole process of counseling because before him all the people in the field were medical so their whole orientation was very medical what's the problem yeah get a diagnosis come up with a treatment apply it and fix them yeah and he said well you don't do any of that you have the client fix themselves and that is so much in my way of thinking we we create our own problems and we have the ability to resolve them if we so choose right yeah but yeah but we usually don't ask ourselves questions right like like what you've been sort of sharing this whole time is you know asking an open-ended question really allows because I you know I don't ask myself those kind of questions during the day I'm just like oh you know like like you mentioned before it's it's like I'm in I'm in the traffic trying to avoid getting you know avoiding getting into construction or into an accident right I'm just trying to get from A to B and and so yeah you don't know spend the time to ask questions so yeah no no you don't what I'm doing right now is thinking about a response to what you're saying rather than listening to where you're coming from which is the typical conversation right what came to mind for me was I was once Blown Away by one of my clients H she came back for a second appointment and one of the questions I asked a client when they come back is how was your last session and she was like bandam I don't know if you remember him he was a British Columbia politician he was a premier at one point and he fantastic and that's exactly what she said it was fantastic and I was kind of surprised you know most people yeah it was good it was okay it was all right I liked it yeah but no this was fantastic so I sat down I was in the waiting room and uh I said to her so what was what was fantastic about it and she said and this really blew my socks off I'm glad I was sitting down all those questions you asked me ah not my excellent reflexology not my presence no nothing of what I was proud of but the question she said I hadn't thought of any of that stuff before yeah now this is not common at least I don't think it's common usually you get those questions whenever you go for any kind of medical treatment um healing massage or rapo or anything um health professionals are those kind of questions but it really Illustrated to me how important questions are for people when they take them into areas that they haven't really examined too much in their lives right yeah H wow well I can talk forever about this stuff it's so interesting to me um yeah I'm I'm afraid I could it's well it's good you created a course about it so that's that's really great yeah I'm was exciting too because I in the process I started out with the body mind connection and in the process it become a therapy for myself I I took the uh Gabel mat he has a program of um compassionate inquiry okay and uh I took that program with him and then with uh Amy Dr Amy I took that program I opened up things that I wasn't aware of before I become aware that whenever I'm doing something I kind of punched my shoulders and there's like an intent to get it right and not make a mistake oh um but I was kind of protecting myself and so I started learning to lower my shoulders and as I did that my front opened up yeah yeah and I realize how closed I have been um protecting myself in a way yeah and this is probably childhood trauma that I'm working with so it's not like when you identify for somebody something it's suddenly miraculously taken away but it does open up the possibility for them to be aware and conscious of that aspect of themselves and work with it if they so choose yeah yeah so great are you going to be teaching this in person is it online or how how have you sort of envisioned that you're teaching this I teach it I I plan to teach it through Zoom yeah I plan to have recordings of each class so it's 10 weekly sessions one one session a week for an evening I'm not I haven't taught it yet so I don't know how long the sessions will run right um each one but I'll um I'll play with that but it'll be 10 weekly sessions and there will be homework assignments between sessions um for example um be aware in conversations of nonverbal and verbal cues and bring next week an example of something that you experience with verbal and non-verbal cues and that just helps the student to become more aware of those cues we're aware of them but not consciously and so the idea is for that homework assignment is to have it more conscious so that as we move forward with our listening um we can build on it so yeah between each class there will be the opportunity to practice daily hopefully um but we're learning in the class each week and so it is a training right it's yeah it's a pro process of training yeah yeah yeah and you're going to be there through Zoom um guiding and and helping everybody out that way that's great okay so it's not just an online thing that you sign up for and you watch videos and you go on your way so it's way more uh personal interactive it will be in person and I will be um student I'll have breakout rooms at times where students will practice things and then come back and discuss how it went um so the it's active participation um sometimes I'll have uh two students um do an exercise with the other students watching and then at the end of the exercise the students can report how they experience listening and speaking and the other students that were watching any observations that they had because often as an observer we see things that the participants aren't aware of and so again that's all Grist for the meal yeah yeah yeah nice you know yeah it's part of the learning process great yeah okay and then they can find out about this on your website uh and this is on your uh which one is it it's on the Pacific Institute of reflexology website right yeah Pacific reflex allergy.com Pacific Okay so we've talked about becoming self-aware and we've talked about listening but I'm also in the process talking about the importance of hydration breathing very simple breathing right being aware of boundaries um understanding emotions and so that we're not freaked by them and we can be with them comfortably um the applied holistic practice so seeing a person as a whole in you know in their relationships and so on of course the Mind Body Connection and the nature of trauma and stress these are all sort of intertwined into the process of learning right um yeah um is there yeah sorry it's good okay um I was wondering if there's like prerequisites for this course well it's designed for a reflexologist right I I'm thinking the course would be great for anybody in the health care professions right yeah yeah for sure and so maybe at some point in the future um I I will create a VAR yeah a separate course for but this course is particularly directed to practitioners of reflexology because we talk about relating to the feet and how they you know connect with the person and so on right so yeah it's specifically focused on the practice of reflexology that's my mission is to move reflexology into mainstream and have it respected well you've you've done a lot of that in your in your lifetime for sure at least that's what I've seen in you know my area you know thank you you know reflexology used to be nobody even knew what it was right and now it's everywhere and it's because of people like you really honestly you know yeah I'm glad you said that because of people like me not just me but a lot of people for a lot of very wonderful people out there practicing reflexology and oh it's such a blessing to be part of that Community likeminded people um you you you don't choose to practice reflexology to make a lot of money you know oh really these are people who care yeah you know but unfortunately caring can be misleading and you know if you're very caring and you run to help a guy across the road because he's blind he might B you away and say let me do it myself yeah you know and your intention is good but your caring is misplaced um so and that unfortunately I think is the case with a lot of reflexologists that don't have any training in communication with their clients so that's what this course is about is Raising awareness of how you're being and the neat thing is that it raises your awareness of how you're being in all your relationships you know in your family with your spouse with you know with your friends with in your work um with other practitioners um yeah it's it's a applicable to all aspects of our being I I I think that um we've covered pretty much everything I can think of off the top of my head um but there's a brief description on my website and uh and I'm open to phone calls um or people emailing me if people have questions um yeah it it's really hard to anticipate the kinds of question questions that people might have so yeah totally um if we haven't covered something that somebody's concerned about by all means contact me and I'll be very happy to talk with them about it okay I will listen yeah yeah that's great okay and then um is there is that the best uh website to get a hold of you at yeah Pacific reflexology decom yeah okay that that's by are the best and um to find the course description look under training yeah and then Under courses and then under at the bottom of the page it's uh the third Advanced course that is offered right yeah okay yeah below the video or wherever um I'll I'll put that information a link um in the description right so the other thing Adam one last thing um I'm teach in this course for the first time and I assess the value of the course is [Music] $895 okay which I feel is is a fair price um but because I'm teaching it for the first time I'm giving a $300 discount oh okay so only $5.95 for the whole course first time around one time offer yeah um and we'll see how it goes so in exchange for the feedback of the participants right yeah okay and then um when when is this course uh uh slated to run March 18th March 18th okay so thank you so much Chris for doing this interview with me um and now you guys know a little bit more about this amazing course so if you're interested all the details will be in the description below um head on over to Pacific reflexology tocom and you go under training and scroll the way to the bottom it's the last one there um Advanced reflexology creating a healing space is what the course is actually called and like Chris said if you're interested in learning more about it you can uh email him or phone him and he' be happy to answer any questions about the course um best of luck for this course Chris to run well and um thanks for watching today this is Adam Thomas from balancing touch and remember to keep those feet happy thanks for watching bye-bye