Reflexology and Cancer Care

At the beginning of this month I went on a fascinating course on reflexology and cancer care. It was led by a man called Peter  Mackereth, who works at Christie’s in Manchester, one of Europe’s leading cancer centres. Peter runs the Complementary therapy service at Christie’s, supporting patients and carers through all the stages of their cancer journey. Being diagnosed with cancer is unimaginably difficult, bringing with it many emotions and symptoms including stress, depression, fear, worry and anxiety induced nausea.

Taking part in this course was a real eye opener, and made me realise just how uneducated I was about cancer. It also made me realise how much I wanted to help, and use this course to its full extent. There is a myth that massage and reflexology will spread cancer, and a lot of reflexology courses teach that we should not treat cancer patients. However, Peter made it very clear that this was definitely a myth, and we can absolutely treat cancer patients! This is because the whole point of reflexology is that it is balancing, not stimulating. Reflexology works to bring the body back into homeostasis, where all the bodily systems are working correctly.

Reflexology and other complementary therapies should be done alongside traditional medicine, and not used instead. This is where some of the bad press on reflexology and cancer has come from, since patients decide to give up on conventional medicine, and just focus on treatments like reflexology to cure them. The point of using reflexology is to help the patient to manage with the side effects of cancer treatments, such as fatigue, anxiety, depression etc. not to cure the patient of their disease.

I am readily available to treat cancer patients, at whatever stage they are, so please get in contact for more details.