It is the monthly blog time and wow, how quickly do they come around!

You have Sooze again this month, and rather than having a content focus, the CAREA Team think it a good idea to re-visit just how DuoPody technique came about, so here we go …

How DuoPody began

The birth of DuoPody was momentous and dramatic too!

I ran my clinic from my home, but had moved town and two clients couldn’t make it to me, so I went to them. One had multiple sclerosis. He had originally arrived at my door telling me that ‘My wife made this appointment and insisted I came, but you will never see me again’ and this story begins 10 years later!

I will call him George (not his real name). I arrived for our monthly appointment to be met by his frantic wife telling me that George was constipated, really constipated and the GP had been several times and tried ‘everything’, but no movement and George was in excruciating pain and very, very unhappy. Up until this point I still followed the routine I had been taught by my wonderful teacher, and many in the UK still do this, which was to cover up the left foot and treat the right foot, then cover right and treat the left each time starting at the toes and working down to the heels:

So here I was, moving my thumbs and fingers up the head, over the brain, down the neck, across the shoulders, between the toes for the eyes, ears and eustachian tubes etc., then on to the stomach, the gall bladder, the liver, the pancreas, the small intestine and into the large intestine … and then woah! What am I doing? Why am I doing half of George’s stomach, missing out a bit of his liver, half his small intestine and then encouraging peristalsis in his large intestine, but then abandoning the rest, just as the tone of his feet in this area was starting to feel less hard/blocked? Because what I was going to do, was what I had always done, which was to cover up that foot and start on his left foot large toe, up the head, over the brain, down the neck etc., and 20 minutes later I would start on the rest of his transverse colon. My brain did a huge wobble and it did a huge PING! Why didn’t I do ALL of his small intestine right foot and left foot and then do ALL of his large intestine right foot and left foot? Wouldn’t that make sense for George and his dilemma?

Use your imagination to picture this … I am sitting on the floor as this had become the only way George could remain comfortable whilst I did reflexology. My concentration was immense and it felt very militant to be diversifying from my usual treatment that I had been using for years. So, there I am, completely focussed on what I am doing and how it feels so ‘right’ to be moving from one foot to the other whilst I mutter anatomical details to myself, ‘so now I must be doing duodenum, jejunum, ileo-cecal valve, oh and colon itself and appendix must be around here somewhere too. Here I go into the large intestine, and I was here 20 minutes ago and it feels quite hard again, so I need to move this faeces (I was actually thinking pooh!) all the way along, then down, then a really good shove on the u bend up to the rectum and out of the anus, which is going to be half on the right foot and half on the left, so I have to slide down and out with both feet at the same time!’

This sounds twp (Welsh word for daft), but I had sort of forgotten George in the thrill of doing something new with such intention. That was until George yelled ‘Get my wife NOW, I need to go’. Now you may recall that George has multiple sclerosis, and getting to the loo from his chair usually took about 15 minutes, but with such urgency and some extra hands, he was there in 2!

George didn’t emerge from the loo for the next 20 minutes. He collapsed into his chair and had the hugest, widest smile and looked lovingly at his wife and said …

‘Darling you know I love you, but that was better than sex’

And so DuoPody was born because I went home and started drawing a foot map of the digestive system, this time starting at the mouth and including all the tubes and bags. Another curious thing happened which was that I began to understand the Anatomy and Physiology that I always knew was important, but hadn’t grasped very well. Here I was having eureka moments as I linked other client’s conditions to my increasing interest in and knowledge of how the body systems actually work when you treat the whole system. All the other system foot maps followed, albeit very rudimentarily.

By this time, I had also begun teaching reflexology as well as running a clinic. Firstly, on a HND course, then lecturing in reflexology and research on a Complementary Therapy degree in a Cardiff University as well as having set up Inspira Academy, a private training centre.

Duo = two and Pody = feet

So, all the body systems had foot charts/maps and DuoPody was born, but for students I was still teaching what now gets called classical reflexology and going back many decades we were all following what Eunice Ingham had brilliantly created and is of course the foundation for all the reflexology techniques we have today. But I added in teaching DuoPody towards the end of training and odd things were happening. Students were repeatedly reporting things like:

• My husband didn’t like what I was doing previously, but loves DuoPody
• Study Clients are saying they feel really ‘balanced’
• My friend already has ordinary reflexology, but says DuoPody makes her feel massively different in a good way
• My study client is a qualified reflexologist and wants to learn how to treat with DuoPody
• Client studies were requesting DuoPody rather than classical reflexology

Very importantly, students were also saying they much preferred treating with DuoPody as they felt more balanced, more relaxed. Their thumbs, fingers, hands were working organically rather than mechanically and … their posture was great too.

And then the extra ordinary woman who went by the name of Hanne Marquardt came to Inspira Academy to deliver her CPD course.

Hanne was inspiring, her textbook was inspiring and also detailed systems, rather than the posters we were used to which represented the body parts without any anatomical similarity. She was already in her 80^th year, so at the end of her first day teaching I asked if she would let me ‘do her feet’.

Hanne scared me and made me breathe very rapidly when after about 5 minutes of treating with DuoPody, she sat bolt upright (not easy in the Relaxator chair I was using) and bellowed ‘What are you doing with my feet?’ Quaking I whispered that I was doing a treatment that I had developed for my clinic that I had called DuoPody. She smiled, lay back down and said ‘Hallelujah, it makes me very happy to know that in the UK, they now know you must treat systems and both feet at the same time so that you understand health and illness properly … please continue’!

After her CPD was finished, Hanne stayed a few days longer and told me in no uncertain terms that I must abandon teaching one foot and then the other and continue developing DuoPody.

The first two students who became teachers at Inspira Academy, were Cath England who now owns and runs Inspira Academy and the other was Annie Trigg. Together with Annie we knew that for Reflexology – DuoPody Reflexology – to make sense to other Health professionals, we had to develop charts that were recognisable anatomically, so that when we make the claim ‘The feet reflect the body’ they can see and understand immediately what we mean and so The PodyCharts were born using Real Feet that were X-Ray’d and the skeleton added on to the Real Bones with 100% anatomical precision in order that each of the body systems will sit exactly where they should be.

DuoPody makes sense, anatomical sense and evidence says that it brings about improved responses to a treatment, but it is also important to remember that all touch to the feet is effective, even mechanical touch elicits responses! Being a DuoPodist is so much more than following the systems though. DuoPodists use the foundation knowledge of DuoPody and start to build, and to explore, and to incorporate other techniques. DuoPodists take every scrap of information given to them by their clients and their feet and lower legs and then they ponder and they plan and continue to ponder as they treat, informing themselves of why they are doing what they are doing, physically and psychologically so that they facilitate the best possible response from the reflected body they have the privilege to be holding in their hands.

Always Ponder and Wonder ~ Sooze