27 September 2026. This is a substantive developmental revision for Ruth's review. All first-person prose remains proposed authorial language, not an approved transcript.

Help a curious reader understand and describe an experience of touch, ask useful questions, and judge explanations without giving up their own account of what happened. The primary reader is someone considering reflexology or reflecting on an appointment. Practitioners are the secondary audience.

Proposed subtitle: Touch, Attention, and the Person Behind the Feet. It fits the material better than a promise of a new physiological explanation.

• Introduction rewritten: speaks directly to the curious, questioning recipient; states a specific reader promise and a question to carry through the book.
• Chapter 1 rewritten and retitled “Does It Have to Hurt to Matter?”: starts with the sourced objection to force, develops a human conflict, and gives the recipient a role in understanding the session. The earlier title implied a discovery scene that the sources did not supply.
• Chapters 5 and 6 tightened: remove drafting-process language, reduce the repeated force quotation, and restore the reader's perspective.
• Chapter 7 substantially rewritten: makes each Wave phase intelligible, separates the observer from the interpretation, and adds an explicitly invented counterexample. It now asks what would make the framework informative or wrong.
• Chapter 8 substantially rewritten: four imagined situations use dialogue and contrasting expectations. The accounts remain visibly fictional.
• Chapter 10 substantially rewritten: follows an imagined newcomer through booking, arrival, contact, adjustment and ending, with usable questions and phrases.
• Chapter 11 condensed and retitled “Scalp Scratching: A Different Kind of Attention”: keeps the emerging adjacent service, ASMR evidence limits and practical distinctions, while giving it a clearer role in the central argument. It does not establish a new branch of reflexology.
• Chapter 13 opening aligned: returns to the introduction's question about experience and explanation.
• Research and editorial materials added: a full developmental assessment, dated reader/market evidence, four comparable books, a limited review sample and a focused interview guide.
• Original preserved: the complete earlier draft remains available for comparison. Chapters 2–4, 9, 12 and the source notes were read and retained in this pass; chapter-specific next actions are recorded in the editorial assessment.

These connections are editorial interpretations of the dated research, not proven reasons people will buy this book. Sources and limits are in Reader and market research.

The largest remaining gap is firsthand material. A real remembered encounter, a mistake or disagreement, and Ruth's natural spoken explanation will add more distinction than further AI expansion. The interview guide makes that next step concrete. The new web edition allows answers and comments beside each section.

The Wave remains a proposal. Its phase definitions, resemblance to other practices and originality need investigation. Scalp-scratching service details and Ruth's experience with it need confirmation. Biography, byline, genuine client permissions, a fuller clinical evidence review and final copyediting remain publication work.

This edition is ready for Ruth's editorial review. It is not a publication-ready medical or practitioner manual.