This is the year 1999. I live in hot and lively Israel. Nothing works for me. If you want me to start crying, just ask me how I am doing. I tried everything. Don’t want any more pills. A friend sends me to a channeler. The channeler sends me to a woman who does some kind of holistic reflexology. I go see her. She looks in my feet. She pokes at them, smells them, rotates toes, foot, and sinks her thumb in painful places. She asks me questions: do you ever experience “da-da-da”? “Yes”. She goes on: “When you were a child, did you suffer from bla-bla-bla?” Halfway through her Kleenex, I answer “Yes.” “When you were between the age of this and that, did something happen that made you feel very lonely?” There goes her Kleenex. “Yes”. Over one hour and this woman tells me my life’s story in my feet. Then she invites me to choose a physical issue as the focus. I choose the PMT, all the going crazy two weeks before and two weeks after my period, plus terrible pain the first day, not to mention wiping out the world’s chocolate supplies in one day. Ofra, my new therapist, chooses the context of my focus: the Water element, the world of my emotions. The foot representation of the Water element displays most signs of imbalance. Moi?!? Imbalance in the World of Emotions?!? She tells me that a minimum of six sessions is needed to show results. Within two sessions all depression is gone. Two to four days of healing crisis after each session are followed by a better physical and mental place than before the session. After the eights session, I ask her: “How many more sessions do I need?”. Ofra asks me: “How far do you want to go with your healing?” I stick with her for one year and a half, until one foot is on the Air Canada plane: I am moving to Canada.

July 1999: Ofra teaches Holistic Reflexology and Foot Analysis. I sign up. I am already her client, so now I sit in class, finally making sense of all the miraculous healing I have

been experiencing for the past six months. In the meantime, I’m off cigarettes, coffee and chocolate. PMT, depression, anxiety and a 20 years old constipation are gone too. Now I look at the class model’s feet, and map them. The big toes are the head. The hardened skin on their edges shows sinusitis. It’s chronic, or was in the past. If it were red, it would have been acute, “now”. As a rule, if it’s red, it’s acute, if it’s hardened skin, it’s either chronic, or someone in the family suffers from “it”, whatever the condition is. Hardened skin is the representation of the Earth element in the foot. All elements are represented in the feet, just as they are represented in the body: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. I learn how to find each element’s representation and potential delimitation in the foot, and the actual area each element occupies, where it exceeds and migrates towards another element, where an element is underrepresented. I learn to look for signs of imbalance in each element, being lines (horizontal or vertical, or both?; deep lines or shallow?), calluses, discoloration, temperature, disproportion, smell, rigidity, pain. Then I learn the way to “decode” these signs. I also hear stories of clients who had to buy a larger size of shoes after healing with the Holistic Reflexology sessions. Toes are sometimes curled under. This signifies something specific in the person’s health, and as the person heals, toes may straighten, requiring larger shoes!

A process of Holistic Reflexology always starts with a Foot Analysis session. In the session, I draw a foot map, colored crayons and all, and ask lots of questions, assesing. What I look for is the gap between a person’s potential as shown by their foot, and their actual, present state, as shown by the signs of imbalance in the foot. Then I know what the direction of the change is. The person chooses a focus in the physical realm: migraine headaches, or sinusitis, or menstrual pain, chronic constipation, high or low blood pressure, diabetes etc. I choose the “Context”, which can be either the element (Earth, Water, Fire or Air) or the body system (muscular, digestive etc) which displays the most signs of imbalance. I start working symptomatically, with specific techniques around the area of the focus (for instance, in constipation, I start working in the foot area representing the digestive system) and in the area of the context (for instance, around the heel when the Earth is the context). After each session, the person’s body reacts to the work in a specific way. I look and listen: which element reacted? What is the direction of the reaction? Then after the first two-three sessions, the techniques used follow the person’s reactions rather than staying around the area of focus and context, and the process turns from symptomatic to holistic. Old, stuck emotions are often released during sessions. When the focus issue is changed, the person either stops receiving sessions, or moves on the next issue, and changes the focus.

Why holographic? Well, my understanding of all Creation is that it is a huge hologram, in which each part of the whole holds the information of the whole. As part of the hologram, the human body is holographic too. You can find information on a person’s health and state in the person’s eyes, hair, tongue, pulse, hands, and feet, and of course, in each cell of the person’s body, in the DNA. Take one entry; learn its language, et  voilà! You can find an entire planet in a person’s feet! To say it’s fascinating, is to say the very least. I find the Foot Analysis a great tool for assessment for my clients; a great self-assessment tool for myself, and for the playful part of me, a great party conversation opener. Many times there were long lines of people taking off their socks, waving their feet in the air, and asking to be told what I see. For fun or for healing and growth, or for all the reasons, Foot Analysis is easy to learn and to grasp, it fits perfectly into the greater understanding of a system’s health, and the chakra knowledge. To me, Foot Analysis is one good piece in the puzzle.

Where is the Foot Analysis originated? This particular approach which crossed my path and now crosses yours is based on Indian-Tibetan philosophy and foot mapping, and it has been brought to my therapist and teacher through Avi Grinberg, the Israeli founder of the Grinberg Method, quite popular in Israel and fairly known in a few European countries.

My gratitude goes to my teacher, healer and role model, Ofra Garti from Israel, for the tremendous healing, learning, inspiration and guidance she offered from her great wisdom; to Avi Grinberg for spreading ancient knowledge to the West; for the many obliging people who are trusting me with their deepest secrets as their feet reveal them, and for the unsuspecting sandals-wearers secretly peeked at by a naughty inner-voyeur (your secrets are safe with me!). And my deepest gratitude goes, of course, to the Creator, for creating such a fascinating, fractal-like, holographic universe, full of exciting worlds for me to explore in human feet and elsewhere!

Article published in Tone magazine, January 2006