Hello and welcome to my blog!

I am delighted to share my journey to publishing Put Your Best Feet Forward!

Even though my reflexology practice didn’t begin until my early twenties, I have been fascinated with feet since a very young age. I can clearly remember staring at my feet in awe by the complexity of my toes as if they were feelers or tentacles, and later learned, indeed they are extensions of the nervous system and powerful connectors to the earth.

My professional interest in feet was stirred while working as a nurses aid while on summer leave from College. My responsibilities entailed taking vital signs and assisting patients with bathing and self-care. There was one particular patient whose belligerent disposition did not favor the staff and one evening I was assigned to her care. It seemed every cordial attempt I made to connect with her was in vain as she grumbled and complained. I decided first to take her shoes off, which normally one would think this task should be simple, however I struggled. Her feet were very swollen and had the appearance of what I would describe as mushroom capped, as the tissue of her feet spilled over her shoes. Her shoes would not release easily, though finally with careful effort they gave way and left their imprint on her skin. After washing her feet I felt an urgency to rub them, and as I did the ornery disposition of this woman melted away–as if she had come back to herself again.

Even though this gesture seemed simple it gave her tremendous relief on many levels of her being. Over that summer we developed a warm and pleasant relationship with each other. I looked forward to caring for her and made a point to massage her feet on my shift.

One day my mother gave me an holistic health-care book. As I was reading it through I happened upon a chapter on reflexology and could not stop looking at an image of a map of the feet with what looked like organs of the body drawn on them. The absurdity of this art seemed bizarre and the practice of releasing tension related to specific areas of the body though the feet seemed a bit of a stretch–but I couldn’t look away and kept reading. In fact it intrigued me so much, from that moment on I decided to gather every book I could get my hands on to continue to learn about reflexology.

Suddenly I found myself on a mission to prove or disprove this healing art and thought of a way to reveal its validity–I brought the reflexology chart to the nursing home with me. With permission from the charge nurse I took extra time on my shift to associate the images on the reflexology chart with the feet of those I was assigned to care for. I was fascinated by the congruities between the reflexology map and the feet–for example I would read a patient’s chart to find a symptom such as constipation and then palpated the area on their foot sited as the colon on the foot reflexology map. I would then compare this area with other patient’s feet who was not experiencing constipation. There truly was a raised density of tissue in the reflex area of the colon on the foot of the woman who had symptoms of constipation, and the texture on those who did not experience constipation was smooth and un-noticeable.

By the end of the summer I knew reflexology was a special and effective modality and from then on, the ball to learning and growing with this healing art took on many forms and phases as it lead me to becoming a reflexology expert and later to trademark the term structural reflexology as a motion to promote healthy and vital feet and bodies. To shorten the reflexology journey for others, Put Your Best Feet Forward was authored.

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