Mastering Reflexology: Part 1 - Creating a Fluid Reflexology Routine | Answering Today's Question

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today today I want to answer a question that I got we've been emailing back and forth and the question is about now that she's certified and she also is asking this question on behalf of some of the other students in her class um how to make the session that they leared kind of flow better right they feel that there's um it's not a nice flowing session that they learned she has sent me all the points and stuff that she learned in her reflexology session and I've put that up against what I've learned in my session and this is tends to be a common place to be at after you have you know done your Anatomy physiology you've learned all the points you've learned the session and you got tested on it and you passed and now you have a certificate so how is it now that you get out into the real world and um perform reflexology in a nice flowing session so in this video I want to share some tips and tricks and what kind of helped me get more into the flow of a reflexology [Music] session okay so the question is I and some other people I have been training with we looking for a full 45 minute routine to show how to cover all the systems and reflexes within the feet within the foot um the routine we got shown to learn for the exam was very hard to learn and didn't flow easily if that makes sense now qualified um I think a lot of people wonder where to go from this now right uh obviously each individual client is different and you would work on areas needed for them but if it's a first uh client or a oneoff treatment then having a really good full routine would be great and also uh would hopefully lead to clients coming back yeah I wonder if you had any advice on this or have already done a full routine covering each area of the foot there's a lot there I want to try and uh answer as best as I can um to put it out there um I was exactly feeling the same way that you were and many of your other students uh when you first learn something and you you focus and you get the routine down and it's all awkward and it looks like a you know a huge mountain of information that you need to cover and you finally just barely get it under your wing and um pass the exam and you know you have your Anatomy physiology yay um and you have your routine right that you have learned and a lot of these routines so one issue a lot of these routines um sometimes can be uh taught in a way that It prepares you for an exam so it feels very mechanical right you're like okay doing one two 3 four five and you know so there there isn't really a flow there and especially when you don't have a lot of experience working with clients um the flow doesn't come till later so thank you so much for sending me your um routine and and the points that you all learn um because that gives me a good insight as to you know what you were taught and the interesting thing is that it's very similar to uh the method and the order that I got um taught as well and pretty much not all of them but a lot of reflexology has been handed down and this is the routine that we kind of get and yes it's going to feel a bit mechanical um so my first kind of uh advice would be to just gain confidence in the session that you learned okay so as I was looking at it it's it's broken up into little sections and that's what I think will help with the flow the number one thing that I found in my practice to make things flow was so first of all when you're trying to remember all the points it does feel very um you know robotic mechanical because you're like okay first step one and then we go to step two and then we go to step three and so you're really like not too too much focused on the client in front of you right so that's kind of a disconnect there when you're so focused on your routine so one of the things that really helped me was to get a clear idea of the flow of the session so in my head I have top of the foot which is from the toes all the way down to about the shoulder line okay so there's lots and lots of points as you know that are in that area but what I would do is I would just in my head I would uh I'm very visual so I would color in each area to make sure that I didn't forget that right and then as I would go and then a really big thing that helped me was the desserts okay so the desserts are what I call the warm-ups so those are the big movements that you use um loosening up the feet the stuff that you get familiar when you first start the flexology session you go Hi how are these feet and how do they function and how do they move right all these big movements um you know twisting the toes things like that I incorporate them whenever I forget what's coming up next whenever my hands get a little crampy because that's something else that can happen too that can kind of throw you off your flow is your hands start to get sore right so doing these bigger motions really do help with um the flow and switching from pointed pressure to more of a um you know movement based is going to really help that as well so sprinkling uh these um what I call desserts all over uh the reflexology session is going to be great and you know as a client and hopefully during when you were learning you we also receiving as well as giving and you can understand how um that's really good so another advice would be to go out and get some sessions done um from your uh uh past students as well you know you can do little exchanges and things like that so understanding how a session feels and working together can really help each other um gain confidence and figure out a flow that works for you but I I really don't think that the points what people were taught um can be the issue um making it your own becomes the issue right and what is should be most important is how you take that information that you learned and adapt it to your own well-being and your own understanding and bringing it into the flow but um I'm kind of blabbing here but really um I think sprinkling the desserts the warm-ups those big things all through your entire session is a great way to bring flow to the overall feel of the entire session and it's going to help with you staying relaxed and it also feels really great because some clients right um another point is understanding your client's needs okay so some clients they're coming to reflexology because they want uh sort of a pointed um they want to feel you know the pain pain no gain sort of theory right they want to feel all those little points and they want to feel more of a robotic sort of mechanic pushing those um points and getting right in there right where other clients are going to like more of a flowing session they don't want to be um at all hurt um you know or jolted out of their relaxation by a a sharp adrenal Point things like that right so understanding your clients is also another really great Point understanding what they are looking for in a reflexology session can ultimately adjust your whole flow right somebody who likes lighter pressure is going to like a lot more slower um bigger gentle more um sedating sort of movements right where somebody who likes deeper pressure wants to get their feet worked really well right so you can um Gauge by um the intake form when you first uh get a client right find out you know what what pressure do you prefer you know light medium hard right that can give you a gauge as to how you can work the session so you don't need to work in a lot of those desserts for example if you're if somebody that wants really deep pressure right you're going to want to um hit a lot more of the reflexes that are sensitive right so that's that's another little thing too is you start and this is where it becomes like an art of reflexology art of developing your practice is is working you don't need to be perfect right off the get-go right it's it's a practice right uh another little tip here is I really like to take the socks off of clients and also place them so that I can put them back on at the end of the session I think that's a really great uh impression as well so leaving Little impressions along the way of your session I think are is also a really great way to work your flow into things um creating the environment that you feel comfortable in so that then it that will transfer on to the client is also another great um little point I also like to incorporate uh at the end of a session lotion or oil or things like that so you can use different things like that and that's what I use at the end of a session that sort of becomes my sort of ending Focus right so you have your session you have all your points in between that you have all your desserts and then at the end you have more of a massage relaxation um get some of those dry feet uh nice and moisturize and I I have a whole massage routine so you can incorporate that into the session as well um I also have a uh towels that I use that I wrap the feet in um something that I leared in Thailand which again became something that I incorporated into my reflexology I wasn't taught that but I just thought it was so great when the um reflexologists in Thailand were doing that I'm like oh I need to learn that so I learned it and now that becomes part of my session so incorporating things that are important to yourself and that you think are really great are going to make your reflexology session that much better right um anything else here yeah I I really think that above all else is just ging confidence in your reflexology session right um and the biggest thing that I think for that is getting your own feet done right and seeing what you like in a session and what you don't like in a session right so for example when I went Thailand um I really liked their session the interesting thing about it was they used pretty much like an oil or what they used was a green bomb and Vaseline I thought so that's what they used and they did a massage the entire time they were hitting all the points and stuff um what I didn't like so much was that they use a stick and they were rubbing up and down the sides like this if felt okay afterwards but it wasn't like something that I was like oh this is amazing they did do some pointed pressure on uh I think they have 26 points of relaxation that they use and I really like that so there was part of the stick I didn't like and there was part of it that I did like so just understanding what you yourself like then you can transfer that on to your clients right and another interesting point too is once you've developed your own technique and stuff you are going to attract the clients that um enjoy your session because that's what you like giving out so I don't know if that makes sense but I found that I wasn't able to please everybody there are certain clients that come back to me because they like my session they like what I'm delivering right and there's other clients that wanted that were looking for something else figuring out what you want to um give to the world with using all the points that you learned is going to be really great I do have um because there's a question here about uh we're looking for a 45 minute routine so if you're interested I have on my website um a bunch of online courses and one of them is called in session where I had a friend film me over my um shoulder and I did my basically half an hour to 45 minute routine and I show I don't go into a lot of detail about how to do it or position my shoulders or anything like that um but you get kind of uh you know a fly on-the-wall view of uh a whole uh reflexology session so you can just go to my website balancing touch.com shops and then under there um you'll see online courses and it'll be in there or you can go to the store I actually strapped a phone to my chest and did sort of a a my point of view and I worked um on somebody the other day and so if you're interested I can also show you that it's about uh you know 30 minute little bit over 30 minute uh video and that shows not every point but it so shows how I work a session from from start to finish I didn't follow any type of um you know notes or anything like that I just kind of did a free flow and I worked most of the points that uh I felt the client needed um during the session right and so I do uh I take off the socks at the beginning and I take you through a whole session so um I'll put that video uh after this one um so you can find that on my YouTube channel so hopefully that helps you as well but again thank you so much for asking these kind of questions because um yes when you first finished uh reflexology you're excited um you're nervous and you feel like you know nothing um and honestly I've been doing this a while and I still feel like I don't know anything um every client is different every um session is different and so um yeah just go in there with um I guess belief that what you have leared um is good enough and just do your best right that's all you can really do um but yeah having things like what I've been blabbing about in this video um can be really great like having just really understanding your desserts really understanding um the reflexes so you don't have to think about them is like ideally where you want to be at and then you go into practice and you really start to um go deeper into actually tailoring all those points and all the way that you do it to the client right and then having and asking clients lots of questions about how does this feel do you notice a change things like that um will start to happen and your sessions will just start to have its own natural flow to it so I don't know if this um answers your questions um but from my experience um I wanted to share some some little tricks that I've used uh to help me get through and make reflexology enjoyable for myself and hopefully uh the clients and feeling confident about a flow that I have in my sessions so there you go hope that helps uh until next time this is Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology 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 balancing touch.com Thomas from balancing touch.com see you later