Shiatsu - the art of meaningful touch
At its heart, Shiatsu is the art of meaningful touch - the therapeutic conversation happens through attentive, respectful, listening, empathetic touch. This means that there is something inherently simple, direct and truthful about the interaction. The style of touch in Shiatsu is a mix of solid/strong, dynamic, and light/gentle. It involves pressing, holding, movement, and acupressure points.
The distinctiveness of Shiatsu also comes from it being a body-work that impacts us on different levels - the physical, emotional and energetic - and it brings these three aspects into interrelation with each other.
Shiatsu can help with:
- Pain, tension, discomfort
- Feeling lost, disconnected, empty, low
- Emotional overwhelm, such as with sadness, shame, anger, agitation, and frustration.
- Anxiety, feeling scattered, over-activity, not being able to stop doing or rest
- Sleeping challenges
- Digestion issues
Shiatsu may be useful if you are interested in:
- Addressing the bigger picture of tension, pain and discomfort, giving the chance for more ease and flow in your body over the long-term.
- Getting more into your body, having a better sense of it, especially if you experience an over-active mind or struggle to relax.
- Developing a sense of how you are feeling and what is happening emotionally in a way that doesn’t rely on talking and analysis.
- Developing self-insights into the interconnection between body experience and emotional experience. For example, how physical symptoms may be related to stress or anxiety, or how trauma may have impacted you.
- An option for gentle, rejuvenating body work, for example if you are fatigued, or have delicate or sensitive areas of the body.
What informs my practice
My guiding principle is that with the right support, your resources of inner-knowing, body intelligence, and innate capacity to heal will give potential for physical symptoms to improve, and enable the emergence of new patterns of feeling and ways of being. My approach emphasises facilitating your own curiosity, awareness and insight into the felt sense of your body, your emotional experience, and how the two interweave and affect each other.
My hope is that Shiatsu therapy opens space for the fabric of our body to reshape, energy to move, new feeling to emerge, emotions to find expression, and forgotten parts to flourish.
