No pain, no gain

YouTube - foot reflexology

"Taiwan set a World Record by arranging for 1,008 people to have a foot massage simultaneously."

The above is a video of this Guinness book of record attempt at the largest foot reflexology session ever held. The event took place in Taiwan.

The interesting part of this video is the expressions on the participant's faces. They are expressions of pain. The Asian view of reflexology in general is "no pain, no gain."

This video took me back to our trip to Japan in 1990. We attended the Rwo Shr conference. Our host, a Japanese company that marketed foot rollers, paid our whole way and entertained us in lavish style.

I had given a speech for several thousand people which was indeed intimidating but I got through it. I felt it was all downhill from there.

Then they asked me to give a speech to their consultants. They were reflexologists who worked in a type of product show room that featured reflexology and massage products for the home. It sounded like a piece of cake since it was only for 60 people.

But at the last second they asked me to explain the difference between the Rwo Shr method and our method. Having been worked on by a Rwo Shr practitioner I was a bit panicked. The pain was incredible. I begged off the second foot. And I have a high tolerance to pain.

Father Josef, a Swiss priest brought back some of the ancient techniques. The Rwo Shr method (meaning Josef in Mandarian Chinese) was named for him. He explained to us that he is really pretty tough with his technique application but he got results.

What was quite awkward was that Father Josef was sitting in the first row with the other dignitaries of the Rwo Shr method. Then it struck me. My old martial arts background was the ticket.

While we were waiting to be taken to the conference earlier that day I had been fooling around with one of those travel kiosks that tells you about sites of note. Having practiced Judo in my younger years I looked up the Kodokan. The Kodokan is the home of judo in Japan.

The kiosk information talked about judo being "the gentle way". That was it. When I gave my speech I explained that in Juijitsu, the forerunner of judo there were two schools- the soft school and the hard school. We were the soft school of reflexology like judo was to juijitsu. Around the room there was a nodding of heads as this seemed agreeable. The front row seemed very pleased as well.

The only downside of this was my nickname from then on. I was "software" from then on among my Japanese friends.

Seeing those faces grimacing in the Guinness record video brought all that back.

Kevin Kunz