Sole Guidance: Ancient Secrets of Chinese Reflexology to Heal the Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit. / Holly Tse, 2016. Hay House Inc., 287 p., illustrations, tables.
What you do to have fun when you have a day off from work, when you don’t have to commute and be somewhere at a particular time? For myself, such a free day was always about fun—going and doing, full of action—even if you had to include driving, or shopping.
For my husband, whose job as teacher made it difficult to sit down at all, all day, a day off was about re-charging his batteries and putting in a full day of rest and relaxation. So, he said, you have to thank your body, for taking you through the week, for doing your bidding, day after day, getting you from here to there and back, Monday through Friday.
And I thought, Wow–what a concept! On your day off you choose not to go and get fun, which actually requires a lot of effort, but instead to take care of yourself. And your mind, your body and especially your feet really benefit from such a break from all the “shoulds” and “have-tos” we imagine are good for us! We’re all about “deserving a break”, right? But who thinks to thank themselves at all, and especially their feet?
We imagine that whatever we experience begins and ends in our mind. We have an opinion about our experiences and bodily sensations. Sometimes we are even attached to them, as in not wanting to let them go.
Holly Tse’s Sole Guidance offers the reader two basic ways to care for ourselves. One is through foot massage. The other is something quite different than physical manipulation. It’s all about letting go of our physical pain through discovering our self-intention in life. Thus Tse provides multiple ways for getting closer to the real you, deep inside, the things that you want to express, and how you can become a conduit for energy from the Universe.
In my life, the Universe of possibility! That’s pretty exciting.
Note that Tse uses Chinese Reflexology for the physical aspect. In the subtleties of physical sensation, the concept of Yin and Yang plays a major role. For one, there is a cycle of energy that courses through our bodies. And it turns out that your feet are pretty intimate with your body’s organs and nerves and even your brain. Properly cared for, your feet help you to experience a better quality of life. Everything from your physical health to your mental health and outlook can be accessed through your feet’s reflexology points.
In Sole Guidance, author Holly Tse helps you discover the distinct points on the soles and the tops of your feet that enervate bodily organs. From the wisdom of Chinese acupuncture, we understand that individual points transmit energy to each of the body’s organs through channels known as your body’s meridians. There are meridians that run under the skin’s surface for each body part such as kidney, bladder, lymph drainage, heart, stomach, throat, neck, intestine, gall bladder, shoulder, knee, pituitary gland, spleen, liver, adrenal glands, etc., etc.
Author Tse gives instructions—very simple steps to follow—for massaging those points, and the order in which to massage them for overall benefits.
However, Tse doesn’t leave you hanging by your toes, but points the way to a world of healing that begins with your life’s intentions. Her suggestions begin with a three-part analysis of the steps (she calls them “catalysts”) which are necessary to effect change. Even in such a vast topic as your emotions, Tse is confident in your ability to control them. And her thesis is that once you reverse the strangle-hold of emotions over your life, you can manage your pain and dis-ease. And with consistent practice, you can arrive at a place of better health, in some cases radiant health.
Sole Guidance shows how the body and mind systems integrate but can fall out of balance when there’s either too much emphasis or too little attention. Such an imbalance can produce pain and suffering. In its complexity, the concept of re-balancing ourselves can touch all aspects of our lives, expressed in mental and physical ways.
Find Holly’s website here.
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