Healing-Shiatsu Touch Principle
"The art of witnessing through touch and breath"
1.Basic principles
a) Attitude of
acceptance and loving kindness
b) Relaxation and letting-go of muscular tensions so Ki can flow
c) The attention on the underside of the body
d) The attention on the out-breath
e) Where attention is, energy flows
f) Allowing the energy to come to you
g) To visualize and feel the cushion of Ki
h) To lean and extend attention/ Ki through the cushion of Ki at
90° angle into the body, sometimes 1 to 3m deep
i) Stillness in movement and continuity in movement and attention
j) Three questions:
2 Does the work echo?
3 Has the pressure lasted long enough?
2. The practitioner
Healing-Shiatsu
Touch asks the practitioner to cultivate an attitude of Acceptance
and Loving Kindness so that the condition of the client is received
as it is and is also felt as it is, with no judgement or personal
distortions.
For this the practitioner needs to develop an awareness of who they are, physically and mentally so as not to distort what is or to impose their own views onto the client's condition. The tools to ensure that this becomes a reality and not a mere wish are:
a) Awareness of posture, centering and relaxation of the muscles so the work is done through Ki and not through muscular tension, strength or will power.
b) Awareness of the breathing patterns. The breath needs to deepen and the practice of letting-go on the outbreath whilst giving shiatsu is vital so that Ki can flow.
c) Awareness of mental attitudes. The attention is focused on experiencing and feeling in a direct and immediate way through the touch, rather than through thinking and intellectualising what one is receiving or doing. Cultivating stillness of body and mind so that thoughts, ideas, worries do not obstruct the flow of Ki of the practitioner.
3. Diagnosis
What is our response
to life events and how quickly do we come back to
balance? This is what the practitioner needs to assess in each session
and
over time.
a) Kyo/Jitsu manifestations in the Body-Mind are not seen as imbalances but as our response to life situations. Kyo/Jitsu show how we attempt to find balance in the ever changing flow of life.
b) Kyo/Jitsu become an imbalance when we cannot let go of our response once the event has passed. Kyo/Jitsu then become a stagnation, fixation, a holding, a stopping of the ever moving flow of responses needed to survive well. It is like keeping on the raincoat though the rain has stopped and furthermore forgetting that we still are wearing the raincoat regardless of the weather condition!
4. Touch
Where
attention is, energy flows.
Energy/Ki is alway transient, never static. The tsubo/meridian belong to
the realm of the body and so are not linear or two-dimensional. Their true
depth is three-dimensional rather than on the surface only of the body.
Therefore to touch with Ki the practitioner needs:
a) To approach the client with the attention of the backward circle, the underside of the body and on the outbreath.
b) To visualize/imagine and feel the cushion of Ki.
c) To lean and to extend the attention through the cushion of Ki at 90° angle and into the body sometimes even 1 to 3cm deep.
d) To practice stillness in movement and continuity in movement and in attention.
e) To ask three questions:
1 How does it feel?
2 Does it echo?
3 Has the pressure lasted long enough?
Articles by Sonia
Basic Healing-Shiatsu Touch principles
Mindfulness Meditation in Shiatsu
“The
Breath of Awareness”
The Cosmological Cycle
The Cosmological Cycle : yin and yang
Motherhand
Mutterhand (in German)
Sonia Moriceau interviewed by Pat O'Grady
Sonia Moriceau
Im Gespräch mit Pat O’Grady
