Method
How This Chart Was Built
1. Attribution instead of assertion
Reflexology has no standard, so "this spot is the liver" is not a statement anyone can support. Every record therefore carries a tradition field and an agreement field. Where schools diverge, the record stores each alternative placement and the page shows them side by side.
2. The ear is different
Auricular point naming was standardised — by a WHO working group and by the Chinese national standard GB/T 13734. Ear records can therefore be tied to an actual standard, and only ear records are allowed to use the standardised value. The validator rejects that value anywhere else.
3. Validation that can fail the build
- Every record must carry at least one source.
- Coordinates must be inside the rendered image (0–1 on both axes).
- A record marked
disputedmust list at least one alternative placement — claiming a dispute without documenting it is treated as an error. standardisedis rejected outside the ear.- Duplicate ids, missing names, missing locations and empty traditional-use text all fail the build.
4. Our own artwork
The foot, hand and ear images are rendered in Blender from the MakeHuman/MPFB base mesh, released under CC0. No chart artwork from books, sites or apps is reused. Camera orientation is fixed explicitly for every view, and the render parameters are stored beside the images so a coordinate can never drift silently from the picture it belongs to.
5. What we refuse to do
- No medical or therapeutic claims. Reflexology is a traditional practice, not an evidence-based medical treatment. Systematic reviews have not shown it to be effective for any medical condition. These maps document what practitioners traditionally use — they are not claims about how the body works.
- No copied datasets or artwork from competitors.
- No invented citations, page numbers or ISBNs. Where a source is a book without a verified locator, the reference is kept general rather than fabricated.
- No manufactured consensus. If the schools disagree, the page says so.
Current sources
- Ann Gillanders, "The Family Guide to Reflexology" — Hand reflex chart
- Barbara and Kevin Kunz, "Complete Reflexology for Life" — Hand reflex charts, palmar and dorsal views
- Barbara and Kevin Kunz, "Reflexology: Health at Your Fingertips" — Hand reflex charts and hand sequences
- Beryl Crane, "Reflexology: The Definitive Practitioner's Manual" — Hand charts and zone-theory chapters
- Chinese foot reflex-zone charts (足部反射区) as taught in the Chinese foot-massage tradition — Standard Chinese plantar and dorsal reflex-zone chart
- Chinese hand reflex-zone charts (手部反射区) as taught in the Chinese hand-massage tradition — Standard Chinese palmar and dorsal hand reflex-zone chart
- Dwight C. Byers, "Better Health with Foot Reflexology: The Original Ingham Method" — International Institute of Reflexology charts, hand reflex chart section
- Ernst E. et al., "Reflexology: an update of a systematic review" (NCBI Bookshelf) — Evidence review, used here only for the no-therapeutic-claim framing
- Eunice D. Ingham, "Stories the Feet Can Tell Thru Reflexology" (1938) and "Stories the Feet Have Told Thru Reflexology" (1951) — Ingham original foot charts, plantar view
- GB/T 13734, Nomenclature and Location of Auricular Points (Chinese national standard) — Auricular point names and anatomical locations, by auricular subregion
- Hanne Marquardt, "Reflexotherapy of the Feet" — Foot reflex-zone chart, Marquardt lineage
- National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) five-point auricular protocol — Protocol point set: Shenmen, sympathetic, kidney, liver, lung
- Paul Nogier, "Treatise of Auriculotherapy" and later Nogier auricular charts — Nogier's French auricular map and its landmark points
- Terry Oleson, "Auriculotherapy Manual: Chinese and Western Systems of Ear Acupuncture" — Comparative tables of Chinese standard and Western (Nogier) auricular point locations
- Wikipedia, "Reflexology" — Zone-therapy framework; documents that published reflexology maps are not consistent with one another
- William H. Fitzgerald and Edwin F. Bowers, "Zone Therapy, or Relieving Pain at Home" (1917) — Original ten-zone scheme; the early zone-therapy work was applied largely to the fingers and hands
- World Health Organization, Report of the Working Group on Auricular Acupuncture Nomenclature (Lyon, 1990) — Standard anatomical nomenclature of the auricle and the standard auricular point list agreed by the WHO working group
Frequently asked questions
Where does the data come from?
Published reflexology literature and the zone-therapy framework. Nothing is copied from another site's or app's dataset. Where a placement comes from a specific lineage, the record names it.
Why is there no single 'correct' map?
Because reflexology was never standardised. Rather than invent a consensus, each record names the tradition it follows and lists competing placements.
Who drew the artwork?
We did. The foot, hand and ear images are rendered from a CC0 anatomical mesh (MakeHuman/MPFB), so no third-party chart artwork is reused.
What stops an unsourced claim getting published?
A build-time validator. If a record has no source, an out-of-range coordinate, or is marked as contested without listing an alternative placement, the site fails to build.