Common steps and sub-activities
Palm stimulation using combs
You need two combs of about 4 inches in length in metal that you can hold. The combs should be altered slightly so that their ends are rough – if you file a few 'teeth' on the ends this is perfect. The aim is to make the edge as rough as the teeth and provide stimulation for the thumbs.
Take a comb in each hand. With the teeth in the joints of the fingers and the spine in the palm press the comb hard. Put your thumbs on the rough ends and press hard here too. Make sure every joint is pressed and make sure the pressure is as hard as you can stand.
Hold the pressure for at least ten minutes and then relax and breathe deeply and slowly for a few minutes. Then repeat the same procedure – pressure for ten minutes then relaxation and steady breathing.
Zone therapy – Dr William Fitzgerald
All this may sound foolish in the extreme. Yet there are many other things equally foolish in the practise of medicine. And if zone analgesia will do what we claim for it, it may well be taken gently by the hand, lifted out of the foolish class and placed among the ultra sensible procedures – where by right it belongs....
When we grasp the arm of a dental chair, and hang on like grim death, we are unconsciously going through the motions that, if continued long enough, would have made our trial comparatively painless. The only fault in our preparation for the ordeal was that we should have started our pressure grip three or four minutes earlier. But our intentions were good.
When automatically we clench our fists in furious anger, we are relieving our terrific nervous excitation and thereby perhaps preventing the bursting of a blood vessel. When we clasp the hands of one sorely stricken and in the throes of despair, we are, in addition to supplying him with comforting magnetism and physical solace, producing a distinctly analgesic and quieting effect upon his entire nervous system.
And when we clasp our hands or press the fingers tightly together in supplication, we are ministering to over wrought nerves, and thereby perhaps bringing ourselves into closer harmony with the great Cosmic Force that envelops us all in a mantle of kindness and love.