Traumas are portals to awakening

Like many people in the early ’70s, the trauma forced me to question what life meant to me. My particular trauma at 27 years old was being left with two small children after the death of my first husband, David. This was during a time of expanding consciousness when events like the Vietnam War, the shooting of students who rebelled against it in Kent State, birth control, and the sexual revolution that led to the children of women. flowers and loves, they put us in motion. Many people began to test the waters of what we could experience: drugs, sex, and rock and roll. After David’s death, I broke my protective shell and went looking for my own answers because what I knew no longer made sense; I became a seeker. I knew I would marry again and I wanted to marry an educated man, someone who liked to travel, was domestic and, although I didn’t make it a requirement at the time, who was spiritually inclined.

I put Bill. He was a meditator, also a widower, had a young son the age of both of my children, and due to his trauma after the death of his first wife, he opened up to alternative approaches to dealing with stress. He had taken the meditation and introduced it to me. I was captivated by meditation once I learned it and wanted to learn more, so I enrolled in a Yoga Teacher Training course at the Toronto Yoga Center, where the old school of teaching yoga still existed, honoring the ancient philosophy. of yoga and instructing according to this philosophy. In those days, there was no Hot Yoga, Power Yoga, or Yoga for weight loss. Hatha Yoga, Pranayamas, Meditation and Yoga Philosophy were taught.

WORK OF PRESSURE POINTS AND MAGICAL RESULTS
One of my teachers, Jay Bixby was his name, came up to me after his class and said, “Stay after class Danielle, I want to show you some healing techniques.” I was lucky at the time to have menstrual cramps and Jay proceeded to give me pressure point work. Pressed along the clavicle area, thumb walked down either side of the spine, hit the points in the hip area, did some spinal pressure work on the thumbs and toes and for me surprise, my cramps disappeared. I could feel this current of energy enter my abdominal area and dissipate the cramps. I thought, “Wow, this is better than taking a Midol pill.”

I shared this experience with Bill and we decided that I would take my first pressure points course – Vita Flex from Stanley Burroughs’ book called “Healing for the Age of Enlightenment”. It was 1977 and Mr. Burroughs had been around for a long time as a pioneer in the field of healing arts. He was way ahead of his time and had been arrested for “healing” people, which threatened the medical model, but that didn’t stop him from spreading the word. His book included the famous Master Cleansing Diet, yoga poses (designed by Jay Bixby), color therapy that I love, and his wonderful Vita Flex pressure point methodologies. This is my favorite book of all time and when I find copies of it, I take them and pass them on to students when they take my lower leg or upper body advanced circulation workshops which include a few points Vita Flex.

When I took Vita Flex, Bill’s son had been diagnosed with a curvature of the spine. We were directed to take him to Sunny Brook Hospital for X-rays which showed that his femur was misfitting in his hip socket, causing his hip to deviate and he ended up with a curved spine and leg 1.5cm shorter than the other. They asked us to come back in three months to see how he was doing.

I took my stepson to the Vita Flex teacher and asked if he could lengthen his legs. (Actually he was kidding because I didn’t think it would be possible). He said: “Yes, indeed, there is a leg lengthening point in the clavicle area.” The teacher taught me what to do, and I performed this two-minute ritual every morning before sending the children off to school. I just pressed on the clavicle area, thumb walked down each side of her spine and did the spinal areas on the thumbs and feet. The teacher had said that he would probably take about three months to normalize the leg.

That was all I did and then we took him back to Sunny Brook as requested to have him x-rayed one more time and to our amazement he was completely normal! Well, you can imagine that we were very, very impressed with this result and totally delighted with our son, as he was only ten years old and now he was able to continue his life with a better skeletal system.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER
That got us hooked on the healing arts and I think I took every course that came to town in those days. Wonderful courses with Dr. Bernard Jensen on Whole Foods and Iridology, Dr. Alzner’s Deep Muscle Reflexology, Werner Erhard’s Training Seminar known as EST, which was very amazing in those days, and although I loved the Vita Flex method, I passed I was certified by the Reflexology Association of Canada in the early 1980’s and soon after became a teacher.

At the time, doing all these alternative things wasn’t as close to mainstream as it is today—reflexology, yoga, and vegetarianism were still silly, and we were considered a bit weird by our kids’ friends. The kids would come home from school and I’d be in a headstand, or corpse pose, or crooked like a pretzel. Visiting children used to tell our children that there was never anything normal to eat in this house. We really were post-latent hippies raising new age kids in a very confusing era. We had no road map to follow and we were making it up as we went along. We would have visiting yogis, psychic healers, people from other planets (so they said), tarot card readers, and many wonderful experiences in that home. This is what our children were exposed to. alternative living workshops and ideas.

Because our children were exposed to reflexology at a very young age, they often asked for foot surgery and were used to thinking about the body traced on the feet. Once, at a doctor’s appointment, the doctor said, “Let me see your stomach,” and my only daughter began to remove her shoes. I had to hold back a few smiles.

We learned more yoga teachings from our spiritual yoga teacher Dr. Ramamurti Mishra who was the loveliest yogi anyone could find. We were very fortunate to have been exposed to his teachings on Ayurveda philosophy and personal doshas, ​​yoga chakra healing and various cleansing practices.

I also continued my education while raising the children, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a graduate diploma in human resource management. I found that he had a great interest in personality theory and that he trained me in the use of the MBTI® (Myers Briggs Type Indicator). I’ve worked for a couple of companies giving workshops on using a behavior model and got more training in personality theory of temperament. I was having so much fun learning all these wonderful things for self-understanding and healing.

AN ENTIRE HEALING SYSTEM WITHIN OUR FINGERTIPS
All these learning experiences led me to put together how to think about ear, hand and foot reflexology. I realized that with the personality temperament theory (similar to Ayurveda’s mind-body system), we can think of the human instrument as a holistic system consisting of a Mind Side that acts as the Dreamer in us and produces our Ideas; a Social Side that acts as a Catalyst in us and generates our Connections; and a Physical Side that acts as the Builder in us providing feedback that helps manifest and consolidate ideas and connections.

Because I was lucky enough to teach all three reflexology courses to the students (foot, hand, and ear reflexology), I asked them what their experiences were and how they felt the three modalities differed. It was from my students that I brought together the knowledge of Ayurveda, personality temperaments and reflexology modalities into one complete system at our fingertips. The benefits expressed by the students fit very well with the principles of Ayurveda and we determined that by doing the ears we feel calmer; when making the hands we felt that our emotions were getting cold; and by doing the feet we felt that the body was stimulated. I was so excited about how this all came together and tried to capture it in The Well-Tempered Life, a book that summarized my experience with yoga, personality theory, and reflexology.

• If the mental principle is unbalanced, do ear reflexology to calm the mind.

• If someone is frustrated, upset or angry, do Hand Reflexology to cool the emotions of the Social Principle.

• And if someone is tired, lethargic and bored due to too many time constraints and no time to rest and repair, practice Foot Reflexology to stimulate the Physical principle.

MOTHER NATURE IS THE HEALER
Like many reflexologists, we know this is powerful work we are doing and we are thrilled when people tell us the impact of our pressure point work on their systems. I always tell my students, “You are not the healer here; your job is to push buttons. Mother Nature is the healer and each person’s body has its own intelligence. It will take what it needs from your pressure point work and he’ll use it however he sees fit. Your job is just to push the buttons.”

For me, it’s better not to label an imbalance in the body but to think more along the lines of TCM guidance. See the condition as an energy imbalance and work to bring the system back into balance, back to homeostasis. Whether in the mental aspect with worry or anxiety; in the social aspect with frustration or anger; or whether it is the physical aspect of fatigue and toxins, we must strive for balance and help our clients achieve it with whatever tools, skills, or knowledge we have to share.

For me, reflexology is one of the most valuable tools we can have to help ourselves, our families and our clients, and I am truly grateful to Jay Bixby, wherever he is, for my first experience of natural point healing. pressure. It really helped shape my life. I love sharing, teaching and passing on information and I love sharing my past and experience with others.