How to Work the Nervous System on The Feet in Reflexology

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today today we are going to look at how to work the entire nervous system on the feet [Music] so the nervous system can be broken down simply into two different sections right one that kind of excites us and gets us going it's also known as the fight or flight or even freeze response right and this is known as a sympathetic nervous system right so our heart rate gets going um blood goes out to our extremities our arms our legs and we sweat and all these things are give us a great benefit to be able to um you know get out of danger right to be able to our Bloods and our legs and stuff and our hearts pumping so we can run away from something quicker um we sweat so if something grabs us we have a an extra layer for example on our body so that we can pull away easily like things like that so this system gets us kind of our go go system and in our daily lives this system is activated a lot in stressful situations things like that you know back when this system was kind of a benefit to us was when there was actually like physical danger that we could either run away from or fight to survive right but in today's world there is a lot of we we still get this response happening even at you know when there's just stress at work or you know our boss says something to us and we go into this we get all these chemicals these same chemicals and the same exact response that we would get from if we had to run away from a tiger or something like that in nature we live in more of a sympathetic nervous system State more often than we do on the opposite side of the system so this is our kind of rest and digest system which is the parasympathetic system so one of the great things that we have as a reflexologist is we um things like massage things like relaxation techniques and breathing technique things like that put us more into the parasympathetic state right so it's a balance if we're always go go go go go go our system is going to be too much overloaded all the time and we're going to get feeling sick and things like that right where if we don't get that chance to kind of bring it back to an even balance then uh we can't have happy lives right it's it's always one-sided right sort of thing it's sort of the same way as if if where I was breathing really shallow and not able to relax and breathe out properly right same thing as if we're walking you know one arm balances the other arm like this sort of thing right so if one side's always going quick forward um we just don't move through life with ease right so the greatest thing about reflexology is that it puts us into a parasympathetic mode and that's why a lot of people and if you've done reflexology you'll notice a lot of people just go after a couple of minutes they just start to relax and even some clients fall asleep right during a session that's what we're really trying to invoke here so there are some certain um reflexes and areas that we work on the feet that are directly related to the nervous system but in general when you give a full session of reflexology that is the most benefit that gets the person the client into a more of the parasympathetic nervous system response right so that's kind of our goal here so um let's go and I'm going to show you uh some of the main reflexes that are directly related to working on the nervous system but again the best thing is to work an entire session over some time right so just working on these points might only take a couple seconds but working the entire feet is going to be even more beneficial to the client's nervous system than just working the single points but it is of course important to know these points and where they are so before we jump right into all the points that are related to the nervous system I really like to work on some general sort of desserts some warm-ups to allow me to feel the entire foot and see how it works and basically say hello to these feet this is one of my favorite ones it's sort of a DOT to dot full foot scan this gives me a really great idea of how the foot feels in general right and just checking around the ankles here as well just to kind of see how they move see if there's any like you know fluid retention or things like that gives me a good feel for what is needed in this foot but just a couple warm-ups really give me an idea of how the foot will function [Music] and of course I try and do the same stuff that I did on the other foot and because we're going to be working on the nervous system it's really great to do a bunch of warm-ups before because then it gets their nervous system familiar with how you work and how you feel right that way they can relax a bit long like deeper hopefully I usually don't wear my rings I forgot to take them off so I'm just gonna take them off so the sort of dot to dot scan of the entire foot is so good for a general overview of how the foot feels in temperature in tightness things like that [Music] [Music] great so the first one that we're going to work on is the brain so the brain reflects is found mostly on the big toe pads and the way that I work this is I do horizontal lines and vertical lines covering the entire pad of the big toe and then I'll use different techniques like what you're seeing here sort of a push in and then a circle just to really scan the whole area and work it really really well so the brain does go across all the toes as well but I put a lot of focus on the big toe and just check every part of the pad of the big toe technique wise it doesn't really matter which direction you go or how you work but it's just really important to work the entire pad and then I'll work each toe as well so again I'll come over to the other side and I'll do the same stuff horizontal lines and vertical lines making sure that I cover the whole area very very well and this is a really great technique rolling the finger on top of the toes yeah so I found a bit of tension around the kind of like the occipital Ridge area of the head and so I'll just spend a bit more time there and then working on each toe as well making sure that you work it really well so this is a cool little technique to do the top of the heads top of the head but sections of the head right so when you're rolling across make sure that you're not working on their nail you're sort of working this side of their nail I'm just rolling my fingertip there right on the tip of their toe right so not the nail part obviously but the pad very tip of the pad of the toe it's also important for myself to make sure that I'm using my third fourth and fifth finger and pushing my thumb to support my index finger right so here I'm using my thumb and my fingers to kind of really hold my working finger the index finger nice and sort of tight so that it doesn't just flop around that way my fingers won't get stressed out when I'm doing this and all I do is I drop my elbow down to give my hand the movement so I keep my wrist straight and then I kind of just lift up my elbow and then drop my elbow and that will allow my hand to rotate and I always like to give good desserts as well when I'm working in between so next we're going to look at is the nerve ganglia right that runs down your spine and where it is is the nose at the top here and it runs right down following the arch of the foot all in the meaty part there all the way down to the heel and the way that I like to work it is I use my thumb walking down and then walking back up again I like to kind of overwork this line starting on you know the far side of that line that I just drew and then I work even more into and working all the arch of the foot because if you get a picture of the spine in your head you know that has like a bunch of branches that come out from the main spinal cord right and so that's what I'm working here all the way up the arch of the foot and yeah I'd like to use this in dot to dot sort of technique work the whole area so this is the whole area that I want to work feeling for any tension or any type of area that does doesn't feel or needs stimulation and then I'll come over to the other side and so a little tip here for the technique that I use is I like to have my bottom hand Palm up when I'm kind of working as well as now you can see I flipped it to be Palm down I just really don't want to be putting my wrist at any weird sort of angles so just pay attention to how your wrist is bending when you're trying to work the side of the foot it can be challenging but just try and keep your wrist as straight as possible when you're doing this so this isn't really the part of the nervous system but I just feel this foot needs a little work back and forth that way right and as I said before just working any part of the foot is going to be a benefit for the nervous system so next one here is the sciatic nerve okay and it runs around and wraps around the ankle outside ankle and so it's kind of like a Nike sign almost like a check mark where I'll go down one side wrap around the ankle and push up into tendineum and uh basically the outside bone right the far out fibula right that's the name of the bone on the outside again keeping my wrist straight and using my fingers going to sort of palm up as I go so in the supporting hand which in this case is my left I will actually be kind of turning the foot slightly and lifting so that it makes my job a little bit easier and then work the whole sciatic area really well good next one I'm going to do is the kidney one point or the solar plexus area and this one is amazing because it's where on the foot anatomically where tons of nerves come to a single point so this is a really grounding balancing point and I like to work on the diaphragm a little bit because it just helps with relaxation and again our main focus here is trying to activate the parasympathetic nervous system come over to the other side we can kind of hold in and then I like to pull down along the diaphragm so here you can use one thumb or two thumbs and then I just like to work all the way across there because there's so much nerves and tension kind of in this area so it's really nice to loosen that up [Music] so you're pushing down and spreading out just really helps with that area so yeah we work the head the brain basically down into the spinal cord and the nerve ganglia right that goes out from the spine and we work the sciatic nerve right wraps around the ankle there and we did the kidney one point or the solar plexus same point different names so there you go those are the main points to the nervous system and again key Point here is having and doing a full session of reflexology that is going to be the greatest benefit and then when you focus in on those reflexes that I just showed you um you're going to have a really great uh response and bring that parasympathetic system back online and you know balance out the sympathetic nervous system right so there you go um I didn't have time to show you a couple of the relaxation techniques so I'm going to make another video for you that's going to have a couple techniques of breathing and holding on the feet that you can either end a session with or if a client's under a lot of stress you can even start the session with or you know just bring it in just as a tool for your reflexology so stay tuned for that um yeah hopefully this was helpful and I will see you in the next video take care bye-bye if you're interested in learning more about reflexology you can 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 thank you