Understanding the Healing Crisis in Reflexology

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today I get a lot of comments about things along the lines of people wondering where I got my information and my training from they are taking a reflexology course and they're saying wow your Technique is a lot different or the things that you learned in your class um are amazing and we never learned that so what I've been doing lately is going back through all my courses and everything that I learned and refreshing relearning and rereading a lot of the material the instructor that I had IET Eastman was a wealth of information she gave us so much content outside of reflexology that worked with reflexology that I don't even know what true reflexology training versus other methods and stuff into reflexology I know the reflexes and the points and all that and techniques but there was so much more um philosophy and energy techniques and like just so much information she um gave to us so I'm going to be sharing in the next uh bunch of videos just random little articles and I'll read them to you and then I'll give my little two cents on how I've used that technique or information in my reflexology practice and hopefully that can help your reflexology practice grow and expand so this article that I came across was a healing crisis so we give reflexology um person receives it they might be under a huge amount of stress and you give them a great session they go home feeling great and then you get a call from them or you phone them to check up on see how they're doing and they had an awful sleep they felt almost sick to their stomach things like that right so this is under the category of a healing crisis so I just want to read to you this article um on a healing crisis and my instructor IAT Eastman's um amazing wisdom on this so when you begin to receive reflexology sessions or touch for Health Muscle balancing or any of the health integration series you may experience a healing crisis especially at the beginning stages this healing crisis Isis may occur as a physical mental or emotional event you may experience nausea dizziness fatigue restlessness confusion tearfulness and irritability and on the other side of that you may experience nothing but delightful relaxation since each person is an individual you will each react according to the most appropriate and beneficial way of clearing for you so for most of you properly restored energy balance will not occur overnight nor after one session neither did your present discomfort occur instantly it took time to put you in this position healing crisis has a whole bunch of indications right so you have like here nausea dizziness fatigue restlessness confusion tearfulness irritability so that's sort of what happens you know you go to the gym you work out and what happens your muscles start screaming at you afterwards and then you come over this um hump and you feel great right so it's sort of that's how in my mind I think of the healing crisis some people don't even notice anything but some people have these experiences and it may turn them away from reflexology having an understanding of what happens when you're doing anything massage people will feel um really weird after acupuncture all these the category that we are in as complimentary healers is there's an effect that happens and there's something you know we move energy and when that energy moves around in the body in their body how they release it or how they deal with it they might have a a pretty big um something uncomfortable that they notice right and so we're we're calling this the healing crisis something else to be aware of as well in this paragraph is understanding that maybe after a couple sessions this healing crisis will happen right so that's sort of what a healing crisis is so in this next little part it sort of tells you about the how of um why a healing crisis might happen so our systems attempt to find and relieve the root cause of your imbalance the emotions surrounding it at the time of cause and ones that ensued often when there is pain in one area you will compensate with another system or part of the body after a while that part will be fatigued and malfunctioning and you might even forget the original cause often physical problems from the past may occur when triggered by similar triggers in the present time unearthing these emotions revealing past and present pain may cause you to feel a bit worse before feeling better sometimes a chronic pain is like an old friend it has served us well with certain benefits which we may deny awareness and relief from pain may cause confusion irritability even grief sometimes we will say you know oh I hate having this pain or you know oh this shouldn't be happening to me but it's like an old friend it's comfortable we know we shouldn't be hanging out with this friend but we keep going back and hanging out with them and sitting in that sort of like negativity thing um and then the next sentence here awareness and relief from pain may cause confusion irritability and grief so this is a really good one to know about um clients as well because some people really are comfortable with their pain because they've had it for so long and then when they get a bit of a relief from it it's almost scary like I know this personally in my life I deal with a lot of like sort of nervous anxiety issues and things like that I've been trying to own more of it so that I can actually have more choice of what to do with it and there's moments where I'm in a situation where I should be feeling anxious and I'm actually not and it's really uncomfortable which is kind of hilarious right we think oh we're in pain and we feel so uncomfortable and stuff and then when that pain is gone it allows like bigger space and it can be sometimes scary so knowing this about clients is really really important as a practitioner right because we always think like oh yeah we've got to get rid of their pain and yay we're going to make them feel good and we see them when they first come into our session and they're you know their faces all down and they're blah like Dark Cloud over them and then they leave and The Sun Shines out and their eyes are bright and everything like that but they go away and suddenly they're uncomfortable because the it's a new way of themselves being expressed right and they're not used to it people treat them differently things like that so a lot of people go back into their comfort zone which means going back into having for example chronic pain so this is just something to be really aware of and that's their choice right and it's their comfort level and we have to understand and respect that as um uh practitioners right and so they end up not coming for reflexology I think it's really important when you do have new clients to let them know that that this topic of a healing crisis is very common and could happen right so anyway on to the next paragraph here for people who are cleansing any type of high overgrowth in the body the risk of feeling physically worse after the first session is greatly increased this is because the foreign substances as they begin to die or be released into the system cause the body to try to rid itself of toxins perhaps too many are trying to leave simultaneously and the body is unable to cleanse itself so rapidly I liken it to the 15 people all trying to be first out the door some will get trampled uh and hurt and left behind so I really like that image so yeah when we we we sometimes know this too when uh we're under great you know stress of work and all you know kids and all this stuff and then we go away on vacation and we finally have time to relax and guess what we get sick right so it's sort of that same thing like all this stuff our bodies holding on to this all these you know what is it 15 people trying you know hanging around doing all this stuff and then when we finally take the time for ourselves come and get a reflex algae session massage or take you know go on a relaxing vacation all these 15 people try to jam through the door um to get out and yeah we end up like right feeling oh yeah you know what I'm talking about so in the last bit here what can we do about um a healing crisis so in all cases be sure to drink a lot more water than you usually do this will assist the body next realize that your system is undergoing change and is resisting a bit talk to your mind body pat yourself on the back and tell yourself it will soon be very much better if it helps blame the discomfort on me I love that since each of you is different the intensity of your healing crisis will vary the key to working through a healing crisis is to understand what you are attempting to achieve to be persistent with your home play to have patience and faith in what you are accomplishing think of it this way discomfort during bioenergy management can be looked upon as a sign of progress and accomplish lishment we've sort of all experienced where we're fine we're feeling okay and stuff and then we start doing something that we haven't done in a while like um most obvious one I already mentioned but you know going to the gym and deciding to do a bunch of reps right we're feels okay well we're doing it maybe a little bit of a struggle but afterwards we're really really sore like I go to yoga and feel feel great feel nice and relaxed and then the next day and even the next day after that I'm like oo that was uh intense right I can feel all these muscles and stuff moving and so but with yoga I have a goal in mind I'm trying to you know feel more relaxed feel more open and things like that so I keep going and going through the healing crisis and I'm noticing I'm getting stronger and stronger so really I think I think it's great to pass this information on to reflexologists because we are working with people that are probably going to experience healing crisis and they might not know what it is and they think it's our fault and I love how she my teacher said here you know yeah if it helps yeah blame it on me the reflexologist right I love that little line uh when in doubt you know blame it on the reflexologist but what ends up happening sometimes is they do blame it on the reflexologist if they ha don't have a basic understanding that this may be something that happens and they will never come back to you again um even though they have experienced all these really great benefits from reflexology so I like to if I remember at the end of a session is explain to the client you know make sure you drink a lot more water than usual um we worked a lot of you know really relaxing stuff here and there could be some movement in your body that causes you to feel a little bit off right so this is called you can you sort of go into you know this is a healing crisis this may happen but it won't last long right usually doesn't last too long as far as um my experience with healing crisis they just last a couple hours some people even get like little headaches and it will go away things like that so um from my understanding I explain to them even like what I did already like my you know when I go to yoga I have a definite goal in mind in your practice having a goal to work towards with your clients is really really amazing so I find getting a number system of how is your discomfort right now on a scale of one being you know no discomfort 10 being you know a lot uh on a scale of that so before the session where are you sitting at and then afterwards maybe bring out the scale again and say hey um we've worked a little bit how does it feel have you noticed a change at all and so having I think a goal and a focus the same way as you start exercising you have a goal you want to you know lose weight or you want to feel better you want to feel stronger you want to be more stretchy those kind of things are definite goals but it seems like to get to the goal we need to go through these little up and down valleys of you know discomfort to get there but I can tell from myself now when I first started yoga to where I am now my body feels a lot more stronger and then I'm also more aware of when my body is going out right so these are really great things to pass on to the clients that this is natural that's the thing a healing crisis um if clients are experiencing in them they can be natural they're natural right that there's a natural progression of when we're working through things to have a period of not feeling great but then you feel really awesome right same thing when you get a cold you feel really terrible but usually after you get well after the cold you have more energy than you did before the cold right um I've noticed this a lot of my kids so it's the same sort of thing so I just thought I wanted to share this article with you CU it's just so great and you know it's written to uh us her students but I really want to pass this information on to people who are practicing reflexology on to their clients because people who have never had reflexology before can actually um maybe maintain some reflexology clients because some of them I know will be like oh it's reflexology it's not good for you blah blah blah they because I had these reactions and then they'll never come back again where people who have an understanding of yes probably after especially people that are under a lot of you know high stress and really kind of unhealthy lifestyle habits when they come for reflexology those tend to be the people that I've seen in my practice uh have a bit more of a reaction a healing crisis to reflexology so anyway blah blah blah I can keep going on forever talking about this but hopefully um the main points where covered in this video about like what is a healing crisis why does it happen uh some physical reactions to it and cleansing and then how to manage it right so hopefully this was helpful to you and you can use some of this information my instructor was an amazing lady and she had so much information and I'm going to be happy to share them in the next bunch of videos with you so stay tuned and remember to keep those feet happy thanks for watching healing crisis 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 balancing touch.com Thomas from balancing touch.com