Frequently Asked Questions

You will need a device with an internet connection and a PDF reader (which can be downloaded here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/). Because the videos are HD, for optimal streaming we recommend watching the lessons primarily on a device with a fast, stable connection, and using smaller (cellular) devices with slower download speeds for training or other short viewing needs.

Footwork is available on all desktops (Mac and PC), laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. For the best user experience, it is highly recommended to take the course on a 13-inch screen or larger, while using a smaller device to practice while watching.

You can log in to Footwork from any internet-connected computer or device. However, you can only be logged in to one device / computer at a time.

The videos are provided through an online streaming player, which means you can watch the videos as often as you want using your browser.

You can pay using the secure payment system of Paypal, either with a Paypal account or with a credit card using the Paypal system (no registration with Paypal is required). Footwork chose Paypal for the maximum level of security it offers (SSL).

Body Attention is the natural experience of the body being aware of itself and its surroundings. It is the awareness of a live body in reality, attentive to the way it works and functions. It is a type of physical awareness that seems natural for us when we see it in animals, but that we are usually disconnected from because we are occupied in our minds. Both client and practitioner learn this state of attention. Body attention is necessary to effectively allow the body to do its work and achieve wellness.

The Map of Efforts is the way the practitioner maps out the excess effort and energy deficiency seen and felt in a client’s feet. This usually shows a pattern of how a person distributes his or her attention and energy in the body. It is then used to focus various Forms of Touch and instructions on those imbalanced areas to teach the client to break free of their pattern. Improvement in the pattern will show itself in the body, and also as a change in the Map of Efforts. The map is also designed to follow changes and improvement, and to adapt the practitioner’s work to the individual in the present moment.

Forms of Touch are a way to communicate with your client’s body. They are used to support the body’s struggle to rebalance the excess of effort and deficiency of attention in certain areas. During the course you learn 20 Forms of Touch, using movement and pressure, each designed to be applied to specific parts of the foot. You use these Forms of Touch to speak with the client’s body through their feet: these different ways of touching the feet are like individualized words that, combined, give a personalized message to the body in the only language it understands and can work with, the language of physical experience.

The term is used throughout our course in reference to the client’s experience during a session on the working table. It refers to the body’s natural ability to heal and rebalance itself. This ability is being focused on and intensified through the combination of touch and verbal guidance to facilitate the unification of the body and mind. Letting the body work is the main goal of the Footwork technique and is what renders it able to provide effective, long-lasting results.

As the feet are the body’s foundation, on which a person stands, moves, rests, and is in effect ‘built’, they indicate patterns of imbalance in the body. When you learn to recognize these, you can affect the whole body (the ‘building’) through your touch on the feet (the ‘foundation’), adapting your touch and instructions very accurately to the real needs of an individual body. Reaching the entire body through this small, workable area enables you to be more focused and efficient. In addition, because the feet are so far from the head and normally also far from our attention, touching them can greatly help bring a person’s attention into their body, allowing the mind to become quieter and less important. Most people enjoy being touched on their feet as well, which increases the overall effect of relaxation.

The Footwork technique is based on the client gaining body attention as a necessary means to get well. A person achieves this attention when their mind is focused on their physical experience. By combining touch and instructions during the session, Footwork teaches clients to unify mind and body, thus bringing the person’s full attention to the moment and to what they can learn. To make the practice effective and beneficial for the practitioners, the training in Footwork aims to achieve the same for the practitioner.

The Footwork technique is effective and gives long-lasting results because it empowers a natural function. Part of the body’s ability to be alive lies in its ability to continually rebalance, repair, heal, and recover. This technique teaches you to become very accurate in your touch and give clear verbal guidance, both of which allow you to tailor your sessions precisely towards meeting the goals of each client. You teach the person to break free of a physical pattern that continuously reduces their wellbeing. While practicing the technique you learn how to raise your own level of physical attention, so that you can teach the body of your client with your whole body. You are not just using a technique; you learn to teach with all that you are, body-to-body. And you learn to give your client’s body the time, energy, and attention to focus on what bothers it and rebalance itself. The combination of having a more engaged client, their energy, breathing, relaxation, and silence allows the body to work far more intensely on its recuperation than in any other state.

In a Footwork session the client has an experience of deep silence and peace, of letting go – through the thorough relaxation they accomplish – of various efforts in their body. This is combined with the pleasure of breathing fully and discovering their own capacity to make a difference in their condition and improve their wellbeing. It is a rich, lively experience to have the feeling that “my body is working for me” and, with time, the body’s vitality becomes tangible and invigorating. Since a practitioner using Footwork learns to elicit and use their client’s own motivation to be more well, clients not only feel that the results are their achievement but they also naturally start implementing what they learned in the sessions in their lives, enabling them to maintain the changes achieved in sessions over the long term. Needless to say, this is a very satisfying process for clients and practitioners.

Footwork is practical and immediately applicable. It allows you to affect a broad range of conditions and wide spectrum of people and can be integrated into many different modalities. It is based on a partnership with your client, which stems from their participation and motivation to learn. This unique experience of developing a partnership generates very satisfying and pleasurable work for both client and practitioner. Footwork is also unique in:

• its way of assessing each client’s individual condition through the mapping of effort as it appears in the feet
• the way the Forms of Touch are applied
• the body attention practitioners learn and use while working
• the act of teaching clients, rather than treating them, as well as the structured nature of the sessions
• the way it utilizes the power of the body to heal itself, involving the body and mind together in letting the body do its natural work
• inviting clients to engage in their own learning and wellbeing, allowing them to put what they learn into practice in their daily lives and giving them the ability to maintain their results over the long term

Footwork can help address a wide range of complaints. Because the technique is focused on the benefits of changing the client’s underlying state of being – elevating the client’s body attention, unifying their mind and body, guiding their body to relax – the body can use more of its huge innate ability to work, heal, recover and regenerate, when dealing with whatever condition bothers it. Our bodies know to direct energy and attention where the problems are, when we let them, and Footwork teaches you how to do that. In addition, Footwork can be advantageous when you are faced with chronic symptoms, conditions, or areas of the body, which you cannot work on directly, as well as when the modality you are using is primarily not touch-based, but you want a way to include the body in your practice.

The Footwork technique focuses on teaching people to break free of patterns of effort that they maintain in their bodies. These patterns frequently result in experiences and symptoms involving chronic pain, which in many cases do not yield a medical diagnosis relating to a curable disease – yet greatly reduce the person’s quality of life. Since we usually respond to pain with contraction, trying not to feel it, cutting off our attention from the painful area, we tend only to add to the effort around it. In a Footwork process the client learns to reduce such effort, giving the body the best conditions to experience the pain without contracting, to work with it, and rebalance. If you are a professional working with chronic pain, you will find here an extremely effective way to teach people how to respond differently to pain and reduce it by expanding their breathing, relaxing, and creating silence, allowing their body to devote its resources to healing.

Anyone in the health and wellness professions, practicing through touch, verbal therapy, teaching or coaching, naturopathy and medicine, physical training, energy work, homeopathy or kinesiology, or related forms of holistic treatment, could benefit from implementing parts or the whole of the Footwork technique in their practice.

The goal of Footwork is to empower therapists, practitioners, and other professionals with the concepts that it is based on. Involving the client, teaching, assessment through the feet, the power of breathing, relaxation, silence, and most importantly achieving body attention and letting the body do its natural work, are all examples of concepts that can be easily applied to other modalities. In addition, all the elements that are taught in order to optimize the results of a Footwork process can be implemented while practicing any other technique.

Footwork achieves its results by involving both the client’s body and mind in the process, unifying them and directing them towards the same goal: the client’s improved wellbeing. The working process you embark on with any given client can become more efficient because you gain tools to map – individually and accurately – each client’s patterns of obstructing their own wellbeing. Footwork teaches you to follow your client’s learning and adapt to it in the moment. It is a whole-body learning, which makes it intense and long-lasting. Since clients get the chance to commit their full power to the session (including their attention, will, concentration, physicality, and everything you could describe as “body intelligence”) any process you are already in will be encouraged and the results you seek will be reinforced.

Footwork introduces a way of working with a person’s patterns of excess effort and energy deficiency, which are created in the body and appear in the feet. The technique aims to teach clients and to involve their body attention in the process of breaking free of such patterns, recovering, and becoming more well. In this, and more, Footwork differs from normal reflexology. As a reflexologist you stand to gain a whole new way of empowering body awareness and encouraging the client’s healing through the feet.

Footwork does not employ a chart, but rather, examines physical effort as it is indicated in the feet. Rather than focusing on organs or looking for physiological disturbances, the practitioner maps excess and deficiency in the amount of energy invested in various areas of the body. The outcome is a personalized map of efforts, focused on imbalances perceived in the feet in correlation to the client’s experience.

Footwork is intended to be a teaching technique complementary to the one you already practice. Through its concepts and practice it aims to enhance the results you already want to achieve. When practicing Footwork, in part or as a full technique, apply and follow the professional guidelines of the modalities you are trained and certified to work with, regarding the relevant times to approach a condition. If in doubt, ask your client to consult with his medical doctor.

To be able to practice and learn the full technique you will need 30-60 hours, depending on the amount of time you dedicate to the suggested training. It is recommended to watch the videos multiple times to deepen your understanding, as you will see new elements each time you watch them. The more proficient you become in applying the technique, the more profoundly you will be able to grasp its concepts and how to implement them in your work.

Practice is essential for gaining mastery. In order to develop your knowledge and skill as a Footwork practitioner, you can:

• cultivate opportunities to explore and train the new material
• take note of the teacher’s training instructions and recommendations at the end of each video as well as those in the lesson’s workbook
• watch the lessons also sometimes while you give practice sessions (for example on a mobile device)
• work with people who can give you feedback, where you can train the quality and precision of your touch, giving instructions, and asking about your clients’ experiences and the sessions’ results
• practice with colleagues in your or related fields, with your current clients, and when possible with someone who is taking the course with you – so that you can also experience being a client
• implement concepts of Footwork in your current field of practice

Footwork is aimed for professionals in the field of health and wellness. As regulations regarding each type of practice differ from one country to another, and also from state to state in the United States, it is your responsibility to verify and comply with the corresponding laws and standards in your country allowing you to practice.

No such knowledge or experience is required.

To earn the Certificate of Completion you must complete a 70-question, multiple-choice online test, with a score of 80% or above.

Once you have marked all five lessons as “completed,” you will have the option to start the test.

You can take the test as many times as you need in order to pass.

It will be sent to you by email when you have passed the test with a score of at least 80%.

The book is recommended for deepening your understanding of the concepts on which Footwork is based, but is not required for passing the test.