How to Use a Massage Ball to do Reflexology for Self Care

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today today I want to continue with um the last video which was talking all about uh massage balls and which ones are great which ones are not so great but they will work um and I want to show an exercise today on how to use my favorite uh massage ball which is a lacrosse ball and um just this exercise is amazing for your foot mobility and um just your overall uh foot Health in general so let's go take a look at this [Music] exercise it's a little exercise I picked up this from um over at the foot Collective if you guys don't know what that is really good to go and check them out uh they do some fantastic uh Mobility exercises and training they're just amazing over there but what I really love about this super simple so it's 222 so you do 2 minutes on each foot two times a day for two weeks and you'll see a huge Improvement what we're going to be doing is rolling across our foot so what I mean is we're going to be rolling this way right so we'll call it like horizontally moving all the way down end up as much as you can and we're going to be doing it that's why I have the little timer here for one minute and the only part that we're not going to work is our um heel right cuz we don't need to work on there but basically from there all the way up is fair game and then what we're going to do is we're going to be working like vertical up and down so from from Heel To Toe direction right up and down and so we're going to be rolling this way and again you don't need to come too high up you just you know stop at the um heel right and move all the way up again so if this is something um kind of new to you um it might be good to like for example have a chair to hold on to or you know I can sort of reach back here to get a little bit of balance on the wall so just it's good idea to kind of have something next to you so that you don't fall over and you know that sort of thing um but it is really good to work on being able to have better balance on one foot so let's actually do the exercise here okay so I'll start with my right foot and then we'll move over to the left foot so I am going to actually start by going this way okay I'm just going to do vertical stuff for one minute okay let's see if this will actually stay there you know what I already have have a nice surface to work with so I'm just actually going to move this out of the way and then you can see me there that should be fine okay cool so I'm going to push start on the timer and we're going to be working vertically ready um before I get started actually I should talk about how much pressure should we apply so you want to actually apply enough pressure that is tolerable okay you want to be like tolerable discomfort if that makes any sense but you're going to have to kind of like self-monitor for this um at first I would recommend holding on to something and then just seeing how much pressure you can put down that feels comfortable so I've I do this once in a while you know my feet are more are used to it right so uh the beautiful thing about this is as you get more and more used to it you kind of want to keep that uncomfortable tolerance right you want to you want to feel um like it was your first time doing it if that makes sense too but you you can by applying more of your body weight right and that's what you can do with these balls too especially because they have so much resistance so if I was to use the other ones that we talked about um you know I would probably end up wrecking the ball before I would get a good workout right so just pay attention to how it feels in your body and adjust accordingly right so you can Yeah by Holding On by this you can suddenly lift up your body and work a little lighter right um getting rid of holding on support and you know allowing your body to sink a bit more into it then yeah you can do um a lot more work that way so let's get into um actually showing you the one minute process here actually 2 minutes okay so push start on the timer and we're rolling back and forth okay so I'm just trying to roll back and forth all the way up here okay all the way back and forth so I'm starting on you know the Zone number one which is the big toe going all the way down and then we'll do zone two which is the middle toe there and work over to zone three up and down four and you'll notice it'll be a little bit challenging depends it could be challenging on the the big toe side or the little toe side and that sort of shows you where your feet and you know coordination and balance are um a little bit weak right so this is really good just up and down here apply more pressure if you need it and we're coming up to the last 5 Seconds here there you go okay now for the next one it helps to really plant the heel down or use it as a pivot right as you do the next one and this is going to be really good for using your toes right being able to kind of hold on to it as you're also exercising that way so let's see how this goes but remember we can also move down you know you're you're working the whole surface too except for the heel the very heel bone there right so you come all the way down to there at least work horizontally across here and then we work up that way right so let's see how this goes okay so planting it down I'm just going to start here really rolling across this way you'll hear some cracks and Pops that's totally great again you want to feel this okay and the side sideways one is a little bit more difficult to kind of hold on to there and our feet aren't in daily life or not used to this kind of a movement so it is going to be challenging and I come right up to the toes here too see all my toes are kind of grabbing it I'm going to move all the way around that way okay and come back to the bottom again doesn't really matter which way you do it just make sure that you're working the whole foot really well okay and do it for the full one minute right just keep going keep going trying to work out any stiffness that you feel any areas there you go right and then we come over to the other foot okay so we're going to do start with the vertical again back and forth heel toe Direction there we go and I can feel this one is not as coordinated and my balance is a little bit off in comparison to the right [Music] side and so it's a little bit harder for me to apply more pressure right because I'm a little bit a little bit off balance right so you know this is just something to get used to and over time it'll get better and better right but the great thing with this is you know the more that you do this the better balance you'll get and your feet will you'll get better posture because your feet will be able to work and open up more right so this is a really great one make sure that you work all parts of the toes okay down there okay and then with this one we're going to plant our heel again um as we move back and forth so here we go [Music] okay I come up all the way to the toes yeah and see I have way less control on this so this is something that I would probably spend more time on then my right [Music] foot the interesting thing is that when I do these exercises it really helps my knee I tend to have a a knee um not really big pain but it is something that I notice there's a weakness there and so interesting enough that my foot is also on the weaker side in comparison to the right side right so something's just could be work a little bit better than it is there you go so as you can see it wasn't that hard to get through it right 2 minutes goes by really fast so in total you're spending you know four minutes right but it's it's not that bad so if you have a little timer that's also a really great thing to have around um I bought a bunch off Amazon just to have them um they're really great you can use your phone but again as soon as we touch our phone we start scrolling and we're like oh yeah what was I doing so I like to have actual manual timers and things like that right if you have a clock up in the wall you can look at that as well um so yeah there you go that this is a really effective exercise and the more that you do it you'll notice the benefits um right away you're going to notice first of all your feet open up a lot better right they feel really really great like my feet right now are buzzing nicely right cuz just got a good workout um and that's what you want to feel at the end of this right so if you feel any type of like really sharp pains and stuff that's not what we're looking for here um it shouldn't really hurt it should almost be like if anything a really good hurt right so there's there's the pain stop and then there's also the you know pain oh but it feels really good you know like getting there your shoulders massaged or something like that right there's it's it hurts but it's kind of a good hurt where you know an injury is actually something that you know sends you pain messages going stop stop stop right so um just pay attention to that and if you're getting those kind of like pain uh like really sharp pains and stuff just lighten up right make sure that you're holding on to something but yeah it is really good to you know move our feet as much as possible and and just doing one minute this way and then one one minute going across or whatever way it doesn't matter really um as long as you do that um you can just do any type of little circles but this one just really focuses you and it's easy to follow right so so again that was um you know from the uh the foot Collective uh they recommend um 2 minutes each foot two times a day for two weeks and you'll see a huge Improvement right um so there you go uh hopefully that makes sense and you know kind of shows you some ideas on how to work with the massage ball hopefully that was useful for you um yeah so until next time uh take care of your feet and remember to keep them happy thanks for watching 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 reflex goodies over on my website which is balancing touch.com Thomas from balancing touch.com