Resting well: the reflexology

A good sleep at night is essential for our daily vitality. But very often it happens that the stress accumulated during the day does not want to go away, and so you spend hours turning around in your bed or constantly looking at the clock. It seems that the time never passes. What can you do to improve your sleep without resorting to drugs that, as you know, can cause side effects and addiction?
Have you ever heard about reflexology?
Not everyone knows that massaging certain points of the feet naturally stimulates sleep and also helps to prevent and cure many diseases of our body.

very often we ignore and neglect them, but the feet are a valuable and fundamental structure for a good quality of life, which is subjected to an inevitable daily overload. Therefore, the feet deserve to be the object of attention and to be treated with care. It is sufficient to say that on each of them there are 7,200 nerve endings that, when stimulated, can send inputs to the brain to make us feel better.
The technique of reflexology restores the energy balance of the body, using a particular type of massage that, through the stimulation and compression of specific reflex points on the feet, strongly related to organs and apparatuses, allows you to exercise an preventive action and intervention on any organism imbalances. The assumption is that each organ, in addition to having its own specificity, reflects itself in the whole organism. Feet, hands, face and ears, especially since a large amount of nerve endings is located in them, are also the most suitable organs which reflect (because of these endings ) all other organs of the body. On our feet, then we would find all the reflex points of the internal organs, spine and bones.

The onset of reflexology is traced back to ancient civilizations, especially to Eastern ones. However, a variety of documents indicate that this technique was practiced by pre-Columbian civilizations and by the Indians. The representation of a fetus on the foot is present in a graffito discovered 6000 years ago in Valcamonica. There is a map of the reflex points, that is to say, the points of the feet attached to certain parts of our body, on which it is possible to exert pressure in order to achieve beneficial effects. For example, the toes reflect the head, the plant reflects the chest, the arch is related to the digestive organs and so on.

The points that, in general, can help in solving or alleviating sleep disturbances are those reflecting the pineal and the adrenal gland. The function of the pineal gland (or epiphysis) is to regulate the production of melatonin, a hormone that, along with serotonin, regulates the circadian and seasonal rhythms: their continuous daily and night fluctuation regulates the sleep-wake rhythm. The adrenal gland, instead, is a gland that contributes to the production of various hormones that regulate the activity of the heart and the blood circulation, respiration, the muscles and the nerve system. In particular the production of adrenaline and noradrenaline. The pituitary hormone ACTH affects the hormones produced by the adrenal gland, and are connected to the reactivity to stimuli considered stressful, whether they are physical, emotional or mental. Now that you are aware of these points, with some movements and the right pressure you can even implement a mini sitting yourself before going to sleep. In this way, the stress will be released gently and the possibility of sleep will increase consequently. The massage has always been the best relaxing technique and is the best blessing you can give yourself!