Saturday, January 9, 2010

Can reflexology help children?


Stories about reflexology and children always seem to bring a smile. Who can help it when imagining this scene: a five year-old on the way to a birthday party insisting that his parents drive back home so he could retrieve HIS golf ball. This self-sufficient young one had learned that he could control his migraine headaches with a reflexology golf ball technique he’d learned at the baby-sitter’s. (The baby-sitter’s friend, a client of ours, had passed on the technique we’d shown him and that he found to be successful for his sinus headaches.) The parents were surprised to learn that their son was having headaches as well as that he was using a golf ball for a purpose.

There’s so much to smile about here but also so much to wonder at with the serendipity of it all. This little boy lived in Dallas, some 650 miles from us. The original client lived in Lubbock, Texas some 200 miles from Dallas. Who knew that a bowl of golf balls and an adult using one for a health purpose could help a child—little mimics that they all are—with a health concern unknown to his parents? (This is not so unusual. Children often don’t know how to express such things.) It’s a reminder to us all that our reflexology activities have many and unknown results.

Looking over other stories and research studies, I am reminded of the role of reflexology in helping both a child, suffering from a health concern, and a parent, suffering from concern about the child’s concern. One study showed that crying time for colicy infants was reduced from 90 minutes a day to 30 minutes with reflexology. Another showed that enuresis (involuntary urination or bed wetting) was lessened and still another that encopresis (fecal incontinence) was helped. Then there are the newspaper reports about chronic ear infections, a very painful experience, are helped with reflexology.

Medicine itself offers scant help for any of these common childhood health concerns.  One can image coping with these scenes without the help of reflexology: loss of sleep, messy situations and problems with seemingly no solution. In addition, frequently it’s not easy to see that a child to be physically uncomfortable or what’s causing it. For these reasons—as well as the sheer pleasure of spending some quality time with a little one—reflexology and children can bring much more than a smile.



Barbara Kunz


Parent's Guide to Reflexology



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