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Heal Body Pain with Touchology with Njideka Olatunde, PhD

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So part of getting better, there's a number of different aspects to healing and I'm really excited because today we're going to be learning about touchology from my new friend, Njideka Olatunde and let's learn a little bit about her.

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and what touch allergy is in just a minute. So Dr. Njideka Olatunde, the visionary and creative energy behind Focus on Healing Wellness Institute is an accomplished naturopath and a leading authority on the cultural integration of traditional health practices with conventional medicine for mind, body, and emotional wellness. She is an author, acclaimed thought leader, podcast host, master reflexologist, pain relief educator, and consultant

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who has helped thousands of chronic pain sufferers relieve pain first with addiction and medication-free pain relief treatment as an alternative in addressing the opioid epidemic plaguing our communities. And Njideka, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to sharing information with you and your listeners. Yeah, I am too. So, you know, for people who have chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID, oftentimes they have chronic pain. And as you know,

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chronic pain is a huge problem in our communities and in our world right now. So let's kind of start off a little bit. You have this, you've coined this phrase touchology. Can you tell us a little bit about what touchology is? Touchology is what I refer to as the science and art of using the power of touch through your hands to relieve pain and stress in the body.

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So when I think of touchology, it's about our innate ability that we have inside ourselves to use our ability to touch in a positive and therapeutic way, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And we forget about it, but that's our gifts in terms of our innate gift to be able to heal ourselves through our hands and using our hands in the form of touch.

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as the therapeutic technique. And yeah. Why do you think that we have forgotten how to do that? That we have these things that we can use in order to help to heal ourselves. Why do you think that's happened? I think that's a really good question, but I'm going to, to elaborate on that based upon the pandemic that we just came through. I mean, like, you know, we were down for what about two and a half years.

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in isolation and my unscientific study, I found that the number of people who may transition during the pandemic made it because of the lack of touch. They couldn't communicate with family members. They couldn't physically touch family members. They couldn't see family members. And these little things like this is known as touch. And I think what it is is

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how we define touch. We only think of touch as putting our hands on something and that's touch. But when I talk about touch, I'm talking about touch in ways that we have forgotten. And let me give you some examples when I say that. Say for example, you're feeling down and your energy level is real low. And then somebody just comes up to you and say, oh, you know,

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It's going to be all right. Do you know that's a healing form of touching all of a sudden? You know, your spirit start rising or someone just comes and put their hand on your shoulder and then you feel so much better or someone just says the two most powerful words in the language universally worldwide. Someone says, thank you. That's a healing touch.

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It's little small things like that, that we have just dismissed and don't give credit to as being a part of healing. And that's what I talk about with my clients in terms of get back to little basic little small things that you think are so insignificant and see that as a way to be about healing. Brilliant. Yeah, it's about

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living an intentional life. You know, it's one of those things that we talk about quite a bit in our program. Like what are the practices that we have set up throughout our day in order to be able to cultivate healing in this isolated world? So I really, I really appreciate that. So, so can you tell us a little bit about the mind, body, spirit connection in order to, to heal and especially in pain? Oh, I love that question.

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And that's a two-fold question because in my practice, I focus specifically on introducing my clients to what I call the pain-stress connection. And you don't have pain without stress, and you don't have stress without pain. But to get to the healing component of the pain-stress connection, you have to connect it with the mind.

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body and spirit connection. So all of that is the connection line that we have in terms of healing. And when I say that, to give you another example, when a person is in pain, they're going to their physician for the sole purpose of nothing but please relieve my pain. That's what they want to see their medical practitioner for, to relieve pain.

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But let's flip that and think about when you go to the store and you want to purchase something, you know exactly what it is you're going to the store to purchase and you go purchase it. So if we look at the standpoint, when I go to my doctor, I'm going there to purchase pain relief. That's what I want. So what I do with my clients, which goes back to how I opened talking about touch,

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The first form of touch is known as listening. That is the first form of touch is to listen, which means that I'm allowing my clients to talk and tell me everything there is about why they're in pain, what they're feeling, everything that's connected to the pain. Now what's happening is they are now opening up and releasing

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what's causing the pain because now, because as they're talking to me, I'm listening for the stress connection to that pain. So as they're talking and they are relieving and releasing, they're now calming down, which now I go to what you came to me for to relieve the pain with what is known as reflexology therapy, which I use to relieve the pain. Now,

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that the pain is released, I found out what the stress connection is that's connected to the pain. So now we work to put together a therapeutic program that may include chiropractic care, maybe massage. may, you need deep breathing, you may need acupuncture. You may need to even just take some rest, you know, or maybe nutrition, but it'll be something that's related to what's contributing

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to that stress that you're having that's connected with the pain, you'll be more inclined. So that's what we're talking about. That's how you combine the mind, the body, and the spirit in putting together the overall integrated, what I call the integrated approaches to a treatment plan in relieving pain and stress. Excellent. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense to me. You know, can't have stress. You can't have pain without stress.

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you know, inflammation comes from cortisol. Cortisol manages inflammation and cortisol is produced by the adrenal gland. The adrenal gland manages stress in the body. It's all connected. So that's so important. How much of pain do you think is psychological versus physical?

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To be truthful, a lot of it can be classified as psychological, more so than physical. And the reason why I say that is because most, if we go back to the pain, stress connection, whatever is causing pain, we have to look at it as something that happened outside of our body that we brought.

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inside the body and once we bring it inside the body what happens is it's going to try to find an area to release itself but if it can't it's going to go to an area that may be weak inside the body as a means of trying to come out which then turns into a physical pain in the body because that's not the normal way to release the stress.

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that now has turned into pain. And I say that to say is most people who have been in chronic pain for a long period of time have adjusted to the fact that this is my way of life and they can no longer remember what it was ever like not to be in pain. But if we go back to what was the contributing factor that

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cause this pain because the one thing we have to understand about pain, which I know that you know very well, pain does not happen overnight. It's a process. You'll get a warning and then you may say, oh, you know, I'm feeling a little bad, but I'll deal with it. And then it may not, it may subside. Then all of a sudden they'll come back a little more, a little more intense and you'll say, oh, this is feeling a little bad here. I don't know what this is.

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And then you may ignore it that time and bear with it. And then it's going to come back full force and you're going to say, oh, now I got to go to doctor because this is a, but you had a warning and you did not pay attention to it. So by not paying attention, it's now turned into a full blown, what can be classified as a diagnosed illness because we didn't deal with the warning side, which is known as

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the preventive stage. we, always say prevention is now a useless word. In the old days, we used to focus on preventive approaches to healthcare. Now it's just a word that has no meaning. But if we understand and get back to that, that puts us back into being in control. So in terms of which makes pain manageable for you who's experiencing it.

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and that's then you have to take it somewhere and try to get what we known as medication, which may work and may not work. And if it does work, it's only for a short period of time. Yeah, I definitely want to get into that. Yeah, I definitely agree. You know, when if we're not listening to those little cries for help, right, it ends up becoming a roar, you know, which is the really significant symptoms, right?

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Yeah. And I think it's interesting the point you make about prevention because our lives are so busy that we don't necessarily want to have to deal with our health unless we're forced to. And I see a lot of these people, unfortunately, who come to see me where, you know, like they their lives are so or their health is so dysfunctional or they they're in pain or they have this fatigue, whatever symptoms that they have.

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that they are, it's significantly compromising their life. And so they have to do something about it. But prevention seems to be a little bit of a luxury where if you have the time and you have done some education and you eat the right food and you exercise or you have modeling at home, which a lot of us don't have growing up, it's not something that we necessarily learn unless we have to. And your point is very well taken because we've gotten programmed to the quick fix.

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See, that's it. Everything has to be fast. And nothing happens fast. And that's what we have forgotten. There is nothing that happens fast. Everything has a process. And we have to understand, and I always tell my clients, you need to reconnect back with nature. Start spending time looking at nature. What do we have? Four seasons. And it's a process. It does not all of a sudden, okay, day is spring, okay, tomorrow's winter.

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It doesn't happen like that. And we have to like, just step back and take a moment to look at the things in front. We may not have the education, we may not have all of the tools, but just look at the basic things that are in front of us and look at the process. And when we start looking at the process and connecting with the process and applying it,

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to our everyday lives, that can be our first step to moving into prevention. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the pressures of society make it really hard to take those small moments to go for walks, to pay attention to the leaves that are falling. You right now we've got fruit trees in our backyard and, you know, it's really beautiful, but I have to take the time to appreciate it and to go out and to pick the fruit.

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And when society says that I'm supposed to be working 40 to 60 hours a week, and then the rest of the time is also responsibilities, it's not work responsibilities, but it's personal responsibilities and taking care of a family, right? It becomes very hard to pay attention to the seasons and really be in touch with nature, right? And to support that, you think of the number one reason that people go to work. They don't go to work because it's a job they love to do.

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They go to work for one reason, and that's health benefits. That's the only reason people go to work. So if that's why I'm going to work, how can I feel good about myself when I'm going to work just to make sure I got the finances available to take care of me if I get sick because I'm operating in the quick fix? That's the whole scenario. And we have to...

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The other thing that I tell everybody, especially adults, we all live in what I call a box. Adults live in a box and it's a closed box. And it's a box that make us think that life is so serious, that we think everything is so serious when it's not. We need to be able.

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to get back to letting that little girl and little boy inside of us come out and play. And that will relieve some of this stress that we are constantly feeling because we're putting ourself in that situation because it's a mind control thing. Like you say, society says we should do this. Why? Isn't that what children always ask you when you tell them to do something? Why? And I always tell my clients, get back to that child.

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the three most powerful, the three letter powerful word in your vocabulary is ask why. And if the why answer doesn't satisfy you, that means you don't have to do it. That's great. Well, I love, I love asking why and I love to figure out what the why is beneath the why. Oftentimes, you know, we're given a why answer and if we don't believe it, oftentimes there's a why beneath the why.

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So I really appreciate that. And I think that's so important, being silly and kind of getting out of our heads and into our bodies. I like to sing and dance and I don't do it enough. It's so important. And I say like, silly. It's your time, it's your space. It doesn't matter who's looking at you. It does not matter. That's your space and time. And if being silly for a minute can make you feel good,

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Just tell everybody I'm in my healing moment right now. Exactly. And if they're judging you for being silly, yeah, you don't want them anyway. Exactly. Excellent. I thought you were going to say that the reason why we work is for money because we got to pay for stuff. Well, you don't get enough money so that so it can't be working for money. You don't get enough of it. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, it's society. OK.

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So let's talk about, so where do you see trauma playing a role in pain?

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I, when I think of trauma, I think of trauma from the standpoint that it is something that is, that has happened to you. And I look at trauma as being something that is generational. That's how I see trauma. I see trauma that's something that's been passed on. And we're slowly coming into

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trying to understand that. But when you think of trauma from that perspective, that's what affects us to what I say today, where we're looking at the need to deal more closely to mental health. Just like we have to take care of our body physically, we're going to have to start looking at taking care of our mind mentally. And that's where I see trauma coming in as it relates to our overall mental health.

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Yeah, I absolutely agree. think that looking at generational trauma is really interesting. A lot of people don't realize that there's been studies done where they traumatized, they gave a trigger to, you know, different animals. I think it was a rat model where they, they, they, they, traumatized them and then they skipped a generation where they did not give the stimulus or the to the, to the children. And then they just gave the stimulus like ringing a bell or something to the grandchildren.

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And they had the same trauma response as if they had been traumatized, right? So we have the same thing. My grandparents came over, they were fleeing Germany. They were fleeing the Holocaust, right? That's trauma. Very stressful times, right? So it's like the trauma we have, whether it's significant abuse or whether it's just trying to get our needs met with siblings and parents who are all imperfect and peers who are all imperfect. And then this generational component.

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It can play a huge role in our mental, psychological, spiritual wellness. And so I think that's why the work that you're doing is so important too, because in reflexology, there's inherently you're kind of working with these energy channels and these, know, can you talk a little bit about what reflexology is? I would love to. And it really ties into the questions you just asked as it relates to trauma, because reflexology focuses on working with

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the nervous system. And the nervous system is the pathway to the brain, which delivers the communication to all of the systems and organs in the body. And so to better explain reflexology, reflexology is the art and science of working specific nerve ending points that are found on the hands, feet, and ears that correlate to

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the various organs and systems of the body. And the best way to kind of explain that is if you ever look at a chart of the anatomy, you will see how all the nerve ends begin in your head and run straight through your body, ending in your hands, feet, and ears. So the way I like to explain it to help people get a better understanding of exactly what reflexology is, is

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Say for example, in your house, the electricity goes up. You'll automatically go down and turn on the circuit breaker and the electricity comes back on. If it doesn't come back on, then you're to have to call an electrician. They'll come in and say, OK, well, there's a wiring problem. And we're going to have to reconnect the wiring. Look at a reflexologist doing the exact same thing. We work with the wiring in the body known as the nerve endings.

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And what we're doing is we're looking for the blockages in the nerve vending that's found on the hands, feet, or ears. And what we do is we stimulate that nerve vending to open up that channel so that the energy can flow through and the brain can now deliver messages to relieve pain in the area that's in stress. So you can see a reflexologist as being the electrician of the body, the nervous system specifically. that's what...

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the concept of reflexology is and how it works. Excellent. And so are you pushing on points with your hand or do you use a particular tool to stimulate these points? Here we go back again to the power touch. What you use is these two fingers here, your thumb. And what you do with your thumb is, if you can kind of see it, it's like a walking technique. You bend your thumb. And what we do is like we'll walk up.

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the nerve ending of the feet and the hands. So where there's a specific nerve ending, that's what we're doing. And inside that nerve ending, if there's pain or stress, you may sometimes be able to feel what we call crystals. And we call them as the crystals are the blockages that we look for in terms of relieving that so that it can be moved out and released in the normal channels of elimination. And that's how the energy is able to flow freely through the body.

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And are these points sensitive? Like if you touch them, they're kind of sensitive? It's not so much that they are sensitive. A better way for me to kind of explain it, because when you think about that, you think about it along the lines of acupuncture and acupressure. you go, we don't operate like that in terms of going to a specific point on his.

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what it is and let me, let me, can give you kind of, obviously you can kind of see it. I'll use the hands. When you look at your fingers, all of the nerve endings to your head are in your fingers and where the fingers are connected to the base, that's the neck. So in other words, what we do is it's the mapping of the whole body that's placed inside the hands and in the feet. So where you have the base of your fingers here, this is where the neck nerve endings to the neck are found. When you come under here, which is under,

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This area right here is your chest area. So all of the nerve endings to the chest are found here. Then you come under here, this is the abdominal and that's where you find, then you move down here. This is where you'll find the eliminated. So what it is is under the fingers, which is known as what we call zones. That's how we're able to find. So say for example, if I wanted to find the shoulder,

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nerve ending on the hands. This right here is zone number one and this is zone number two. So the shoulder is between zone number one on zone number two where zone number two starts. And the reason for that because this is the spine. The spine is in zone number one and so your shoulder would be here going across your hand this way. And so

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What we would do is if there was say was a back problem, you would always focus on the spine and walk the spine nerve ending. And then if it's the neck and shoulder, you'd walk the neck area here. And if you're going to do the shoulder, you'd walk the shoulder area here. So that's what we do in terms of, so you deal with the whole area. It's you don't break it up in bits and pieces, you deal with that whole area. And that's how you would work.

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Say for example, for a back problem or neck or shoulder problem. Excellent. And do you, would you do that same body part that was in pain also on the ear and then also on the feet? Or is it good enough to do just on the hands? Ah, now that's a good question because the hands, you usually do the hands to prepare the body.

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to receive the reflexology session because we always use our hands. So our hands like, know, have that, what do you call that, sturdiness to it because you're using it all the time. But the relief comes with the feet because the areas, the area is small on the hands and with the feet, you have a larger base. Although it's mapped the same way, but the area is larger. So.

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the re you start off with the hands to prepare the body and then you go to the feet to do the relief the body. Now the ears are usually done like if it's like when you say like a crisis, you know, you go, you don't go to ears for something that you need to get to really fast from the standpoint because it's excruciating pain. That's where you will go because the ear nerves

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are closest to the brain in terms of doing the relief. So that's where you would use the ears. Very nice. Thanks for explaining that. And so and how do you use this in the context of somebody who has chronic pain? So, you know, they're either going for pain medication or they're thinking about it or how does this fit in? Usually what you would do, like I say, you you have your initial orientation to get a person started.

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And then you would really put them on. I usually put a person on a series, what I call a five sessions, five session series. And that is to assess the whole body. Because see, when you're doing reflexology, although they may be experiencing chronic pain in a specific area of the body, in reflexology, we work the whole body, every session, from head to toe, not just the area that's in chronic pain.

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because the area in chronic pain has what we call referral areas. That's why you do the whole body because even though someone may have back pain, I need to also look at where on the back is the pain. Is it the upper back, middle back, or lower back? In that area, there's also some connections because we're talking about the area of the body.

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Usually if you're talking about back pain, could we also be dealing with something going on in the kidneys or in the liver? See, all of that can tie in. So when you do the whole body, you have that assessment in terms of moving a person to get to the normal channels of elimination, which is releasing the toxins and the impurities that's the contributor to the inflammation that's causing the pain and discomfort in the body.

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So I would imagine people really need to be drinking a lot of water after their sessions, is that right? Most definitely. Definitely. It is a must. Water is crucial. It's very important because that's the body's main flusher of toxins and impurities. And that's why we have to understand the importance of water in the healing process because water is also a healing tool. Right.

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And this isn't woo-woo medicine. There's a lot of research behind this, correct? Reflexology is over 5,000 plus years old. And what folks may not know is reflexology is older than massage. Massage came out of reflexology. And it's not anything that is woo-woo from the standpoint because

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Reflexology originally started, although I can't do it today, but it originally started as the diagnostic tool. That's what reflexology was originally, how illnesses were diagnosed through reflexology. That was the first form of diagnosis using reflexology. Interesting. How did they do that? Just like when I said the example in terms of where you felt.

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a crystal in the nerve would be able to tell what's going on. And from there, you're able to put together your treatment plan based upon what's happening in the body and connecting that stress area with the body system and the body organs for a diagnosis. That's how it was done. And that goes way back because it goes back because the original drawings are in the tunes of the Egyptian.

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the Egyptian pharaohs had the drawings of how they use reflexology. And that's where you got the first, I guess we say our hands-on information about the use of reflexology way back when. Fascinating. So how do you work with people just in person or are you also doing things online where you're guiding them through doing this at home? I have now moved to virtual.

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And the reason why is because I wrote the book Reflexology Today, A Family Affair. And inside that book, it shows you how you can find basic reflexology techniques for particular health problems. And so my whole focus on is what people don't realize is that when one member of the family is ill,

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it affects the whole family. And that goes back to this whole quick fix thing because the whole family needs to be involved in the healing process. So the reason why I do virtually is because I work with families and a family member who has a particular health problem. I work with the family and showing them the reflexology.

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tools that they can use in their hands on their family members feet and hands. And I also show them how to be about bringing the family back together in what we call reflexology family night. How to like you know everybody sit in a circle and grab a hand or foot and you start doing reflexology. It's about reconnecting. It's about communicating to each other using the power of touch.

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So that's like, you know, how I do. like, I'm really enjoying that because I spend a lot of time teaching reflexology and teaching practitioners in particular how to use reflexology. So now I'm turning that around to teaching families how to use reflexology as the first line of defense in emergency pain relief. That's what I'm focused on because

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Instead of going for the medication to numb the nervous system, use reflexology. So that way you can strengthen the nervous system and the other parts of the body defense system can be in place to work with you in relieving the pain and finding out what it is that we need treatment wise to relieve the stress and pain that you are experiencing. I love that on so many levels. It allows for more touch.

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more connection and then obviously the therapeutic, the other therapeutic benefits. is wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got your website here. So it looks like is focus on healing.com. And so we'll drop that below and then we'll also put a link there for the speaker feedback and that gives people a free gift. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes. It's, it's, call this in the African tradition.

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You never come to somebody's home without bringing a gift. so for the, for honoring the, in honoring you inviting me into your home and sharing with your family members, your listeners, I bring the gift of a chart of the various medication free alternatives that are available that you can use in terms of relieving pain without medication. And so that's available in the link and the link is

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touchologyreflexology.com as well as like, you know, the speaker hub connect. Okay, great. Yeah. And it asks you to rank how, um, how the talk was today. And then it provides the, uh, the document, correct? Yes, that is correct. And the other thing I encourage your listeners by all means go to my website, focus on healing.com and go to my contact page.

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Write me any questions or comments that you may have. I will get back to you because that's what this is all about. It's about information sharing. So if there's something that you'd like to know specifically about a medication-free, alternatives-free, relieving pain, go to my contact page, ask me the question, and I will definitely, I promise you, I will get back to you with an answer. Excellent. That's wonderful. Yeah. So we'll drop those links below. Is there any place else?

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You want people to go or is that really the best place going to your website and the contact page? And also I'm available on LinkedIn as well as I'm available on Instagram. And it's called evolving underscore butterfly. Nice. Dot com on Instagram. So those two places you can connect with me as well. Wonderful. Well.

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And Jadica, thank you so much for joining me here today. It was wonderful to learn from you and to connect with you. I thank you so much for having me. And in my closing words, I share with everybody, understand that it is the power of touch that heals all. And once you remember that, you're on the path to health and wellness the way you want.

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So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass where I go deep into our four step process that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally. After you watch that video, if you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right. Thanks so much. I'll see you over there.

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I hope you learned something on today's podcast. If you did, please share it with your friends and family and leave us a five-star review on iTunes. It's really helpful for getting this information out to more people who desperately need it. Sharing all the experts I know and love and the powerful tips I have is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Thanks for being part of my community. Just a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only.

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and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. It is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Thanks for listening and have an amazing day.