Stuff and Nonsense

I’m not very new age. In fact I am deeply cynical.

Regardless of that though – I like having a foot massage as much as the next person and have twice in my life had reflexology. Very nice too, and I have to admit, quite fascinating in that both times the therapists were able to tell me all about my little aches and pains just through feeling my foot. In fact a friend of mine who has been trained in this showed me how my ankle has a bump which is the link from my foot to my womb, but she has in the same place a dip – having had a hysterectomy some years ago. Strange huh?

Anyway, all that is by the by because where I work they have something called Make the Most of Mondays, and at lunchtimes we get the chance to participate in what are usually fitness based sessions like yoga or Pilates. I’ve never bothered before but a few weeks ago the notification that came round mentioned reflexology so I applied, and to my delight I was offered a place for it.

The session was on Monday just gone. I went along but what a blow! It was immediately apparent that I was not after all going to get my foot massage, but was there to learn how to do it....to someone else.

It was fairly clear from a quick reading of the body language of the other women there that I was not the only one under the false impression that had brought me there.

Now, I have no objection to massaging the feet of my nearest and dearest, even though a particular Scotsman of my close acquaintance can’t cope with it for more than about ten seconds at a time (shame), but did I want to get my hands on the foot of a complete stranger? I rather thought ‘not’.

The stereotypical hippy type woman who was there to instruct us in the ancient art of reflexology launched in with a list of contra-indications for reflexology. She probably didn’t need to tell me that verrucas and athlete’s foot were two of those, but she did. In fact she kept mentioning them and I was feeling increasingly squeamish. Then she got us together in a group of three all set to start manhandling each others feet, and none of us looking too chuffed at the prospect. Whether our vibes were strong, or whether it would have been bleeding obvious to anyone our instructor thankfully did get the message and announced that whilst not as effective it is possible to do reflexology on hands – and even better – one can do it on one’s own hand. “Would you” she enquired, “prefer to try it that way?” A collective sigh of relief was the only reply necessary.

So on to the next stage and she was showing us how to move our fingers across various parts of our hand that allegedly correspond with another body part. She was quick to suggest we didn’t press too hard on the colon part. She told us that when a reflexologist locates a potential problem area they will feel a little lump almost like a grain of salt, or a piece of bubble wrap. Now I have had a problem area for several weeks now – the left hand side of my neck has been really stiff and has actually been waking me up in the night. Very annoying. Having ascertained that the part of my hand that corresponds to my neck is the bottom of my thumb I set about locating said grain of salt or piece of bubble wrap. Did I find it? Course I did not. But I did keep rubbing the bottom of my thumb more through lack of interest in any of the rest of what Hippy Lady had to say than through any expectation of locating my problem neck via my hand – if that makes sense.

As I came away I sent Reidski a text to say the session had been a complete waste of time.

It was only some hours later that I noticed something was missing. That something was the pain in my neck. And as we all know, not having a pain in the neck is A Good Thing.

And I haven’t had a pain in the neck since.


Very, very odd.