Interview with David Wayte and Sam Belyea

[Music] well hello everybody and a special hello to sam bellier who's with us today and i am so excited to be uh doing a quick interview with you sam it's so good of you to join us um i'm hoping that we're going to be able to shall we say open the box on um sort of what makes sound tick how you became a reflexologist what you're doing now and we'll kind of fill in all the bits in between in between does that sound okay one thing i do want to do is just as a quick introduction uh just in case there's anybody that's never heard of sambalier i mean if you haven't where have you been but anyway so sam bellier he's a leading foot reading expert he's a speaker he's a reflexology instructor who has built his brand by decoding the messages found in the feet sam lives in tampa bay usa and he is also the only dual nationally certified reflexologist in florida now sam i actually want to ask you a question about that introduction i've just given because it's something i keep on meaning to ask you and i we we talk quite a bit and i've never remembered to do it what on earth is a dual nationality certified reflexologist sure so that's actually changed one of my students actually became dual nationally certified as well so um the way that reflexology works in the united states is very convoluted because we have each state basically dictating its own rules for certification some states require nothing to practice other states require a massage therapy license which is anywhere from 500 to 1000 hours depending on which state you're in in addition to the reflexology certification on top of that um so you're looking at a good year to two of of training kind of combined uh minimum for for that practice and the the one organization that's really trying to standardize uh the certification process for reflexologists is the american reflexology certification board the arcb so they have a foot exam which you go and take it's 300 questions uh it's a three-hour test whoa whoa back up the bus 300 questions yeah good half it's 150 anatomy and physiology and 150 uh reflexology so it's a good kind of blend um in order to take the test you have to have at least 110 hours of of education um and as part of the examination you have to submit a packet of 30 documented hour sessions right so it's a it's a really well-rounded kind of test but once you pass the foot exam you are then able to be invited to take the hand exam as well and very few people choose to take both but i as an overachiever decided to fly to new york twice to to take both exams and then became dual nationally certified in feet and hands ah now i understand i was thinking did you have dual citizenship maybe canadian and american or something like that now that makes sense excellent and what no surprise about you saying about you know high achiever and all the rest of it that just doesn't you know well of course you flew to new york to take both of the exams yeah i was i was so upset because when i found out about the exam i was so excited um because i was like oh another piece of paper and let's go for it and um and i was seriously considering teaching at the time so i really wanted like the highest possible credentialing so i went back to the international institute and was like hey do you guys know of this test and apparently they had some bad blood with the international institute um and so because of that kind of political uh friction they didn't have a testing site in florida so i literally had to fly uh to new york to take the exam both times uh which was great i love that city but definitely kind of added to the added to the expense and the extent of it absolutely now i tell you what you have just mentioned a word that fits perfectly with a little list of questions that i've got here because you've mentioned the international institute because i believe you can tell me whether i'm right or not were you one of dwight buyer's last students before he gave up teaching um yeah so when the way that the international ins the way that my certification worked through the international institute was four different weekend classes of varying levels and so i got the pleasure of learning from dwight three separate times one of my classes was taught just by james uh his grandson and um the whole family is is really there uh just kind of in and out depending on who you get and who's teaching the class but yeah dwight uh dwight was able to to kind of formally instruct me work on me a couple times um i went to see him for a session at one point um as well as he kind of tested me personally throughout the the weekends and stuff like that so that was like when i first started studying reflexology i was like oh how convenient there's somebody just the next city over just down the road yeah right this is great and it just so happens that it's literally the lineage bearers for reflexology in the u.s so it it definitely seems to be rather serendipitous i was going to say what an awesome pedigree you have got because then you kind of if we were to take it that dwight buyers with your father as it were in reflexology you've got that direct link to unisingham i mean that is fabulous yeah fab well no that's a bad that's a bad joke we won't do that um [Music] don't mind moving on so how what drew you to reflexology in the first place um so i it's a it's a funny story because i as a massage therapist in the state of florida every two years you need 24 hours of required continuing education so around like the the six months prior to renewal you're you're getting well not anymore because everything's digitized but i would get stacks of pamphlets in the mail and i would just throw them in the trash because i knew the kind of massage therapist i wanted to be but at the very bottom of the stack there was an intro to reflexology course which was put on by this national organization it was only a day long um you know it was very cookie cutter nothing really super formal uh just enough to be dangerous not enough to really know what you were doing the the instructor was actually not super great um but it was it was what i needed and so i took the book i took the practice and i just started playing with it and then as i started getting these really cool results um i started seeking formal certification wonderful so it was almost like reflexology found you for sure that's that's one of the things that i can't really teach my students about because they haven't experienced it but the modality itself has a spirit like it is alive and i definitely like i'll get emails from students who have taken my classes and they'll say sam you know i won't have a reflexology client in months and then i'll go to take reflexology off of the menu and then three new reflexology clients pop up that week like it's it's because you're being asked to do the work yes you know from that perspective absolutely absolutely so your training very formal and um i don't think dwight ever talked about foot reading in any of the publications that i've read that he he's done so where did that come from i mean what happened it came from my clients really uh i started noticing patterns i started noticing you know three people come in with the same exact issue and they have the exact same kind of bone structure deviation or the same dry patch of skin or the same area of the foot that's inflamed or painful and noticing these patterns i was like there has to be something more about assessment not just foot reading from the mental emotional standpoint but foot reading from a how to assess the reflexes and how to recognize these patterns and so i went back to the institute and i was like hey do you do you have any references and so they actually pointed me to a book uh that one of their students had written on foot reading turns out that they had almost verbatim copied jane sheehan's book oh gosh no and it was a publishing nightmare and james aware of it and we we laugh about it now but uh that's what got me on to jane's side of the equation and getting all of her books diving into her online course her content was like this is it so i sat with that content for a really long time and the more i looked the more i wasn't seeing the bridge between you know how to assess the physical along with the mental emotional there was just this conversation about foot reading being internal so i blended the two and really kind of made sure that people who were looking for an all-in-one resource could could kind of understand that uh from my work and then if they wanted to learn more specific nuances with the subtle they could go to jane if they wanted to deep uh deeply go into the physical they could work with hagar and her uh kind of postural somatic stuff or angela telford and her visual reflexology and choose where to go from there i'll tell you what you've just name dropped everybody you really haven't yet you know i i do that because i i wanted this information so badly and it wasn't available you know so i really just want to give people like all the connections and really make sure that you're you understand in especially coming from the us where reflexology isn't popular like it is over in the uk we we can often feel over here like we're on an island because we don't have the community we don't have the workshops we don't have the support in our backyard and so me just having to go over to the uk to get resources um you know that was a huge step for me so i really want to make sure that people know like there are figureheads in the community that are talking about this stuff that are actively teaching and willing to share yeah that was such a shock to me that because i assumed being a uk reflexologist and reflexology as we know it today unisingham america you would just assume that reflexology would be huge in america and it's what with the way that you have to train as in getting the massage certification first then you can do the reflexology it seems so difficult to be able to become a reflexologist in the states one of the things that i talked with the the ncre uh the the national uh council for reflexology education um about was this idea of why why it's so difficult for us as practitioners to educate and to teach and to have a have an army of reflexologists kind of doing this work and the big issue that came forward was certifying you know and standards of education but because we don't have a universal system because we don't have this blanket standard everything is so different it's very much like literally the wild wild west of of reflexology and you never know what the quality is or where the training has come from um and we're really struggling with that over here and the example you gave earlier actually says it all some states you've really got to train other states absolutely nothing at all anybody can do it so i can understand that one i really really can now something that i was wanting i'm going to come on to the the foot reading side of things because of course i've done your course with you absolutely loved it but the thing that i really got from your course was that there is this holistic underpinning all the way through it's not just a case of right here's a pair of feet here are the markers that means this person is but what should i say uh struggles to go to sleep or this person is a perfectionist there's so much deeper and what you're going to do with it that seems to be am i right and remembering and also for anybody that hasn't been on your course that really is your focus isn't it yeah so what i what i want to really tell reflexologists about foot reading is that you you understand reflexology from a manual perspective but how do you take what you find in the extremities and in the reflexes and translate that into a conversation that can help a client understand what they're dealing with why they're dealing with it and how they can implement lifestyle changes or surround themselves with other practitioners to really move that needle from point a to point b um regarding like chronic symptomology yeah so what you're saying is now you've seen what you've seen now you know what to do right exactly and i think that that's the missing piece for a lot of reflexologists because the initial training is so it's so it's so anxiety driven to master the routine and to get the manual part of the work down and that's all the the student really wants to know and of course they're trying to memorize the map and it's just it's so much about the basics but at some point as you get comfortable with the routine and as you settle into your practice there comes this next level of exploratory kind of curiosity that you need to develop and you need to start recognizing the patterns that are in front of you and you need to start interpreting the reflexes and being able to gauge is this liver reflex is it depleted is it uh hot and angry you know is it filled with fluid is it tight what what's going on underneath my fingers instead of just kind of mechanically moving over the reflexes to provide a session indeed now it's very interesting again you used a perfect word guys by the way if you're watching this sam and i have not pre-planned any of this uh recording sam's got no idea what i'm gonna ask him next but obviously you did your first book fabulous book by the way absolutely fabulous the second book see i have actually bought it and you know the funny thing was is i saw a video that you did a week or two ago and you were doing a reading and you had to say but you hadn't actually received a copy of the book yourself even in today's day and age it's so hilarious because i told my publishers i was like you need to let me know when the book drops on amazon because that's because amazon the way that they work with their publishing is so much faster than than a traditional publishing company once they have the file they go through their publishing process and it's just printing right so easy for them um but unfortunately because i'm getting my books directly from the publisher and not from amazon there was a good like two weeks three weeks before my first copy um meanwhile all of you over in the uk were getting your copies and i still didn't have mine so it was it was definitely a hilarious kind of everybody wanted to know when it was available and it was and it sold out so quickly um but they've restocked now and uh i just i didn't get and i wouldn't want to get my copy like this book isn't for me like i i'm not really here trying to to to get my my copies and then sell them back like my job is just to to really teach teach now the thing that i was going to ask which i think is excellent because it really does describe what we were just talking about in that now you've seen what you've seen what are you going to do and in your first book you called it a reflexology primer on foot assessment this book is called a consultative approach i think it is yeah yes it is least i got that bit right good job david thank you so are we getting even deeper into what to do with because how what i'm wanting to know is obviously i've read this one i've done your course on this one and there's going to be hundreds of reflexologists maybe even thousands who have read this book in the uk what's different in this one if somebody's wondering okay well i've got this book already tell me what it is that is in this book because i literally have only just got it yeah i have to confess i haven't read it yet i can't wait to it's just uh time but what is it that i need to know in this book that wasn't in here sure so i really i really learned a lot as i took that book and taught it all across the world it was so eye-opening to me to realize that you know things that i thought were really beginner knowledge stuff because of my background in physical therapy and herbalism and yoga and different spiritual modalities it it came as a shock to the people that i taught they were like we've never heard this before i'm like oh well i kind of grew up with this so maybe i just have an advantage um over uh because i've just i've had my nose in books for longer um and so the first thing that i do at the beginning of the book the first section is all about revisiting the elements and breaking those down because that was one of the big things that people continually had questions on that they felt as feedback was not explained as deeply as it could be in the first book which i completely understand because the elements in and of themselves are a holistic concept that is is so easy but also very deep and complicated at the same time and so i really go into the idea of what are we looking for in a marker in regards to energetics and tissue states and elements aren't always taught in reflexology schools i mean it's a case if you you know about elements when you think of chinese traditional medicine right but not with reflexology generally so this is a whole new world for a lot of reflexologists and this is like this was the big disadvantage and something that i really wanted at the front of the book because it was a gap in my understanding as a teacher of who i was talking to because i grew up in a metaphysical shop exposed to astrology and herbalism and all of these things that use the elements and even in massage therapy we're exposed to the elements as tissue states right as within so without and the idea of this this elemental approach to seeing the body um that was that was new for a lot of people that i taught and i was like oh crap now we have to go back and break it down from the beginning and so that's the first section of the book um and then i move on to what a lot of people had questions about okay now i know how to find a marker what do i do about it it's the how to consult why to consult and when to consult um and how i break down and separate my consultation practice from my reflexology practice um when not to consult and common mistakes that a lot of practitioners make as well as i include a new updated version of soap notes which include the energetics as well as the the 12 body systems and taking a an assessment inventory and lots of different kind of how-to's in that consultation second section so you're coming to the uk aren't you yes are you looking forward to it uh yeah i mean it's definitely no you're supposed to be a resounding yeah i can't wait i'm so it's so it's so conflicting because i i mean the uk is just such a fabulous place and every time i go it's it's always meeting the most amazing people and being surrounded by so much enthusiasm and love for the work and you know i've made i've met so many so many just treasured friends you and nandina included um and uh needless to say every time i go there's always some sort of party some sort of conference some sort of something that we all get roped up into um and at the same time it's like with everything travel wise with kovid with everything that um people are even hesitant to to still take classes i've noticed um you know it's just a lot of unknowns so i've actually taken a couple trips in preparation just to kind of get used to get used to flying again after two years um and also the idea that it is an eight-hour flight um you know well 14 really because i'll be i'll be coming in from michigan was it michigan you're going to michigan then you're going to paris and then you fly into the uk yeah guys seriously sam is really going out of his way to get here he really really is so you're going to be in york and you're going to be in leicester and you're going to be in london and so it's a case of it's the um penultimate weekend of february in york the last weekend of february in leicester and i believe the first weekend in march for london yep so 19th 20th for york 26th 27th for leicester and then 5th and 6th for london brilliant and are you going to be teaching kind of a little bit of both or is it mainly going to be focusing on one or the other uh it's going to be both kind of a combination so um the thing with foot reading that also i think is really important is to understand that the basics you know are are pretty much essential if you don't know your definitions if you don't know your zones if you don't know your interpretations if you don't know kind of the baseline formula then a lot of the consultation stuff the advanced stuff that i go in in the second book is is just going to fall flat because you don't have that support so the first day of the course is really going to be basics uh and going over the zones the physical mental emotional interpretations the elements and then the second half of the day is going to be practical where we kind of put it all to work same thing on the second day of the course where we're going to go over the advanced foot reading but we're going to go over how to consult and we're going to go over the three additional extremities to check which i talk about at the end of the book i teach you how to map the uh eyes the tongue and the pulse oh oh wow i'm looking forward to that this it's gonna be great so the good news is is that you don't already have to have done your course you are still going to be bringing people in so they can understand it but if somebody has already done your course there's new stuff for them as well exactly perfect sam we are so looking forward to seeing you in the uk we really really are um i i do wish you the safest of journeys having seen the flights that you've got i just hope you're not so tired when you get here i really do though well we've got the day of quarantine now so that we do have the day of quarantine so you you've got a day of rest um but seriously guys if you're thinking about doing sam's course and you're not quite sure i can personally recommend it having done it myself and i know if you speak to other reflexologists out there who have done sam's course they will speak highly of them as well sam thank you go on yes um also like if if foot reading is something that you're not really sure about in general um on my youtube channel there are several videos where i demonstrate the technique um read from both my first and my second book and you can gather a lot of kind of baseline information for you to start playing with the concepts in your own practice don't don't take it from me like don't don't use my course as an introduction start playing now start getting the basics underneath your belt and really start validating the experiences through your own practice um that way you know you'll be able to really see how applicable it is and really how amazing it is to kind of shed details uh that the that the feet are really trying to say with clients and and make a huge impression and you're the one who's discovering that you're not just kind of learning another modality that you're going to throw away a year later no no exactly i found what i learned from you i can use with every treatment so it's it's not like um some courses that i've been on i'm thinking what am i going to do with that yours is really really useful it really really is last question are there still places left at any of these venues yes uh all three venues i believe still have about 10 15 places left because we've maxed out capacity uh with the availability since this is uh definitely a rare opportunity so we're uh just looking to get anybody who's interested in one of the three dates fabulous sam thank you so much for spending your time with this interview we've learned loads and we are so looking forward to uh next just next month isn't it next month when you come over it'll be absolutely wonderful okay awesome thanks david safe journeys and look forward to seeing you um later next month okay [Music] you