When to use

Shiatsu deals directly with the life-force innate in all creatures.  By treating the body’s tsubo points, energy can be influenced to restore the healing balance necessary to recovery from the sickness or complaint. 

This treatment is beneficial in treating a wide range of maladies, including the relief or complete healing of muscular hypertonia (acute stiffness), irregularities of the nervous system, blood and gland circulatory problems and digestive distress.

When chemotherapy is prescribed in cancer treatment, shiatsu can be very effective in allaying side effects inherent to the cure.  This is also true in post-operative regeneration, rehabilitation, mobilization and acute distress. 

With the strong emphasis today on the integration of traditional and modern medical science, shiatsu assumes a position of great importance, one in which practitioners of both Eastern and Western medicine can combine forces to work together in a powerful combination of knowledge by which all will benefit.  This unity can only prove a boon to patients, practitioners and insurance providers.

The technique

There are many types of shiatsu practice.  I favor the Namikoshi approach to shiatsu, as it employs direct finger pressure to the meridian points, thus allowing the body to react directly through reflexes and eliminate, through the bladder, the toxins that have accumulated in the body.

In treatment, certain pressure points (tsubo points) will prove more sensitive than others, and this can be a sign of health.  A fully trained shiatsu therapist can distinguish between the healthy points and those requiring treatment.  Pain is an import warning signal that something is wrong and needs correcting.  When an animal is sick, for instance, he stops eating and drinking and allows his body to recover through its own self-healing powers.  Shiatsu helps the client achieve the maximum potential of these powers, a benefit available to all of us.

In shiatsu, it is necessary to treat the whole body, as the point that feels the pain is often not the point that is causing that pain.  The trained therapist can focus attention on the point or points that are causing the disturbance.