The relationship between my big toe, my spleen and my hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is one of those hormone secreting glands living in your brain….so it makes sense that its reflex point is found on your big toes (as your big toes hold the reflexes for most of the anatomy in your head).

As it turns out, the meridian paths that run through your big toes are your spleen/pancreas meridian (on the outer side), and your liver meridian (on the inner side).

At first there would appear to be no correlation, right? The head is not physically located anywhere near your liver, spleen or pancreas.

But, your spleen and liver are blood rich organs, which work hard at clearing your blood of various excess hormones, chemical by-products, toxins; and neutralizing viruses and bacteria. Special neural receptors read your blood and feed this information to your hypothalamus. The hypothalamus then instructs the anterior pituitary gland (one of many glands attached to your head) to tell various other glands around your body (eg: Thyroid gland, Adrenal cortex and even your gonads) to produce hormones to balance the blood.

The hypothalamus regulates your autonomic nervous system, and controls emotional reactions (adrenal cortex), appetite (Thyroid gland), body temperature, water retention as well as sleep.

Reflexology applies pressure to these reflex points, which is a stimulus that activates electrochemical nerve impulses, which sensory neurons deliver to your central nervous system. We believe that nerve impulses triggered through pressure may be connected to the autonomic nervous system: the part of the nervous system which controls involuntary action of internal organs, muscles and glands.

And that’s a little glimpse of some of the ‘science or magic’ behind what I do.