MOBILE    REFLEXOLOGY

History of Foot Reflexology

Foot Reflexology has been credited not only to the Chinese but also as far back as ancient Egypt.   Inscriptions depicting reflexology have been found on tombs in Saqqara, Egypt.   According to International Institute of Reflexology, it is believed that reflexology spread to the rest of the world through the expansion of the Roman Empire.   However, reflexology disappeared from the modern medical scene until it was revived in early 1917 by Dr William Fitzgerald.

 

 

Fitzgerald began to post articles on his Zone Theory, or Zone Analgesia.   Basically this was where pressure was applied to the bodies corresponding pressure points to assist healing.   Not only on the feet and hands but also on the tongue, palate and pharynx wall to help with pain release.   He used various tools such as elastic bands, combs, surgical clamps, nasal probes and even clothes pegs.   He was responsible for putting together the first map of longitudinal zones of the body.   He went on to publish a book “Relieving Pain at Home” in 1917 with Dr. Edwin Bowers, which most consider the first true look at what modern reflexology was to become.

 

 

The most significant portion of his research was that not only was the application of pressure on the correct zone reliving pain but in most cases also corrected the root cause.   This is the very basis of reflexology as we know it today.

Dr. Shelby Riley, who work with Dr. Fitzgerald, added the horizontal zones across the hands and feet to continue the healing affect.

 

 

However, it was Physical Therapist Eunice Ingham who finally came to the understanding that areas of the feet were a exact copy of the rest of the organs of the body.   She wrote her first book “Stories the Feet can Tell” where she mapped out these areas as we know them today.   Unfortunately, a foreign publisher changed the title to “Zone Therapy” which is the reason while some parts of the world refer to Foot Reflexology as Zone Therapy.

 

 

During the late 1950sDwight Byers and his sister Eusebia Messenger joined their aunt Eunice teacher reflexology workshops.  Soon they organized reflexology under the banner of The National Institute of Reflexology.   This was changed in the 1970s to The International Institute of Reflexology.