On-Line Reflexology Training & Certification
Reflexology Educators, Mentors and Coaches since 1991
We have lots of very interesting questions asked from our students and clients. A lot of them relate to family reflexology, and 
specifically working with babies. A most popular question is “Can I give reflexology to my baby?”
Answer: Babies enjoy the relaxing effects of reflexology just as much as adults.A baby’s foot has an oval shape to it, usually until they are about 4 or 5 years old, so we recommend a slightly different routine from an adult or older child.
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A diagonal crease across your earlobe at a 45 degree downward angle toward your shoulder may be an early warning sign of a potentially fatal heart attack, according to reports in Modern Medicine (57,10:126) and British Heart Journal (611,4:361).
You might think we’re pulling your, uh…, ears.
But, scientists have been studying the amazing ear-crease phenomenon since 1973 with inconclusive results until this research report.
In this study, they found telltale ear creases in both fat and skinny people who died from sudden heart attacks, so weight was not a factor.
The common denominator was sudden death, often in people who apparently did not know how sick they were.
In the current study, researchers randomly selected 303 people whose cause of death was unknown before autopsy. They found diagonal ear creases in 72 percent of the deceased men and 67 percent of the deceased women.
Men with diagonal ear creases were 55 percent more likely to die of heart disease than men without ear creases. The risk was even greater for non-diabetic women (1.74 times more likely to die of heart disease).
Interestingly, ear creases did not predict death from heart disease in diabetic women. Those with ear creases generally don’t get them until after age 50, the reports say.
Fatness apparently does not influence whether people have ear creases, researchers say, because both fat and thin people have them in roughly equal numbers. However people with heart diseases seem to develop the creases, regardless of their age, they add.
The alarming thing was the link between ear creases and unexpected death. Many people in this study had died suddenly from heart attacks, but had no history of heart disease, the researchers say. In this group, earlobe creases alone were a greater predictor of sudden death from heart attack than known risk factors, such as previous heart disease, the studies report.
That fact has led researchers to speculate that some doctors may be missing severe heart disease cases among some middle aged and elderly people. If that’s the case, help yourself by checking your ears for diagonal creases.
If there is a crease, tell your doctor about the crease and these studies.
The idea is to catch unsuspected heart disease so you can get appropriate treatment from the health care practitioner of your choice.
This is just one of the fascinating facts that Ear Reflexologists learn in the Universal College of Reflexology’s Ear Reflexology Course, which is available as an online course.
A fully trained and competent Ear Reflexologist can immediately check sensitivity on the heart reflex areas in the ears (checking for positive and false positive signs) and work as appropriate to the clients comfort.
Just another great way that the Universal College of Reflexology’s highly trained Ear Reflexologists can make a potential life saving difference!
By Lauren Slade Author, Researcher and Educator
From the very first course I ever took in reflexology over 25 years ago, I’ve had a passion to discover a scientific explanation of exactly how reflexology works.
It amazes me how many people, including Reflexologists still believe that there are little “crystals” in the feet, which when pressed disperse and so cause a healing reaction in the body! How plausible do you think this sounds to a medical doctor practicing in the 21st century? How can it be with all the incredible scientific discoveries over the last half century that this concept still persists?
I have spent a large part of my life studying holistic therapies and how they work. As a Certified Master Reflexologist I have studies Japanese, Swiss, Korean, German, Chinese, Australian, South African, British, American, Canadian and European methods of reflexology. I am also a Master Herbalist, Homeopath, Aromatherapist, Reiki Master/Teacher and Massage Therapist with training in many other holistic therapies. I know that science and holistic healing work hand in hand.
Many years ago I started collecting Reflexology Charts and Maps from around the world and dating back as far as 1917. I now have over 150 different charts in my collection. One thing that really stands out are the startling differences of the reflex point locations on some of the charts. According to my training and my very learned teachers – these charts were just plain wrong! And yet… the Reflexologists who followed them got amazing results. How could that be?
Over the years I have treated thousands of clients. I have worked on a client with four kidneys, another had two uteruses, quite a few have had six or seven toes on each foot, and yet another client informed me that x-rays had shown that all their internal organs were reversed.
The perfectly ordered and neat looking anatomical diagrams we see in medical books, are not always the same as the actual client who comes to me for a treatment. What happens when someone has an organ removed? Do all the internal organs re-organize themselves to fill that space? How and why should the standard classical Reflexology Map still apply?
After almost 30 years of working as a Reflexologist and instructor I know that Reflexology works! I have witnessed and experienced amazing results, both in myself as well as my clients over the years. Reflexology has triumphed where conventional medicine has often failed.
Over the length of my practicing Complementary Alternative Medicine, I have worked on many clients who experienced “phantom limb pain” – a condition suffered by amputees who continue to feel pain after losing a limb. I will always remember one particular client. He had lost his leg below the knee in a motor cycle accident some five years previously. His ‘phantom limb pain’ was so severe, that he was on the highest dose of morphine available to him, just to get him through each day. When I worked the corresponding reflexes in the hand on the side of the missing limb, as taught in my original Reflexology training, there was no benefit felt by the client.
So rather than give up, I decided to do something radical. I planned to work on both feet, the real one and the ‘phantom’ one. I performed reflexology on the real foot, and then moved over to the area where the foot used to be – all the while feeling slightly stupid – but hey nothing ventured, nothing gained!
There was a long silence at the end of the session, as I wondered if I had now lost all credibility as a therapist, and what I should do next. Imagine my amazement when my client reported an immediate lessening of the intense pain in his ‘phantom limb’ from a nine on a scale of 1 – 10 to a five. This was the first improvement he had noted after five years of various therapists using every treatment they could think of on him! I was thrilled. What exactly was the explanation – I do not know. What I do know is that my client reported a complete absence of pain within five treatments, and when I last saw him six years after my initial treatment, he reported that he was still pain free.
This client has been my inspiration for many years to discover the science behind Reflexology. Recent scientific research is indicating a huge upheaval in traditional thinking. Has the tide turned? Is it time for Reflexology and science to come together? I believe the answer is Yes. Much to my delight, I am discovering that at the frontiers of science, new ideas are emerging that challenge everything we believe about how our world works.
These new concepts contain possible explanations for all kinds of wholistic healing – not just Reflexology! Science is providing evidence that the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment, as traditional medicine would have you believe, but a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with a vast sea of energy.
Quantum mechanics and new physics are making great strides. Their discoveries indicate that all matter in the universe is interconnected by waves, which are spread out through time and space, and can carry on to infinity, tying one part of the universe to every other part. This idea of a sea of energy might just offer a scientific explanation for many metaphysical notions, such as the Chinese belief in the life force, or ch’i, described in ancient texts as something akin to an energy field. It means that we and all the matter of the universe are literally connected to the furthest reaches of the cosmos.
In this view, the sea of energy connects everything in the universe to everything else, like some vast invisible web. It is as though a memory of the universe for all time is contained in empty space that each of us is always in touch with. Einstein himself understood that the only fundamental reality was the underlying entity – the ‘sea of energy’ itself. The ‘sea of energy’ might be the closest we have to what in Star Wars was called ‘The Force’.
How does this information impact the study of Reflexology? Is a Reflexologist tapping into this ‘sea of energy’? Swiss physicist Dr Hans Jenny, discovered that every cell in our body is controlled by an EM field with its own frequency. That we are beings of light gives sense to energetic or vibrational healing systems such as homeopathy and acupuncture, which can tune the body back to health. Can Reflexology also be classed as a vibrational healing system? As Dr Richard Gerber, author of Vibrational Healing (Santa Fe: Bear, 1988), once said: “If we are beings of energy, then it follows that we can be affected by energy.”
This idea offers a possible explanation for something that has puzzled me for many years – was this the explanation for my client with the ‘phantom limb’ pain? Did his missing physical limb still exist in the energetic sea? Could it be that we, at our most fundamental level, are packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this heaving energy sea? What a stunning thought!
If so, it means that all of us connect with each other and the world at the level of the very undercoat of our being. It also means that we have the power to access much more information about the world than we realize.
The common assumption has been that psychics, healers, shamans and other ‘sensitives’ have a special gift that somehow endows them with rare and special powers. However, a great deal of scientific evidence now suggests that this type of consciousness is naturally present in everyone if we can learn (as sensitives intuitively understand) – how to access it. With some practice, it can be refined or enhanced.
The world of healing as we know it is undergoing major changes. Science is now catching up with what intuitive and natural healers have always known. Now is the time to let go of our limiting beliefs and let Reflexology soar to its natural height!.
Copyright Lauren Slade 2012
Article by Lauren Slade CMR MH
Principle & Founder of Universal College of Reflexology – since 1991
Published in Mosaic Magazine