Reflexology Documentary History research

thank you for talking to me today Terry okay so we just got a few questions to ask you how did you get into reflexology topic some some other skills in order to pay for the course towards the back end so I studied massage sports therapy and it reflexology I graduated in all of them that's how I started reflexology and I started doing reflexology treatments we did I did yeah whatever came along with it people wanted massage reflexology or anything else and I did quite a lot of it because in those days that was that was part of our income because time he was just starting up yeah in a new place in his place and I was I was wanting to get a get going and to get get the course behind me and to get it paid for so yes that's how I got into it and it started with just one of the tutors from the Timoney courses that have you thought about reflexology I said no and we talked about it and it appealed to me as most things connect with the energy do and we got reflexology is very much a similar sort of thing to what I'm doing now which is using energy to affect change in the body or to affect us to match us to help to assist change in the body and that's how I really got into it and he just went on from there when I came to Zeeland reflexology I tried to contact the new system New Zealand repairs are busybodies and I've got a big sum zero in my attempts to contact them when we got here I discovered why because they were actually getting together for me a new body called reflexology New Zealand and when I got here that and be running for about I would guess about a year because that stage the president was growing across to Australia and they asked me if I would like to be on the committee and I said well you know I I'm not very good at committees I said they're very few job started being really able to contribute well and they said well you know what do you think I said well I wouldn't be any good as a secretary I've been uses as a treasurer because I I hate figures but you know maybe I should be president I said joking that sounds like a good idea so I was then I was in for that for president of reflexology New Zealand and duly elected I did it for 12 months and in that time we achieved a degree of cohesion and that's quite difficult because there are groups within the organisation who are who were from a particularly strong previous body who wanted to dominate things a bit I was hard for sometimes to keep it under control but nonetheless I think I've managed to do that very well anyway at the end of 12 months we were just really getting going with our practice here as chiropractors or as as holistic therapists because we couldn't register as chiropractors so I tended to want to get out of the administrative Robert reflexology New Zealand and stopped just working with therapies working with patients and building after practice and so that's what I did and I I stood down as president and oh what's her name - Curitiba Christchurch and mph - yes xanthi and yes she took over and she went on from there and I thought that was very good because she was a very good person when she time would she have practiced up and running she had time to devote to it and she as she did she got good leadership skills as well perhaps I hope I somewhat minded rubbed off because I have leadership skills I've always held leadership position me Commerce and Industry I've been doing it ever since I keep ducking when they're trying to elect people into into leadership roles but like not very quickly of that and so I'm so currently president of an organization I mean try I try to avoid it for a long time did that so it just seems that it's something that's inherited my personality that people want to elect me to leadership roles I did the same thing with massage New Zealand because we joined them because they were the only ones who would recognize Mick Timoney and when he wanted a body that would support us and so we went to the first AGM dang me if I was nominated to be President there's a young lady who was nominated also and I thought that was very good I said look I'll tell you what I will do the vice president role and I will support this this person in their presidential role and help her to get through the first years as being a president which he'd never done before so that's how it transpired and then we had a massive problem with politics in you see them much much worse than reflexology New Zealand and most meetings were spent rising parties apart almost and I didn't like that much and so I wrote from the sign for massage New Zealand at the ATM suggesting that they fired the whole committee in Scotland again with fresh breath with no previous political or leadership and therefore committed positions and I understand my letter was read out and that's what they did they got rid of the existing committee staff from again which I think was the best thing they ever did because that organisation's been trying to now coming back to reflexology now obviously whenever we had an AGM or a conference rather tango and I were involved just because we were here and we did a lot of work with the King in setting up conferences and getting things right and the last one we did was the Napier language of course was the tenth anniversary I think it was the merger and I'd say to my credit I baked the cake and I got the Tuesday's cake something else by state but they did it with no organic icing right be very careful to bake cake totally organic but nonetheless it was obviously very popular because it was doubly crumb left when everybody left the conference hall and the chef of the conference menu I was asking for the for the recipe so obviously leadership skills extended to making cakes as well so I gave him my recipe we went to the UK in 2011 mainly because business just dropped through the floor after the Christchurch earthquake largely I think because of migration of people down to Christchurch to help rebuild because a lot of our patients at the the building trades and we had a lot of family pressure so we went back to the UK and we spent a year in my place in about six months another at which point we we couldn't stand it any longer we came back again lock stock and barrel and started up again here and we had our first patients in the hotel motel room the day Everett always the day after we arrived on day after wasn't it and that continued and we got this place very quickly because one of our patients was wait for property brokers and he put in a good word for us and so when this place came up with him 48 hours about getting back was it any for 2014 that was it as much as equips those bad but anyway we came over saw in city to have it and we've been here ever since and now we are not practicing reflexology because we have the skills and that what we do which are very which is very very different but very very similar because what we have done is brought energy to a form of chiropractic which was whole body coupled with another form of chiropractic which is known as Korn specific technique which is to do with asking the body what it wants you to do and in what order I want you to work so it's working with the body not on the body and that coupled with our energy approach has proved to be highly successful and as there's nobody else doing it we thought well you know we're better off doing that than doing some reflexology which is well covered by other people by Karen and I think that just about brings you up to date yes so when you studied reflexology where did you actually learn it there's a there was a chap who ran these courses in Basingstoke not far away from where we lived and he taught the massage the sports massage or sports therapy and reflexology all up to what was the be standard in the UK to get straight into the reflexology I forget what it was called it was a specific effect ology Association in the UK which incidentally was well recognized and therefore wasn't my place to be but I found the qualification pitless was easy but I enjoyed the work we were very enthusiastic Bunch learning and come from lots of variety of different backgrounds and the teacher was just very very good he taught us bit by bit how to work the feet and he also had talked about how it affected the body and how it worked as far as we knew and he was also a victim the chiropractor so he we had common ground that's how it worked into Tania learn at the same time assume no I meant in I've notice here after he arrived here I thought in favor of solitude for myself receiving it from a mother of four young children and totally stressed out and her friends use me as a guinea pig while she was training and I had all these free treatments which was lovely but then later when my daughter was about 12 and I was already with too many chiropractor them but in their early stages my daughter developed asthma and she asked mom can you help me because I don't like this inhaler it's awful I said I don't know but I know somebody who can probably help you and I phoned a reflexologist who actually lived about two streets away from us in Bedford and he came every Thursday evening for six weeks and did her feet and she loved it you'll be sitting on this chair half-asleep at the end of six weeks she threw her inhaler away she's never had that's why again the only thing time she's had anything to do with the breathing was when she got what wasn't um I think it wasn't a fourth anxiety and I could tell her to hold her hand in some pressure points which would help them relieve that and she was actually a halfway between home and university she's gone back to you need to do a teacher training course so that helped her calm down and that was about four years before we came here but I've never actually thought of doing we got here and the proximity of love juice and a that's a nice crowd there I enjoyed it very much the full year weekends so and I don't know any ethnics obviously now I did the benefit of the anatomy and physiology yes yeah which we've got from the hair chiropractic course which only makes it much easier to associate what you're doing with results I mean both of us I've always been interested in the human body in how it reacts to various forms of treatment both of us have used different forms of different treatments together with what we do the Chiropractic Center can't use that workers we're not registered but in that in the adjustment of the skeletal structure since for example I quite often use acupoint acupressure techniques to relax muscles would be pulled into a state of cramping and that's that works extremely well as well so reflexology really fitted very well into the mold of what we did because it gave us the ability to achieve things with people or to assist people how did you see yourself as a male practitioner back green because there weren't too many of you my patient base for both massage and reflexology was both male and female and with massage we used to massage people interviewed so it just tells over them so you know it just didn't make any difference never bothered me and never bothered them so I didn't see it as something particularly special I'm just a person and that's all I am like this person is a male their fight retreat male people I'm not didn't see myself as a male or female how did you did you meet any other how did you get on with other reflexologists that were trained in a different way to you it was a good learning experience because you could always say well how do you do this well how did you do that what do you do for this experience in both ways so I didn't I have never found that a problem I've enjoyed learning the different forms of reflexology you know Chinese and and the two different schools of reflexology which are mainly dominant during our first years they both had something to offer and I think the idea that they were somehow different was I just didn't go with it so the different forms can you just talk about that a little bit more well they all came together really I mean there was we did Chinese reflexology but we did a course in that didn't we and it seemed to be similar but you were just working in a different order and you were using a different form of pressure in various places and some parts were more vigorous than we liked and some parts were lighter but generally speaking the overall result was the same and then the same thing applied when you looked at the Thai treatment and the the American school I call it which was the based on work I can't remember his name that long as I looked at it but the actual founder of reflexology basically he set it up in a certain way and there were certain schools have taught it specifically in that way and no other way had any validity for them I learned in the UK which was entirely different we came from a different angle a different school and and learnt it in a different way but the net result was it could be integrated very easily nothing was majorly different about what we were trying to achieve all that was different with the way which we've been taught to achieve it and I didn't see that as a disadvantage or as a problem because I don't think I mean he if I talk to a but activity chiropractor now and talk about what we do there probably be a bit of gas that we were doing some things so far removed from John McKinley's first ideas but you know as I've always said it is a progressive thing