Origin of Reflexology

Video Transcript

"Cultures around the world, ancient cultures and medieval cultures on many continents have had different ways of working with the feet, with the hands and with the outer ears to help people have better health. Hello, I'm Bill Flocco, founder and director of the American Academy of Reflexology with headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Now the question is, where did reflexology start? What's the history of it? And in 1917, a Dr. William Fitzgerald, who was a medical doctor in Connecticut, came up with a concept that divides the body into ten horizontal zones running up and down the body. In other words, one for each thumb and big toe and so fourth. And then in 1924, another medical doctor, this was Dr. Joe Shelby Riley in Florida, he divided the body into what we call horizontal zones. Then shortly after that, a lady who worked for Dr. Riley, named Eunice Ingham Stople, began to take reflexology to lay people and they stopped calling it zone therapy and began to call it reflexology, in other words the map concept of the human body on the feet, hands and ears. And then in 1957, another medical doctor, this one in Leon, France by the name of Dr. Paul Nogeir, discovered the map of the human body on the outer ear. The medical approach where you can diagnose and prescribe which is only legally done by medical doctors is called auricular therapy. When we use our touch on the outer ear, it's called ear reflexology. So what they discovered is this, there's a progression from the top of the body down to the buttocks. And if we look at our friends here, we have the head, the chest, the abdomen, the toes and fingers and ear help bring relief for the head, the ball and pad, the big knuckles of the hands and this area here is for the chest. The soft sole of the foot, the soft palm of the hand and this area here is for the upper mid-abdomen and then the lower pelvis helps by working on the heel of the foot, the heel of the hand and this part of the ear helps bring relief for the lower pelvis. So we have the progression from the top down. So I'm Bill Flocco from the American Academy of Reflexology in Los Angeles, California."