Lymph Care Using Foot Zone Techniques
The lymphatic system is a vital part of our circulatory and immune systems. It consists of a network of lymphatic vessels, lymph nodes, and lymphatic organs, including your spleen and tonsils.
How do I adequately describe the lymphatic system without needing as many pages as I print up when teaching about this body-wide system during the Foot Zone therapy classes that I teach?
Let’s begin today by imagining a team inside your body that is constantly working to keep everything—and I do mean everything!— in balance. That is our lymphatic system!
Unfortunately, the amazing lymphatic system has a downside, as well. Bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells that enter the lymphatic vessels can—and sometimes do, if the system is not healthy and working properly—use this system to travel throughout the body. This danger is supposed to be kept to a minimum as lymph fluid passes through the many lymph nodes situated throughout the body. If the immune system is healthy and the lymph fluid is moving as it should be, all will be well. Even cancer cells will be eliminated in an early, unnoticed stage. If not . . . .
Our lymphatic systems also contribute in very important ways to our ability to absorb dietary fats and fat-soluble vitamins. In addition, our lymphatic systems also transport cellular waste, debris, and toxins away from tissues, thus protecting tissues and organs throughout our bodies.
Caring for the various parts of the lymphatic system is precisely what we are doing during a very large portion of every foot zone that we give or get!
Some Simple Drawings of Foot Zone ‘Flows’ for Lymphatic Congestion as I Work Them.
(Shown only the right foot)
A Few Ways (Besides the Foot Zone) to Get Lymph Moving
1. Breathe deeply. There is approximately three times more lymph fluid moving through the body than there is blood, but the lymph has no pump to keep it moving. Deep breathing—the kind in which your abdomen moves with each breath, stimulates the flow of lymph, and energizes the immune system.
2. Add exercise to your breathing, and you will have turbocharged your lymphatic system and increased, in beneficial ways, your immune responses. A rebound exerciser is believed to be particularly good for your lymphatic system. Whole Body Vibration (I call it being jiggled and I love it!) seems to make my lymphatic system very happy. Involuntary muscle movement promotes lymph flow.
3. Drink plenty of water. Room temperature, or even hot water, sipped frequently throughout the day will re-hydrate the body and get the lymph moving.
4. Alkalize your diet. Simply eat more alkaline foods than you do “junk” or highly acidic foods. Avoid as much as you can sugary treats and beverages. Lessen the amount of meats, breads, grains, dairy, and processed foods that you consume each day. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Green, leafy vegetables provide chlorophyll, which will purify your blood and cleanse your lymph.
5. Add a few good-quality nuts to your diet. Raw, unsalted nuts and seeds are powerhouses of minerals, vitamins, protein, unsaturated fatty acids, and antioxidants.
6. Add herbs, especially lymph-building ones, to your life on a daily basis. A few suggested herbs include: astragalus, barberry, calendula, dandelion, echinacea, elecampane, garlic, ginger, goldenseal, myrrh, rosemary, sage, thyme, and white oak bark.
7. Use essential oils regularly. Regular use of essential oils helps to cleanse the body from toxins, free radicals, cellular debris, heavy metals, petrochemicals, bacteria, and a host of other unwanted things. Suggested oils include cypress, orange, grapefruit, rosemary, peppermint, lemon, and blends such as Butterfly Express LeSolace, LeAgeless, LeCherish, LeCinnamonBear, LeEndoRelief, LeLiteN, LeReflections, LeMillenia, LeRevitalize, LeSunburst, LeSynopsis, LeUnDone, and LeVitality. Which oil to use will depend a lot on where in the body the lymph clogging is most prevalent and what else needs to be accomplished.
8. Clay baths and foot soaks use the pores of the skin, especially the large pores of the feet, to cleanse the liver and move lymph fluid.
9. Gentle massage. It is believed that a gentle massage can push up to 75% of stagnant lymph back into circulation, freeing up trapped toxins.
10. Keep your skeletal structure aligned through chiropractic and/or the regular use of LeMillenia essential oil. LeMillenia, added to the bath or shower, can help the body realign itself or maintain a chiropractic alignment for a much longer time.
11. Dry skin brushing, especially before showering. Use a natural bristle brush. Brush your dry skin in circular motions upwards from the feet to the torso and from the fingers to the chest. The point is to work in the same direction that our lymph flows—toward the heart.
12. A shower in which hot and cold are alternated every few minutes. (Sorry, this one is not for me!) Heat dilates and cold contracts. The lymphatic and circulatory systems run alongside each other in the body. Alternate hot and cold increases both circulation and lymph drainage. Contraindicated for pregnancy and heart conditions.
Energy and Energy Protection
‘Energy and Energy Protection’. What an interesting and fitting topic to discuss with Foot Zone Therapists. Why do I say this? I want to tell three short—very short—stories to explain.
First story: For a short time during my childhood, my mother experienced some very difficult health issues. The severe anemia she suffered, as well as the pain she endured with repeated miscarriages and surgeries, resulted in stress, tension, and—sometimes—irritability and impatience. It didn’t take much self-awareness, even as a child, to realize that tension in the home had a profound effect on the other members of my family! I even asked my father once why I had to behave ‘like an adult’ when my mother didn’t have to. I will always remember his words to me. “Dear daughter,” he said, “Because you can and, right now, with your mother’s health as it is, she cannot.”
What does this first story have to do with energy protection and zoning feet? People come to us seeking answers for health issues they are having. Many times, those issues come with emotional baggage connected to or resulting from the stress they are creating in their lives. As a young zone therapist, I didn’t expect that. I didn’t even recognize, at first, that it was happening. My husband, most helpfully, pointed it out to me!
My dear, patient husband explained to me one day that when he saw a certain car pull into the driveway carrying a young couple for zones, he absolutely avoided coming home until I had finished up with them and they had been gone for some time. That astonished me, especially when he explained that, after this couple left, I was extraordinarily critical of him, discontented, and difficult to live with for a time! They had always seemed so polite to each other to me. I had not recognized the ‘politeness’ for the underlying stress and contention that later led to their not-amicable-in-the-least divorce.
A short while later, my husband pointed out something else to me that I had not recognized or considered either.
My husband pointed out to me that if a client came with a headache (or a cough or just about anything else), they left without it at the end of the Zone session, but that I struggled with it, sometimes even for several days. I realized that he was absolutely right about that a great deal of the time.
I was already playing with (my name for blending) essential oils when I learned to zone feet. I immediately set out to make a blend using essential oils whose aromas were described, around the world, as having ‘energy protecting or ‘repelling’ properties. The Butterfly Express essential oil blend I called LeBenediction was the result. It took several attempts at blending to finally come up with this powerfully effective blend! Why the name LeBenediction? Because, previously, prayer for protection and healing was the way I was coping with whatever I picked up from a zone. (And more than a bit of prayer went into figuring out the proper oils and proportions of those oils for this blend!)
In this article, I will give a description of LeBenediction and of the newer blend, created by a very talented employee, LeGuardian. At the end of the article, I will try to contrast and explain when it might be best to use one or the other of these two blends.
I have been a teacher all of my life! I was given the responsibility to lead the music in my LDS primary meetings when I was 11 years old and should have been just an attendant. By the time I was 14 years old, I was also the teacher of a Sunday School class of 4-year old children. (Primary was on Mondays in those long ago days, so it was possible for me to do both!) I loved those callings!
What does this have to do with this newsletter highlighting Butterfly Express, LLC specials for other Foot Zone specialists? Not much, maybe, except a desire to share some of what I have learned over these many intervening years!. I am getting older by the day, and sharing what I have learned, often by hard experience, is the best of the things that fill my days!
I have been zoning feet for almost 30 years, guessing as best I can about the ages of my children at the time. Although our family was already using both herbal and homeopathic remedies, learning to ‘zone’ feet made a significant impact on the health of my family, just as it had done for me when I began getting zoned regularly a few months before begging to be taught to do it myself. My husband’s health was very sketchy at the time, as it had been for many years already. I believe, as I did then, that regular foot zones kept him with us. His health, even now at 73 years old, is better than it was then!
After some deliberation and visiting with an employee who also knows the Zone, we decided to feature the Synergy Kit to offer these ‘whole-body’ oils to zone therapists at a discount, along with a bit of information about various body systems and the essential oil blends, mostly formulated by me, that I have found useful during foot zones over the years.
I am so excited about this new monthly Butterfly Foot Zone Focus. I have spent more than 25 years creating and then using Butterfly Products as I learned bit by bit what worked for what during a Foot Zone Session. (I even got a vote on what would be featured in this first month’s specials, ha ha.)