VRT Reflexology

this film was made at a lynn booth seminar for the association of reflexologists at the cbi centre london i'm lynne boove and i'm a reflexologist who also teaches vertical reflex therapy this is a weight-bearing technique for the hands and feet that i discovered and developed i've been teaching a specific angle on vrt today at this arr seminar looking at older people people who have a lot of multiple pathologies may be chronically ill or fit people who are older and also very much looking at the palliative care issues looking at the field of oncology and how reflexology can be used very precisely and also my work recently has been with dementia clients and some of the work i've developed working than hands and nails seems to have helped people perhaps focus become just a little bit more lucid very early days but these were the techniques that i wanted to share as a taster just to let people know what vrt can offer in the framework of older care and then we can do the pituitary pinch and that again you can either press but the fit the fingers the thumbs are splayed and your fingers are at an angle so i tend to just perhaps lift the hands a bit at this point and just pinch so you're rolling forward till the nails just touch and hold so you're holding very gently and then nail the harmonizer third nail diaphragm and hold and of course as you can see you can go on you can work the fingers in this way you can extend the repertoire but this is just a little practical session that you can practice on each other so you're here to learn about how we work but we do work with caution we work very gently vrt can be as quick as a three or four minute first aid treatment or it can be incorporated into your whole hour treatment if that's what you give one of the early findings i had with vrt that was very exciting was its versatility i found i could actually absolutely get results in a five minute first aid treatment weight bearing on the hands and feet or use it for shortened treatments for various groups of people so it means the older people can get real therapeutic value in perhaps 10 or 20 minutes support the foot with one hand three pulls on the lower lumbar region work up and down the spine and i tend to make three passes so i hit the muscles vertebra and neural pathways slightly different areas and a nice vigorous tapping and i just squeeze and work round the thoracic area it seems to help the middle of the thoracic spine which is very good obviously for someone who has a shoulder problem but i don't do this on everyone when i was at university i actually was given reflexology by a student friend of mine and was amazed how effective it was even though in those days it was very little known i work with seriously ill or chronically ill older people i also work with super fit sports teams and i love developing vrt through my practice using different techniques on both age groups and others and then of course i teach it and share what i've discovered although my research in reflexology was with a chronically ill older age group which i very much enjoy working with and i never failed to be surprised how changes can be made for the better even in very older perhaps chronically sick people but i always feel the body still has a little chance to regenerate given the right impetus i think it's incredibly important that when people have a terminal illness that their carers are also looked after so i can teach carers and family self-help techniques for themselves and also techniques that they can use on their loved ones very simple vrt techniques they can use on every visit or in between my treatment sessions so it's empowering other people to help themselves and those they care for my point of view when i go into work with people with dementia never wear a white coat they associate that with intervention even if you do wear whites for your work don't don't make notes in front of them with someone with dementia you've got two ways of working you could work as we i showed you before with palliative care you could certainly work around the bowel area if you knew they were constipated but on the whole for dementia if there aren't major health issues then i work much more on just a general treatment working down the whole hand we'll just look at the rolling because this is what i want you to do now rolling forward touching the nail and holding so this could be the central pituitary which again is calming but it could be if you take those five little lingam zones we're right in the center of the body the solar plexus the sternum we're right in the core of the body and we're just holding it and when we do this work obviously in a smaller group in a class i say just look at just look on this as a key it's a junction box into the body because everything that happens in the body is triggered by the body's own reaction even if we if if there's external inputs like drugs or surgery and i hold and sometimes i hold and i wait quite a long time quite patiently just talking to them and often this is when i find with people with dementia they will begin to engage one of my great joys in recent years has been developing sports injury work with vrt and reflexology and i work with a team of professional footballers i treat rugby players individual work with tennis players is very useful for my practice because i found that one lady who was in her 70s not a professional actually had had a mastectomy and was so upset she couldn't lift her tennis racquet because of scar tissue from the removal of the lymph glands and through the vrt techniques within a couple of weeks she could raise her arm again and was so excited she went out and had a game of tennis in february in the cold some people ask me as i'm a rather small person how i deal with a six foot six rugby player who might weigh about 18 stone obviously you're working with a very different size foot you have to make sure you have tough chairs or couches to take their weight but basically whatever i teach even if it's for a small child's foot who's suffering from asthma or a rugby or football player who's got a groin injury or a groin strain i will work in very much the same way so all my techniques can be applied to everyone for the past 16 years i've been probably specializing in the work of older people although my practice is full of a mixture of clients of all ages and types but what i've found is that the body is never too old or too ill to show some signs of regeneration and it's quite a privilege for reflexologists to work in a field where some people have forgotten they assume that going into a nursing home means old age and deterioration but with the right care reflexology and some of the new techniques i've been sharing today i've really wanted to empower people as clients and also to inspire people as therapists for more information about me and the courses i run please look at www.boothvrt.com and if you're interested in reflexology in general please look at the aor website this film was made by jonathan mitchell the association of reflexologists copyright 2010