Mapping the Lymphatic System - Reflexology

okay everybody let's do some mapping bam knocking stuff over already so we have to start with our guidelines on the plantar surface of the feet um and what we'll do that's a little bit different from our previous videos is we will actually map some of the other reflexes just so that you know how to check for those reflex areas so we're just drawing our guidelines we have first and foremost our shoulder line guideline where the toes meet the ball of the foot our diaphragm guideline underneath the ball of the foot the proximal head of the fifth metatarsal about halfway down the arch which divides into our waistline guideline and then we have our pelvic guideline just above the heel if we wanted to also for this the purpose of these reflexes etch our plantar tendon we totally can which is just that pesky tendon that runs down the plantar surface of the foot so what I wanted to draw your attention to first and foremost is we covered this a little bit in the skeletal system but the idea of the Box theory of the joints and we'll look at this a little bit more on the other views of the feet but I really wanted to highlight the shoulder reflexes and then the hip reflexes which we can't really see very well on this view but they're in horizontal zone four they are the lateral malleoli do you see how we've created this box shape yeah so this is very much how the body is organized when a box is even you know the Four Corners are in alignment but if one edge of the box starts to deviate either because of an injury um or something like that then the whole box has to shift accordingly which puts pressure on joints that aren't meant to take that much pressure so what we want to be aware of with the lymphatic system is that although we're going to be mapping specific portal reflexes for the lymph that skeletal structure is going to be super important because the bones are the Gateway for the lymph now um let's talk about real quick kidneys so kidney reflex is halfway above and halfway below the waistline guideline in line with the second or third toe just depending on who you have on your table it shifts a little bit on everybody and that is our kidney reflex also if you wanted to draw ureterm bladder just a flashback to the uh urinary system just as an FYI but then what I really wanted to play with here oh and we got to do the adrenal because the adrenal sits right on top of the kidneys okay but now to the actual portals for the lymphatic system so the lymph drains into the subclavian veins sub meaning underneath clavian as in clavicle and then veins as in the vessel portal so the clavicle would be literally on the shoulder line guideline because if we think of the toes as head and neck then just as the head and neck starts to go into the chest we have our clavicle so I'm just going to highlight that in blue and that's going to represent the reflex for the clavicle on either side so this is the area that we want to check for that Dorset that plantar aspect of the ball of the foot just along that shoulder line guideline for any fluid backup that's going to tell us a lot about the subclavian area in terms of drainage just in terms of direct lymph and then we're going to flip to our other picture of the various surfaces of the feet to draw some specific distinctions if the picture would be ever so kind and come with me there we go okay so let's talk about the dorsal surface because the dorsal surface is is very very important so we have again shoulder line guideline diaphragm guideline proximal head waistline guideline and then pelvic line guideline through the back it gets really easy Once you just draw them over and over and over and over and over and over and over again so again the subclavian although technically the dorsal aspect of the foot represents the back of the body same principles apply you know if somebody has C7 pain all the time they're more prone to having that physical impingement of the joints which leads to lymphatic backup also if we wanted to really focus on um all three of these or two of these pictures rather the spinal reflexes because where the spine deviates it can also tell us a lot about where the lymphatic system might be impinged but also lymphatic impingement can cause spinal pain so the two feed into each other and they're just really really good to know and then again we have that idea of the shoulder reflexes and then the hip reflexes which we can very much see on our lateral view there so that would be the shoulder that would be the hip and then we can't really see it on the medial view there but what we can see on the dorsal medial and uh lateral View is going to be our fallopian tube vas deferin reflexes now Sam this is the lymphatic system not the reproductive system why are you drawing the fallopian tube vas deferens reflects some of my live students might already know because although on most Maps the dorsal ankle Bridge the bridge of tendons on the dorsal ankle represents that reproductive space and it is definitely a very key if you wanted to go to the reproductive system master class and just review that it is very very key to palpate for like cysts any sort of physical impingement of the reproductive area but we have to remember like we said in the muscular system this is also very very deep pelvis this is also iliopsoas this is also all of the deep core and so when we think of major lymphatic portal this is going to be an area that tends to be flooded with fluid physically if somebody is coming in and they have swelling of the feet this is where you're going to find it on the dorsal aspect of the foot normally it's going to be towards that hip reflex on the lateral sides and then it will gradually pool up into that subclavian area and you can literally see the backup happening especially when in the case of like a um a lower body impingement that's affecting the the upper body so what we want to really be aware of is that this dorsal ankle space really tells us a lot about how the the lower core aspects of those inguinal nodes that inguinal lymph drainage that groin lymph drainage how that's doing in its Journey back up towards the subclavian veins and then if we wanted to just be really fun and carefree we could also draw the kidneys on there and the ureters which go into the bladder kidner bladder and then we can't really see it on that aspect cool so that is that oh and adrenals can't forget the adrenals always find that on the dorsal aspect right in between the the first and second metatarsal heads proximally there's always that that point that seems to be super stress oriented and that's because it's the dorsal aspect of the adrenals imagine that okay moving on to the hands about to get handsy uh we have our shoulder line guideline again the hands are structured just a little bit differently so we have to do this weird swooping motion I know it's query as any but that's the way we map it then we have our waistline guideline and the proximal head of the fifth metacarpal because this is a carpal area not a tarsal area and then that imaginary line in between the distal and proximal rows of the carpals of the hand okay so we have our shoulder reflexes again remember the hands are a little bit tricky because we're mapping them anatomically so even though this is the medial aspect and the shoulders or lateral we have to imagine the hands like this because the thumbs represent the big toes and the fifth digits represent the fifth digits okay so those are our shoulders those are our hips and then we have that subclavian area at our shoulder line guideline okay so we're really looking for swelling at the base of the fingers here just like we would be looking for swelling at the base of the toes ball the foot um even into the knuckle area then if we wanted to draw our kidneys kidneys are really fun to draw because they're literally right in the belly of the hypothena or no I'm sorry the theme or not the hypothena hypothenar is here so silly oh forgot the bladder and then bladder goes medial then we have our adrenal so that point that everybody presses in the center of that phener area in order to take away a headache that's why the adrenals right there and then if we wanted to just for Giggles before we look at the dorsal aspect we'll draw our spinal reflexes just a little bit of all over review test your knowledge okay now we get to start to look at the dorsal aspect in terms of all of those really fun hip lymph drainage areas so we have again shoulder line diaphragm line waistline pelvic line Shoreline diaphragm line waistline pelvic line okay so subclavian area this is going to be our major lymphatic drainage point that we're going to be assessing for then we have our kidney reflux if we wanted to do on the dorsal surface again right in the middle of that in our area adrenals okay now let's take a look at the shoulder and hip okay so with the shoulder and hip we're really going to be looking at that dorsal aspect actually I used a different color for that didn't I I used pink just kidding so we have our dorsal aspect and then all of those dorsal tendons of the extensors of the hands the muscles that make your hand go out or into extension versus flexion which makes them go in we have all of those nice pelvic muscles and all of those reproductive spaces but also all of those deeper lower pelvic lymph reflexes then we can't really see it but just to to draw the spine always follow that thumb or big toe line okay looks pretty good to me now onto the face the face guidelines are shoulder line in line with the eyebrows giving them a unibrow underneath the zygomatic bone making them a raccoon or like they're going to rob a bank then we extend the smile line for or the lip line for the waistline and then that cleft of the chin extends all the way to the jaw which we can't really draw properly on a 2D image but you would trace the jaw all the way to the ends of the face all the way to the ends of the Earth okay so we have the temples which represent the shoulders then we have the jaw area which represents the hip and that creates our box for the body we then have our subclavian reflexes at the shoulder line but here's the deal a lot of people get really really interested in the fact that I call the eyes the chest lung space as well as heart as well as major lymphatic portal so what I look for when a client comes in in terms of if I think lymphatic backup is present is I'll look for bags underneath the eyes now some of you might be like well Sam I have bags underneath my eyes no I'm talking about pools of coagulated fluid at the base of the eyes um that tells me a lot not just from a physical standpoint in terms of lymphatic backup because it's literally the water pooling in the face at the base of the lungs like deep into the chest it's also a sign of you know respiratory infection and deep-seated grief so we talked about how the lymphatic reflexes are often associated with the emotional state because where fluid goes emotions follow um or vice versa where emotions go fluid follows you know they are very much connected so when we look at fluid even like upper eyelids that are kind of really baggy and saggy that are kind of taking over the eye all of that would indicate clogged lymph just as a fun you know side note okay then we have our kidney reflexes on either side of the mouth and then our bladder reflexes in the middle and then our adrenal reflexes halfway in between the sides of the nose and the corners of the mouth right over the root of the canine tooth good stuff and then the spine spinal reflex uh uh bam some of you thought I was joking but seriously that's the spine so although we have normally there's that cleft uh in the head that you can't really see on this picture but that Ridge just as the eyebrows start to become pronounced that curve of the frontal bone we have that would be our cervical reflexes then our thoracic reflexes then our Lumbar and sacrocoxic reflexes so that's kind of like lymphatic system in a nutshell and last but not least the ears so drawing our guidelines just above the Triangular fossa just kind of highlight that for you real quick we have our horizontals on one space diaphragm guideline just below that you have that nice Ridge just above the Simba kanka to tell you where to go with that the waistline guideline just in between the auditory opening and the Simba conco or the Simba conquer cavemkonka then just below the auditory opening as the lobe starts to form we have our pelvic line cool so we have our shoulder reflex in zone two sure then we have our hip reflex in zone four awesome then we have our subclavian reflex which is right along the shoulder line and then if we wanted to do let's do spine now so again spine is always medial wee then we have our kidneys so right in between the symbiconka and kavam konka that Ridge just as we get into that nice little fold or Crest it's tucked right in there at the kidneys just like with all kidney reflexes on all the extremities I mean it'll it will literally manifest as this bean-shaped patch which I think is really cool and we have the adrenals we have two adrenals not just one okay and I think that's pretty much it I think we got it I think we got all the lymphatic reflexes just as kind of like a summary again we have nodes everywhere so it's not like we can map the nodes individually they are omnipresent they are everywhere yes we have clusters but those clusters tend to form around the major joint reflexes so if you know your major joint reflexes you know where the nodes are going to be and then all you need to understand is the drainage aspect at the subclavian vein to look at fluid backup and be able to actually see fluid in the extremities because where you see fluid back up that indicates the exact same fluid backup in that reflex area in the body it's one for one so we really just need to pay attention to basic anatomy here and then let the lymph tell us the rest great job everybody