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New Reflexology Path at Bastyr University, Seattle, Washington

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Everyone knows there’s nothing like a good foot massage. But at Bastyr University, a new pathway studded with jutting, smooth river stones is intended to offer more than relaxation.

“It’s preventive medicine”, says Elizabeth Marazita, a licensed acupuncturist and a doctoral student in oriental medicine at Bastyr. Marazita designed the new path to mimic those found throughout China and Asia.

The path, one of the few in North America, is constructed based on the principles of reflexology, an ancient Asian therapy that links health and well-being to specific points on the feet, hands and ears.

Reflexologists use the foot as a guide to overall health, applying pressure to areas that correspond to vital organs, muscles, glands and nerves

“Just as we know what a football field is, everybody in China knows what a reflexology path is,” Marazita said. Slowly traversing the winding trail of stones — about 2 inches high — kneads sore muscles, breaks down toxins and helps build immunities, says Marazita.

Like a deep tissue massage, walking on the rocks is not always comfortable, but it can help identify tender areas of the foot that need attention.

“If I feel it in the foot, it’s something that might show up later,” Marazita said. “It’s an area of imbalance.”

Elizabeth Marazita, a licensed acupuncturist and a doctoral student in oriental medicine, designed the reflexology “Walk of Health.” During her walk last week, Marazita said she could feel the effects of indulging in junk food at the Puyallup Fair in her heel, an area linked to digestion.

The better shape you’re in, the less pain and wincing you’ll experience along the way, Marazita said.

“My 2-year-old can run this thing,” she said. Marazita, a former international banker who worked and lived in China for four years, first noticed reflexology paths in Taipei, Taiwan, during a break from a business meeting. An elderly man was walking a path the length of a football field constructed almost entirely of 3-inch-high stones — a difficulty level comparable to black diamond ski runs, said Marazita. (Bastyr’s path is considered moderately difficult).

Located at the edge of Bastyr’s herb garden, the pathway mimics therapeutic walkways found in Asia.

Located at the edge of Bastyr’s herb garden, the path is 3 feet wide and 64 feet long. The concrete at the entrance is carved to read “Walk of Health” in Chinese, with the symbols for the five Chinese elements — earth, metal, fire, water and wood.
Benches are set up for those who need a break along the path.

“It’s like walking in a riverbed,” said Virgil Miller, an herbal sciences student at Bastyr earlier this week.

Marazita suggests drinking plenty of water throughout the day after finishing the walk.

Only North Dakota and Tennessee license reflexologists. Three years ago, Washington state added an exemption to the law for reflexologists, allowing them to practice without a massage therapy license, according to Lisa Dowling, president of the Washington Reflexology Association.

“The path is great because people can go and do reflexology on their own feet just by walking on it,” Dowling said. “It’s like a type of self-care.”

WHERE TO WALK

The Walk of Health is located at the edge of the herb garden on the Bastyr University campus, 14500 Juanita Drive N.E. in Kenmore. The path is free and open to the public.

By JULIE DAVIDOW
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Moon Reflexology

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“Riddler’s Moon,” starring Kate Mulgrew (“Star Trek: Voyager”), Corbin Bernsen (“L.A. Law”) made in 1998 features Reflexology. George decides Victoria needs relaxing after all the stresses she has been under and decides the Reflexology is just the answer she has been looking for.

The story line is that widow Victoria Riddler (Kate Mulgrew) and her wheelchair-bound son Elias (Daniel Newman) live a meager existence on an Indiana farm that hasn’t yielded a crop in years. Then one day Elias experiences a strange vision–and before long, the Riddlers’ north land is fertile and bountiful. Astonished by this phenomenon, the locals suspect that Elias has somehow developed diabolical superpowers. Only town drunk George (Corbin Bernsen) knows that the answer lies not in Elias, but in the stars.

Doctor doesn’t always know best

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Source Daily Telegraph
By Dr James LeFanu (Filed: 28/05/2006)

Complementary therapies can certainly be pretty half baked, both in theory and practice, or as a group of “prominent doctors” put it earlier this week in refreshingly robust prose: “unproven treatments of no demonstrable benefit”. And while they conceded it was important to keep an open mind (“we must remain open to new discoveries”), it should not be so open that our brains fall out.

Fair enough, but the view from the coalface of the doctor’s surgery is rather different, where it is not unusual to encounter patients who insist that they have been much helped by homeopathy or acupuncture or whatever.

What is more, most family doctors over the past 20 years, have incorporated several principles of alternative medicine into their own practice – the first and most important being that there is not necessarily “a pill for every ill”.

The singular virtue of “the alternatives” is that its practitioners are not permitted to prescribe drugs, so must resort to non-pharmacological means of treatment.

Thus, whereas the family doctor will hand out the standard regime of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs for their patients with acute back pain, they would acknowledge that osteopaths and chiropractors can do a lot better: correcting the underlining defect in the vertebral column with a vigorous clunk-click of spinal manipulation.

It is a similar story with gut disorders, such as irritable bowel, long dismissed as psychosomatic by orthodox medicine, whose standard therapies of anti-depressants and a high fibre diet not infrequently compound the symptoms of abdominal discomfort and bowel disturbance.

Now, family doctors hopefully know better, recognising – as naturopaths and others have long maintained – that the cause may well be intolerance to some food or other where a change of diet can bring near instantaneous relief.

The complementary therapies have the further virtue of being a cautionary reminder that Western science does not have all the answers.

How can it be that twiddling an acupuncture needle between the toes can cure a migraine headache – an effect that so clearly defies any physiological or anatomical explanation?

And then, of course, they have the opportunity to practise “old-fashioned” medicine, talking and listening to their patients, rather than staring at the computer screen on their desks.

From all of which, one might reasonably conclude that those “prominent doctors” might usefully take to heart the Biblical admonition about motes and beams.

Baring their soles – What’s with the barefoot divas?

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REBECCA ECKLER reports on the new foot fetish

Whatever happened to the N3? (No shirt, no shoes, no service.) Ubiquitous photos of pop tart Britney Spears walking barefoot into a gas station washroom still have people trash talking. Then there was Barefoot Britney stepping on a hypodermic in Hawaii, parading shoeless (with her new bump on display) in L.A. and irritating other passengers with her bare feet on a commercial flight.

Blame it on the yoga craze, the hippie revival or the theory that singing shoeless is grounding, but it seems the culture is in the throes of a new foot fetish.

On American Idol, female contestants are belting out their songs in formal dresses and bare feet. Brit singer Joss Stone performs sans footwear, as does Canadian opera singer Measha Brueggergosman.

Surfer dude singer Jack Johnson is so well known for baring his soles, Saturday Night Live did a parody ad for shoes that look like bare feet.

According to Jake Gold, Canadian Idol judge, musicians like bare feet because “it’s more comfortable, easy to move around stage, and there’s a whole sexual side to it as well.”

Actors like it too. Mischa Barton recently was photographed barefoot in a Malibu parking lot and outside her hotel in Maui. The best part? She shills for Keds.

And then there’s poet-actor-photographer-painter Viggo Mortensen, who likes to do interviews in bare feet and wears a bracelet that reads “Peace.” (His director in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, also made headlines a few years back with his barefoot ways.)

Designers and alternative healing practitioners are also tapping into the benefits of bare. Nike’s popular new Nike Free line of lightweight sneakers claims to mimic “barefoot running in grass.”  A hot new product in North America is the Cobblestone Walkway, a mat that mimics the effects on bare feet of walking on smooth pebbles. Based on traditional Chinese healing practices such as reflexology (there are actual cobblestone walkways all over Asia), the mat has been shown to increase balance and circulation.

Some people are long-time barefoot aficionados. In a recent cover feature about Calgary in Maclean’s magazine, a top interior designer, Paul Lavoie, was featured in a full-page portrait in jeans, a turtleneck and bare feet.

“I like to be barefoot quite often,” says the 39-year-old Lavoie. “It’s the hippie in me. I’m always barefoot at home. I guess it’s like my inner child coming out.”

Lavoie says there’s nothing more natural in the world than for him to wear a suit, even a tux, without socks. “Of course, I need to wear shoes to events. But I never wear socks. There’s absolutely a comfort level about walking around barefoot. I would do it all the time if I could.”

Katy Cook, 21, a hairstylist at the trendy Luxe spa in Calgary, is also a fan. Though she must wear shoes to work, she wears sandals, with no socks, even in winter. “The first thing I do at home is take off my socks and shoes,” says Cook. “I drive barefoot all the time. And my all-time favourite thing is gardening barefoot.” She doesn’t only go barefoot at home though. “I’ll walk to the corner store barefoot. Yes, some people look at me and think, ‘Who is that strange girl?’ I don’t care.”

There’s even a society, boasting more than a thousand members worldwide, called the Society for Barefoot Living. Who belongs? Well, according to their website, members “enjoy walking barefoot as nature intended, taking delight in feeling the many textures the world has to offer, like having tough, callused soles, and even think it’s cool to get them dirty. We also hate wearing shoes and, if we had our way, would never wear them again. Shoes are unnecessary ballast. Plus, bare feet are cool and look great!”

Barefoot society member Bryan Macdonald, 61, went au naturel 11 years ago. The 61-year-old from Windsor, Ont., owns two pairs of shoes and one pair of flip-flops, which he keeps in his cars for emergencies (such as snow) or when his wife refuses to be seen with him in public.

“It just plain feels good,” says Macdonald, who calls himself the Barefoot Photographer. “I shot a wedding last July. I wore a short-sleeve dress shirt with nice slacks and was barefoot from start to finish, from the bride’s home, to the church, to the reception.”

Part of the new barefoot cachet is undoubtedly the widespread influence of yoga, traditionally practiced in bare feet, and the accompanying interest in the ancient Indian beliefs embodied in the discipline.

“I’m a foot lover,” says Toronto-based yoga instructor Graydon Moffat. “I often talk to my students about how they should appreciate their feet and not take them for granted.”

Even while not teaching, Moffat hates wearing shoes. “The best is in the summer when the ground surfaces feel warm. But even in the colder months, I love to feel the different textures on the soles of my feet. More and more people these days, including men, are taking care of their feet, which encourages people to show them off,” she says. “Feet are sexy.”

It’s those hypodermic needles that aren’t.

Globe & Mail 20th May 2006

Mayan Reflexology & Asian Stroll Paths

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Reflexology is becoming more and more popular to North Americans, but the concept of Reflexology has been a part of humanity forever and used in ancient times as a cure and prevention to physical ailments.

The first evidence of Reflexology came from the tombs of Egyptians some 4,500 years ago. Also, ancient China was home to the practice of Reflexology at that same time. Even now archeologists are finding evidence in ancient Mayan pyramids of Reflexology practice during their times well over 5,000 years ago.

Of course at this point in history it is believed that shoes were not yet invented. So humans naturally walked barefoot over whatever contours the earth presented. Some say by walking barefoot these ancient dwellers of our planet were healthier as their feet received “free” reflexology from Mother Earth!

Other cultures, especially Asian, still to this day go barefeet frequently. My neice married an Indian fellow from Delhi. Whenever we visited his home in Vancouver, his family members were always barefoot whether inside or outside. In fact, many indigenous peoples all over the world primarily go barefoot. Often its a part of their spiritual beliefs that they are connected to the spirits of the earth through their feet.

Over the years I have visited Vancouver’s original China town and found their healing stores a magnificent source of knowledge and history of the healing arts. One day I noticed a mat full of plastic rocks on the shelf. A very tiny and very elderly lady marched into the store, pulled one of thses down from the shelf onto the floor, slipped off her shoes and starting walking up and down right on these rocks. Picked it up took it to the clerk, bought it and walked out. Witnessing this, I then pulled the next mat off the shelf, removed my shoes and tried walking on the rocks – OUCH! Holy cow, how did this little old lady to it so easily? I picked up the mat, put on my shoes and bought it!

That was the first of many Reflexology stroll paths we bought. These are very popular in Asia and a part of the outdoor environment in Singapore parks. Today, Bastyr University in America has a fantastic Reflexology stroll path on its campus.

One of these days I’ll make one in our backyard as a part of our daily healing routine!

Learn Professional Reflexololgy online with the Universal College of Reflexology and start of your new rewarding career.

How to make a baby

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Having trouble conceiving? A course of reflexology could make all the difference. Maxine Frith investigates for The Independent – Published: 27 June 2006

REFLEXOLOGY – What it does: The ancient Chinese medicine is based on principles similar to acupuncture. Reflexology focuses on the feet, and is based on the belief that all the body’s organs, glands and main joints are reflected in them.

By applying firm and specific pressure to different areas of the feet, reflexologists claim to be able to bring the rest of the body into balance and improve general health.

The practice can help women to relax and feel less stressed, particularly if they are already beginning to worry about their chances of conceiving. Studies have shown that women who are less stressed are much more likely to become pregnant.

Certain techniques such as “thumb walking” over the foot may stimulate the reproductive system, and practitioners may also focus on the pituitary gland reflex to balance hormones in the body.

It has also been claimed that reflexology can help with menstrual problems.

Does it work? As with many alternative medicines, there is no clear scientific evidence that reflexology can boost the chances of pregnancy.

However, a study by the Danish Reflexologists Association found that, of 61 women under 35 who had been trying to get pregnant for more than two years, 15 per cent conceived within six months of receiving regular reflexology sessions.