Shiatsu
Shiatsu is a traditional body/mind therapy developed in Japan. Through touch, using pressure, holding, rotations, stretches… Shiatsu meets and supports the body’s wisdom and resources for wellness.
Shiatsu is rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine, working with points and meridians similarly used in Acupuncture. Zen Shiatsu extends that heritage, combining the eastern elemental approach of our human nature with western physiology and psychology yet all the while and most importantly asking the practitioner to draw in the intuitive wisdom of Zen, keeping the encounter and experience in the now, open to its depth of mystery, possibilities and change.
Receiving Shiatsu is a powerful experience. It can be deeply relaxing and nourishing, as also very positively challenging. It will support you in times of wellness and lay the grounds for healing in times of stress and illness, relieving tension, improving vitality, strengthening the body.
Shiatsu will help with a wide range of physical pains and conditions (such as Arthritis, bad back, recovery from injury, stress and tension, digestive problems…), and be very effective with emotional pain, anxiety, depression, times of crisis and trauma, grief or anger.. It offers great support to women hormonal cycles, the journey through conception, pregnancy, birthing and postnatal care.
Shiatsu reaches deep into the depth of our being. It touches hidden places, witnesses and honours the unmet needs of body and psyche, thus inviting us back to wholeness.
Guided through touch and Body Centred Dialogue, we learn to listen to the language of pain and discomfort. Perceiving what is offered as potential gateways to real transformation, deeper knowing and seeds of meaningful direction to our life.
Finally in Shiatsu we receive the beauty and warmth of simple human touch. We let ourselves be touched. We let someone deeply touch our life, exploring the reality of that experience too.
A Shiatsu session takes place on a comfortable futon and will generally last up to an hour. You remain fully clothed as it is performed through loose clothing.
Body Centred Dialogue is an important part of shiatsu
Offering you space, before we move into bodywork, to arrive in yourself.
We often are out of touch with how we actually feel at any given moment, unaware of the layers of strategies we rely on to navigate the now. Coming into congruence with sensations underneath, a place of authentic presence, often bring a sense of relief, an opening, supporting you to receive what you might need once on the mat.
As far or as little as you feel comfortable to, I will guide you to listen in to the now, drop your attention inwards, into the body and the felt sensations. Our body is a library of our experiences through life. Learning to listen to its language is an important step towards reclaiming solid ground to move through life. Witnessing the habitual patterns held in the fabric of our being, we grow in awareness, learn to move towards new possibilities, and allow the dawn of different choices.
Body centred Dialogue is an important technique part of mindfulness practice, also skillfully explored in Keith Philips’ ‘Transformational Dialogue” postgraduate courses.