How Does Understanding Your Foot Anatomy Help Your Reflexology

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from bouncing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today today I want to ask a question and try and answer it of how can understanding foot Anatomy help you with your reflexology [Music] so yes the anatomy of the foot is really important you know I had to learn it when I was learning reflexology and I learned all the bones and I could name them all I still think I can um but I know how they look and how you know they sort of move and and all that so that's that's really great um and of course I create these little cheat sheets for me so I don't have to remember all the names A lot of the time um but it is really good to understand the anatomy but you know once like I said once I learned it I kind of like forgot about it and moved on to reflexology where you know I see the the mini person in the feet and I work that and stuff so obviously as as a reflexologist we learn the points and it reflects we see the body reflected on the feet but we're not working the anatomy right which is a big you know misunderstanding from a lot of people they think we're crazy because we're working you know there is no skull in the the big toe for example right but we're working the reflective you know properties of that so um what I've been finding lately and what I've been really interested in is going back and looking again at anatomy and just how it lines up in reflexology is just amazing so I'll share a little story with you because I noticed um I was having a bit of knee pain and um I I just want to share the story with you so I'm in this adult karate class and we have an exercise at the very beginning where we lift up our big toes right we lift up our big toes and keep our you know the other toes down on the ground and then we switch so we push the big toes down and then lift up the the other toes right and then we do that again so when you kick sideways for example you make something called a knife foot right so you lift up big toe and then that makes it stronger along where your heel is to actually you know kick something right so by doing that it makes the foot more structurally strong and more precise when you're actually you know going to kick something so the interesting thing that I found is I'm getting a little bit of knee pain on the inside of my left um leg and I only notice it when I'll wear sort of like bad shoes you know the the Snows out and things like that so when I'm walking around in sort of big clunky shoes I don't have a lot of movement um I will notice that I'll get to pain or you know I want to put on my you know cool shoes that I got from Tokyo and you know that sort of thing and walk around the mall and think I'm really cool um but they don't allow for my foot to be you know have natural movement in it and I've noticed a little bit of a twinging in my knee when that happens and so what um I noticed when I was doing this exercise is my right foot was really strong my big toe could go up and down and I can actually like thud it on the ground right when it when my toes are up in the air like that I can really put a lot of pressure down on my big toe but my left I couldn't I have a hard time I can lift it up fine that's totally fine but if I'm trying to lift up the toes and push down the big toe for example there's definitely an imbalance between my right and left and it's interesting enough because if you're walking and you're not pushing off correctly with the big toe the foot kind of does a little bit of a slide right because there's no toe to push it off so if if any of your toes actually are lifting up a little bit you're in when you're walking you are actually kind of rotating on like the ball of your foot or you know the ball of the big toe in my example here so as I'm walking I'm gently shifting right and so this is really interesting um and what it's causing is at that little minute every time I take a step that little um spin that's happening is Upstream from that so I have my you know my um shin bone right the tibia and the fibula right they're actually turning a little bit and then my femur which is my leg bone is also turning a little bit so as I'm walking it's doing this kind of like a twisting very minute stuff that I would never notice right and I'm noticing that when I'm working on my feet and getting that stronger or walking with more clear intention that I don't get any knee pain and so this is really interesting to me so I wanted to go and check the anatomy a bit more and so I'm understanding how my foot um is working as I'm walking and of course when you put it up against you know a chart like this um and then you bring it over to a chart like this which is just the skeletal system here we can sort of superimpose what's kind of going on and I've noticed too that because I'm doing a little bit of a spinning here I'm getting more of a callus sort of over in this area here right and oddly enough when my knee is um kind of letting me know there there's something going on there I'm also have neck tension and I've noticed lately that I've been having a lot of neck tension of course it's on the left side and big toe look where that is it's right where the neck is on the um on the left side right so over here so knowing how my foot is functioning while I'm walking is letting me know that there's a there's a weakness there right so the muscles need to be somehow strengthened or and it's compensating so it's creating sort of this knee problem which is all going all the way up to my neck like I'm feeling it in my neck because everything else in my body feels really great but I'm feeling it I'll get the little warning sign in the knee and then my neck will actually bother me for a little while and I've noticed that right after I've been you know doing bad posture sitting in front of the computer too long or you know as I said before walking in you know bad shoes right that art that don't allow my foot to move right and so it's kind of interesting when you stack you know stuff that's going on in your the anatomy of your foot and how it functions to a reflexology chart you're going to get a lot of insights into it right so yeah there's um the neck issue up here right I'm also getting a little bit of a callus I've noticed over on this side so it's also relating to you know could be related to my wrist stuff and then you know as you do a bit of referral reflexology you're going to notice that the the risks are related to the elbow which are related to look at the knee here right right so you have this model here so um and then it follows that way so I just find it really interesting um right now anyway to kind of go back and look at the anatomy of the feet and when there's a weakness in the foot or the leg muscles right um it can reflect in our beautiful reflexology charts just as clear right so as a reflexologist we're able to tell like we'll see what we're working on the points and stuff and we'll notice like okay there's some calluses here and that sort of thing and then we can relate it to that part of the body right and when we work on the feet we're actually you know opening up those muscles and tendons and muscles and you know because there's a lot going on in the foot right there's in each foot there's 26 bones right there's 33 joints there's more than 100 muscles tendons and ligaments right like it's just it's a crazy amount like it's a quarter of our bodies um bones right in this little concentrated area and the job of it is to you know absorb um as you know as we walk and run and stuff it's to absorb its shock absorbers right and so if our feet aren't properly functioning we're going to feel the shocks or the rest of our body right it's just a a fact right and the beautiful thing about it is that we see the little person on the feet right and so when we're working we can tell what's going on in the body so it's not really you know um a while ago it was always sort of this mystery reflexology like how does it work and stuff like that but if we're looking strictly uh structurally here it makes a lot of sense how the body reflects um from you know dysfunction in the um you know I guess anatomy and the muscles and things like that when there's a weakness um the foot has to compensate or the leg muscles have to compensate or work a different way and they usually cause pain Upstream before the feet actually feel any pain so the feet kind of in certain ways in certain conditions and certain things like that like this is I'm talking really broad here but in certain ways um the feet are the last to kind of bother us right so um I just find this really interested and I'm interesting and I'm really into this right now is uh focusing on you know strengthening my feed and learning some some really cool exercises and things like that to help the rest of my body right because we know that by working on the feed it helps the rest of the body right so I just wanted to share this little story with you um and yeah you know a simple thing to do is that I'm aware of now is that when I tell my um left toe to lift off the ground and to go and then lift all the other toes off the ground there's an issue there there's a signaling problem so I don't have control over my foot right there's a weakness there and if I if there's a weakness there it's going to cause something Upstream as well right and so possibly it's my neck pain possibly it's my knee pain so I'm going to play around with this to strengthen my big toe and see um if it's going to help my knee and neck problem right because as we you know saw before it's reflected in those areas right so those a bunch of little things Upstream from my feet could be affected I just wanted to share with you that you know something that wasn't found reflexology wise um you know in my karate class found a weakness in my feet so look down at your feet can you do that can you lift up your big toes and then put them down and lift up your other toes right and if you can't there's something wrong there right as far as being able to tell your you know like I can tell my fingers to move like this right and our feet like I said before have 26 bones and 33 joints over 100 muscles and blah blah blah right they they wouldn't be there if they weren't meant to move right our feet and all the joints and stuff are meant to move same with our hands look at that right I don't have you know I don't have a joint in the middle of my leg or or here right I don't have a joint here because it's not meant I don't need it to I don't need it to have movement right I need you know these joints here and this joint up my elbow and my shoulder so I can you know whatever feed myself right so I can reach down grab some tea put food in my mouth or if something's coming towards me I can throw my my cup of tea at them right so as protection so I don't need joints where they're not in my body right because joints when they show up in your body they are there for movement right so if you have all this joints and stuff in your feet it's meant to move it's meant for all these different movements right you have basically two groups of muscles right you have extrinsic and intrinsic muscles in your foot right muscles that come from the outside from your leg muscles and wrap around your ankles and stuff so those are meant for kind of bigger placing the foot right they're meant for bigger movements of okay gotta get my foot in this position so I can walk forward and then you have all the intrinsic muscles which are the muscles that are in the Foot Right within the foot and there's a bunch of layers and stuff and those have to do with you know finite movement of the toes and spreading out and moving around but when we walk around in on flat surfaces and stuff them in shoes that don't allow for all that Movement we lose the ability to use our feet right and that's what I've found from my my class that I go to is that I've lost my ability especially in my left big toe right I've lost the ability to have good control over it and that weakness is throwing something off in my body and so that is just a really cool thing so the more that you know about the anatomy and the functioning of your feet plus the bonus is the zero reflexologist or you're interested in reflexology you get this other layer that we get to superimpose the entire body over top of and then find out more about what's going on so when you have a client or somebody you're talking to and you see there's weakness in the foot you can relate it to the you know to this map basically right this is only the skeletal system of course we put everything in but the skeletal system is so great because it gives you an overview structure of the entire body right so when we have this beautiful map we can relate it to the client or whoever we're you know talking to about their feet and we can give them some really great information about what's going on in their body right so anyway blah blah blah it's it's an exciting thing um it's very simple right it's nothing new I already knew this before but until I have an experience like this where it's so obvious um of course I don't see it right so thanks for watching today I hope that was useful and um I want to make some videos on maybe some exercises and what to do about when you find a weakness right so it's really great to because as reflexologists we can find um right away like where calluses are and where the weaknesses may be um but then then what right so I want to put together um some exercises that are really targeted for certain conditions that we as reflexologists find in the foot so stay tuned for that um hopefully coming soon but we'll see uh thanks again for watching today and remember to keep those feet happy 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]