Reflexology Treatment

By Jeannie Nugent
It’s all in your feet!

I've found the secret to a balanced life. It's all in your feet. Forget therapy, reflexology is where it's at. And I'm hooked.
I've always been a contradiction in terms — extremely practical, but also decidedly spiritual. Whenever something challenges my logical mind, I have to conduct an internal fight to suspend my belief. Letting go, it seems, is hard to do. I'm turning 40 on Friday and this milestone has brought a certain, delightful degree of freedom to my life. I'm eager to try new things, to voraciously gobble up the adventures that are there for the taking. The hang-ups, the "Stepford Wife," this-is-how-the- world-expects-you-to-act-therefore-you-are-a-slave-to-it way of living my life thus far is slowly dissipating through the window.

So whenever my best friend announced that she was treating me to a reflexology session at her friend Donald Piranty’s Hot Springs studio this weekend, I shrugged my shoulders, put a big smile on my face and said "Sure!" Usually, I research things to death before I experience them. I decided this time, I would fly blind. No expectations, no preconceived notions, just experience.

As the lights were turned low in the therapy room, the first self-realization I came to was “Wow! I’m high strung!” Relaxing was next to impossible. I was ever so conscious of every move Donald attempted to make. Then came self-realization number two: “Wow! I’m annoyingly accommodating.” I was trying to anticipate his next maneuver to “help” him out. I realized at that moment how obliging I am in my every-day life. It’s next to impossible for me to accept help, to delegate, to just let things happen. Inconveniencing someone is a cardinal sin to me.

As Donald tried to loosen my rigor-mortise-afflicted feet he firmly repeated the phrase “Let go.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. Was I supposed to twist my feet in another direction? Jump off the table? What? Then it hit me. He wasn’t talking about my feet, but my spirit. Let go — of my hangups, my fears, my life. Let it go. Then, almost like a revelation from out of nowhere, self- realization number three opened up: “Wow! I’ve been viewing my fellow human beings as the enemy.”

In my high-profile job, I’m often a personal target for everything from someone’s paper getting thrown in the flower bed to an elected official’s reaction to an editorial. I realized at that moment that I was hunkering down behind a protective shield against “them.” This career that I’ve wanted since I was 5 had somehow turned into a battle ground. It was me against “them.”
Where had my love and compassion for people gone? Where were the life stories that I loved telling so much? How had I gotten to the point where emotions, principles, and my reason for accepting this journalistic calling were so skewered? Somehow, with my extremely thin skin and heavy workload, I had let “them” become someone to be feared, someone who would surely hurt me, and someone who would take even more time away from “the rest of my life.”

I had to find balance. And at the wrap up, Donald told me as much as well. He began by saying “You’ve been in this job for a long time, haven’t you?” Internally, I instantly began fighting back because I knew that he was going to tell me I had to take a break from it all. But as if he heard my mind’s mumblings, Donald put the world straight again. Giving up a career that I love and that has brought me great fulfillment was not the answer.

Letting go. Getting back to the basics. Finding the beauty again in the humanity that surrounds me. Righting my topsy-turvy priorities. Those were the answers. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “home” was inside me all along. I just needed someone to take my feet in their hands to show me.

To learn more about Reflexology, go to http://www.painreliefandmassagestudio.com/