My Feet are Connected to my Ears

I have never been a big subscriber to reflexology, but I did have an experience that makes it hard for me to ignore that there might be some legitimacy to this practice.

Many years ago, I had this problem with my right thumb. It just started getting real stiff and stayed in a permanent hitch hiker position. Not only did it hurt if I tried to bend it, it just wouldn’t bend. I had some cortisone shots that worked for a few weeks but the stiffness always came back and the doctor said too many cortisone shots would start to do some damage to the joint.

With no other choice, I went to see an acupuncturist. To eliminate any thoughts you have of a placebo effect, I went to this guy’s office fully convinced it wouldn’t work and I was wasting my time.

He started by, as you already guessed, placing a whole bunch of needles in my hand. It felt like someone placed a whole bunch of needles in my hand. He had me sit there for twenty minutes with some meditation music. If you know me, you would know that at this point, I’m in opposite world. When he took the needles out, he asked, “How does that feel?” I told him, “No change.”

The “doctor” decided to try another approach. He explained that just like your feet, your ears have nerves that connect to the rest of your body. After pulling out what looked like a fat ball point pen connected to a battery pack, he said we needed to shock the Hand Area of my ear. At this point I realized that I’m getting the level of medical treatment one would usually expect to get at Taco Bell.

He pressed this device into the top part of my ear and turned it on. Instantly, the stiffness in my thumb melted away. I looked like a total idiot, holding my hand up and moving my thumb around saying, “look I can move my thumb around.”

The stiffness never came back so I guess you could say the reflexology approach worked.

As I run barefoot and stimulate all those nerves in the bottom of my feet, I have noticed other areas of my body feeling the effect. At night when the muscle protein synthesis activates and the nerves in my feet and legs start firing off, I can feel the effects in my shoulders, neck, back, and arms. Perhaps it’s all my imagination but I’m going with the reflexology explanation for now.