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The art of foot reading revealed
SOLE SEARCHING: Foot reader Jane Sheehan.
You may have heard of palm readers and even head readers but what about foot readers? Neil Hudson met one of the UK’s most prominent solistry experts and got his feet out.
Mention the words foot reading to anyone and chances are they will either have never heard of it or will lump it in the same category as nightclub psychics, Tarot card readers and other ‘alternative’ practices.
Foot reader and reflexologist Jane Sheehan is trying to break away from that judgement by bringing her rather unusual brand of therapy to the masses.
What started out as a party trick for the former Huddersfield business and engineering student has become a full-time profession which has taken her around the world and led to numerous television appearances, including several on This Morning.
Jane said: “People think it’s flaky, they have preconceptions about it but if you think about it, you use your feet differently depending on your mood or state of health. “If you are angry, you stamp about, if you are depressed, your shoulders slump, you lean much further forwards on your feet and as a foot reader, I would see that on your feet, because it would affect the circulation, so I would typically notice black or dark purple on the toe pads.”
Position
I met Jane at a teaching seminar in one of the conference rooms at The Holiday Inn, Garforth, where she was tutoring half a dozen reflexologists in the art of foot reading.
It’s something she has been doing since 2003 and judging by her diary (she’s already booked to return to the same hotel in June next year) and the fact her latest book, Let’s Read Our Feet, recently went into its second edition, foot reading is gaining in popularity.
So what is foot reading?
Jane said: “Your feet reflect your personality.
“As a foot reader, I look at everything to do with the feet: their colour, size, whether the tendons are showing, how big the toes are and what position they are in, whether they are pointing inwards or outwards.
“In terms of reading the feet, the right foot relates to a person’s past, whereas the left foot is to do with the present.
“For example, a short little toe means you have a great sense of fun and if you can wiggle it separately, it means you have a good sense of adventure, whereas an elongated third toe equates to drive and determination.”
Jane got into foot reading after she visited a reflexologist with a friend and admits she considered it a bit of fun at the time.
“In 1999, one of my friends fancied reflexology for her birthday, I thought it was just a beauty treatment but was amazed at what they could tell her about her health.
“When it came to my turn, I had a big emotional reaction to it, I was in floods of tears when she touched my big toe - I had to know more,”
Philosophy
She went on: “I studied at the Chiltern School of Reflexology and later came across a book about the mind, body, spirit connection.
“Before that, I thought illness was just about viruses and bacteria, which is the Western perception of disease.
“However, Eastern philosophy teaches that those viruses and illnesses can only invade our bodies if there’s another element involved, like feeling low, which allows you to become run down and viruses to take over.
“Then I met a man who interviewed 5,000 people about their toes and personality – sounds odd I know. I started using it as a party trick.
“At parties, people would think it was a bit of a laugh but they left amazed.
“I once did a foot reading at a school fete and the queue was out of the door. When I did my first teaching job in 2003, the very next day I was on This Morning, so I thought that was a good omen.”
As part of the interview, I asked Jane to read my feet and she gave a very detailed description of my life.
She said I was tired (the paler your feet, the more tired you are), that I had to deal with things very much in the moment whereas in the past I had much more time to analyse events.
She deduced this by comparing the third toe, associated with ‘doing energy’, on each foot and found that on the right foot (to do with ‘the past’), it was turned more toward my big toe.
She also told me I have inner strength (a high arch) and am a good listener (wide outside edge below your little toe).
It was all very uplifting, edifying even.
Listening to this self-bolstering analysis of an unregarded area of my body was fascinating but it’s sometimes easy to be overwhelmed with wide-eyed wonder.
While her description fitted my life (having two small children, sleep is often broken, problems dealt with there and then), you could probably deduce as much by looking at the bags under my eyes.
In retrospect, perhaps I was merely hearing what I wanted to hear or maybe Jane was merely telling me what I wanted to hear.
She can tell you fascinating things, such as: “There’s an area of the big toe called the mastoid process reflex, just off centre and diagonally towards the second toe, which is linked to the air gap in the inner ear and it becomes inflamed when you are going to get a cold.”
But she admits: “There’s a limit to what you can read on the feet. I don’t know people’s backstory. I don’t claim to be able to diagnose medical problems or treat them, we’re not doctors and we don’t act as such.
“People often come with questions about their lives, I can tell them things about their personality.
“At the end of each session, I ask them to choose a picture card from a pack and tell me why they chose it. People project their lives onto the picture and often end up answering their own question.”
Valerie Roddis is a support worker for the deaf and blind charity Sense and a trained reflexologist.
She said: “We believe the body is mapped onto the feet, we work on the reflexes. People come to us for relaxation but also with certain conditions but we would never claim to be able to cure a condition.”
Qualified midwife and nurse of 20-years Gill Askam said: “Sometimes sceptics are the best people to do it on because they have no expectations.”
Like other cultural imports from the East, reflexology is grouped in the same section as crystal healing and meditation and as such is easy to dismiss as flimsy pseudo-science.
It has its roots in Chinese meridian theory, the system which also underpins acupuncture, which is used routinely in Chinese hospitals.
While it has been the subject of serious study by a handful of Western academics and medical professionals, among them Dr William Fitzgerald (1872-1942), a US physician who helped pioneer the idea of reflexology after he noticed patients gripping chair arms while experiencing pain and nurse Eunice Ingham (1889-1974), who published Stories The Feet Can Tell in 1938, it has yet to gain wider credibility.
Taken as a bit of fun, foot reading is a party trick to intrigue your friends.
Taken more seriously, it’s part of a growing awareness in the West that there is perhaps more to complimentary and alternative treatments than was first thought.
Jane’s website is: www.findafootreader.com
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