My clients often ask me what they could be doing at home to improve their lymphatic flow. To help guide them, I often give them a little homework card and a chart of Chapman's Neurolymphatic Reflex Points to refer back to with things I found during their session with me.
These points have a very interesting history. Discovered over 100 years ago by an osteopath Frank Chapman. They are smooth, palpable physiological points deep within the fascia, found in the same locations on every human body. This means that anyone can find and feel them, without any special training and without using your imagination.
All you need to do is find these points on your body using these charts and apply pressure to them with your thumbs or knuckles, maybe in circular movements, while taking deep breaths until the tenderness goes down. If the points don't hurt and are not easily palpable, they are not active, meaning that those areas are clear and flowing.
"Chapman points are now defined as organ-specific gangliform contractions associated with underlying visceral dysfunction." This is a quote from PubMed, the National Library of Medicine. Copyright © 2023, StatPearls Publishing LLC. Put plainly, these points are a contracted mass of nerve tissue located outside the spine and brain, which react to indicate dysfunction in a particular area or organ.
What a wonderful self-care or self-help tool! This may be why for many years, traditional medicine tried to suppress this knowledge, making it illegal to teach. Lucky for us, the cat is out of the bag now.
They are safe to work on even when you are sick, unlike lymphatic drainage, which you should not receive while sick.
I first learned about these points this past January while I was taking an online class on Energy Medicine by Donna Eden.
However, for many years now, while I worked on my clients I discovered that there were palpable points around their ribs that reacted when that area had stagnant or sluggish lymphatic flow. I began working on them with tuning forks if they were too tender to work on with my hands. Later, I would hold these points while guiding my clients to relax their bodies and breathe deeply into the area until the sensation dropped. I thought they were just another trigger point and always found it helpful to work on and address them.
I didn't know that they had a physiological foundation and that it was directly connected to our lymph system until learning about them through Donna Eden. This is why I think everyone should have this information to help themselves and their bodies come back into balance, and flush out toxins to improve their health.
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