Positive Health Online

Sarah Jane Holt says reflexology has been reduced to a scented-candle foot rub – and wants to restore a more targeted, rigorous approach. An award-winning Totnes lecturer who has trained GPs, NHS specialists and scores of nurses is challenging the idea that reflexology is little more than a relaxing foot massage.

Sarah Jane Holt, director of the Devon School of Clinical Reflexology, teaches around 40 students a year. She says roughly a third are nurses, while her former students also include GPs and a lymphoedema specialist whose training was funded through his healthcare work.

Sarah first learned reflexology from her mother, who began practising in the early 1980s and became known for her work in reproductive reflexology. After initially training as an artist, Sarah followed her into the profession and later lectured at Plymouth University, teaching the reflexology element of a complementary therapies degree.

https://www.devonschoolofclinicalreflexology.com/tutor-profile   

Sarah Jane Holt, Director of the Devon School of Clinical Reflexology in Totnes.

She has taught since 2009 and has twice won the Association of Reflexologists’ Inspirational Tutor of the Year award.

“A lot of reflexology is taught as a nice, relaxing experience,” Sarah says. “You might go to sleep, and people are happy to pay for that. But that’s not real reflexology.”

Sarah describes her own method as clinical reflexology: a targeted treatment using firm, “authoritative” pressure to identify and work areas of tenderness or tension in the feet. She is careful not to diagnose medical conditions and presents reflexology as a complementary therapy to be used alongside, rather than instead of, conventional medicine.

Her explanation is that the feet contain thousands of nerve endings and that stimulating a reflex provides sensory input to the nervous system. Sarah believes this can encourage the body’s own regulatory and immune responses. “It’s all about your body healing itself,” she says. “The reflexologist is just the catalyst.”

Local journalist Andy Hill recently tried a treatment after years of lower-back trouble. Sarah found a particularly tender reflex associated with his lumbar spine; the point became less painful during the session, his back felt looser immediately afterwards and, two weeks later, he reported a significant improvement.

Sarah also works with clients managing long-term or repetitive-strain problems. One local professional guitarist in his 60s, who practises for up to five hours a day, reported a release in a chronically painful shoulder during his seventh session. He now uses regular reflexology to help sustain his playing. These are individual client experiences, not clinical trials.

“We’ve had a couple of GPs train with us, and a lot of nurses,” Sarah says. “About a third of all our students are nurses. They want to help people, but many are frustrated because they don’t have time for patient-centred care. With reflexology, you have that time to spend with each client.”

Sarah would like reflexology to be better understood by the public and considered more seriously within conversations around integrated care and social prescribing, while retaining clear boundaries around medical diagnosis and treatment.

Notes

• Sarah Jane Holt is Director of the Devon School of Clinical Reflexology in Totnes and a member of the Association of Reflexologists and the College of Medicine and Integrated Health;
• She has taught reflexology since 2009 and previously lectured at Plymouth University;
• A landscape portrait of Sarah is embedded above and supplied separately.
• Reflexology is a complementary therapy and should not replace appropriate medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Further Information and Media Contact

Andy Hill Tel:  07837 000 211  |  contactandyhill@gmail.com

Sarah Jane Holt Tel: 07715 622671  devonreflexology@hotmail.com

Website: devonschoolofclinicalreflexology.com   Instagram: @sarah_jane_holt_reflexology