The History of Reflexology
Ancient Times
¨ It is thought that Reflexology began in Egypt.
¨ There is evidence of this as there were drawings found in a tomb as far back as 2330 BC
¨ These drawings depicted people having reflexology on their hands and feet.
¨ Some credit has been given to it’s birth from the Incas, people who belonged to a very ancient Peruvian civilization possible as far back as 12,000 BC.
¨ The Incas were thought to have passed this down to the North American Indians who are still using this form of treatment today.
¨ A Florentine Sculptor Cellini (1500-1571) is said to have used strong pressure on his fingers and toes in order to relieve pain in his body with apparent success.
¨ An American President James Abram Garfield (1831-81) who was the victim of an assassination attempt is said to alleviated the pain by applying pressure to certain points of his feet.
Early Modern Times
¨ There were certain books on Zone Therapy published in Europe around the sixteenth century, one by Dr Adamus and Dr A’tatis.
¨ Also around the same time a similar book was published by Dr Ball in Leipzig.
¨ Dr William Fitzgerald is acknowledged for initiating Reflexology as we know it today, he was born in 1872 and graduated in medicine at the University of Vermont USA in 1895.
¨ Dr Fitzgerald practiced in Ear Nose and Throat and whilst working in Vienna he studied the work of Dr. H Bresslar who had researched the link between pressure points on the feet and the internal points of the body, his book Zone Therapy was then published.
¨ Sir Henry Head had worked with patients who had traumatic lesions of the spinal cord and his findings relating to the correspondences between spinal segments, skin sensitivity and internal organs was published in his book in 1893.Dermatomes explains the relationship of areas of skin to spinal nerves.
¨ Charles Sherrington established that the brain and its nerves co-ordinate and control body functions through the transmission of impulses. He shared a Nobel Prize for his discoveries (to include proprioception) with Edgar Adrian.
¨ Proprioception: Proprioception refers to the body’s ability to sense movement within joints and joint position. This ability enables us to know where our limbs are in space without having to look. It is important in all every day movements but especially so in complicated sporting movements, where precise coordination is essential. This coordinated movement is a result of the normal functioning of the proprioceptive system.
The Origins and evolution of modern reflexology
¨ Dr William Fitzgerald is generally acknowledged as ‘ The Father of reflexology’.
¨ He discovered that when he applied pressure to certain bony prominences such as the joints of the fingers, or the mucosal margin inside the nose, he could produce numbness in another part of the body. In other words the pressure had a reflex response.
¨ He also accidentally discovered that pressure with a cotton tipped probe on the muco-cutaneous margin of the nose gave an anesthetic result, as though cocaine solution had been applied.Also when pressure was applied to any bony prominence on the hands, feet or joints produced pain relief, and the condition causing the pain was also relieved.
¨ He further discovered that parts of the body which had such a reflex relationship lay within certain longitude zones and that there were ten of these in the body.By applying pressure to points along these zone lines he could create a reflex effect.He mapped out these zone areas and called the science ‘zone therapy’.
¨ Dr Joe Shelby-Riley was a physician who was interested in Fitzgerald’s findings and learned Zone Therapy from him and used the method extensively in his practice.
¨ Riley refined the method , began to locate points on the feet and the ears (similar to Chinese auricular acupuncture) and added four horizontal zones. Zone therapists employed probes, bands and other gadgets which Riley eliminated.
¨ Riley opened a school in Washington teaching medicine, surgery, chiropractic and osteopathy, naturopathy, colour and electro-magnetic therapy. Eunice Ingham was later employed as a young physiotherapist.
¨ Eunice Ingham pioneered the use of reflex techniques on the feet and hands, gradually lessening the emphasis on Zone Therapy. Her unique idea was that instead of accessing the organs in the zone sections through other reflexes on the body’s surface, she would use the feet.
¨ Ingham gradually mapped out these areas on the feet and hands and we now know that second only to the lips, the feet along with the thumbs and fingers have the greatest sensitivity of any body part.
¨ She called her techniques ‘compression massage’ and finally ‘reflexology’. In this process she discovered that the particular diseased part would be stimulated to heal, instead of being numbed. She produced one of the most popular reflexology books of today which was the following two titles combined ‘Stories the feet can tell through reflexology and ‘Stories the feet have told ’Eunice Ingham is generally recognized for her untiring devotion to and promotion of reflexology.
¨ Hanne Marquardt trained in the US with Eunice Ingham and in 1970 brought reflexology to Germany, teaching its techniques to physicians.
¨ She emphasized the transverse zones of the body; the head and chest, the abdominal and pelvic areas, demarcated by the diaphragm line, the waistline and the heel-ankle line.
¨ Reflexology is now a widely accepted form of treatment in Germany especially for disorders of the respiratory and genitor-urinary system.
¨ Doreen Bayly probably first brought reflexology to England in 1966/1967, after she had studied with Eunice Ingham.
¨ Doreen exchanged information with Gladys Evans and Renee Tanner, she maintained the theory that heavy pressure would do more good believing the age-old adage “No pain, No gain”.
¨ Doreen founded the Bayly School of Reflexology
¨ Father Joseph Eugster was a Swiss missionary and he together with Sister Heidi Massagret made an interesting development in reflexology from the cross fertilization of western reflexology with Chinese medicine because of their work in Taiwan and China.
¨ Eugster devised his method by using the knuckles as the source of pressure, it gives a more powerful, intense and invigorating treatment. He had over twenty five years experience.
¨ In 1982 the Rwo Shur Health Institute was founded to promote this integrated approach uniting the concepts of Chinese traditional medicine with Chinese pressure techniques applied to the feet according to Ingham’s chart.
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