Interview with Pat O’Grady MRSS
Shiatsu Society News - Summer (2000)
Sonia Moriceau
Sonia Moriceau began training in Satipatthana, Mindfulness Meditation, in 1974 under the guidance of John Garrie Roshi. Her meditation practice led her to healing and Shiatsu. She started training in 1980 under Master Ohashi. In 1983 she founded the Healing-Shiatsu Education Centre in South Herefordshire where the practice of Mindfulness Meditation is an integral part of Shiatsu training. The Centre also facilitates Mindfulness Meditation courses and retreats.
P. It seems to me that our understanding of the terms health, ill-health and healing must be at the core of our practice. Could you say what the terms mean to you? I’m not looking for a definitive interpretation of the terms but rather those aspects which arise from your own experience and which influence your Shiatsu practice.
S. For me, the defining feature
of health is not the absence of aches and pains and disease. It’s not
that someone is healthy if they have nothing wrong with them. There are many
cases where people spend their lives up to the age of 50 or even 60 with nothing
wrong with them, but when they stop everything breaks down. Whatever has been
pushed underneath comes up to the surface. So not having an illness, or even
discomfort, in one’s life is not necessarily a measure that this is
good, this is health. For me the measure is about flexibility, the ability
to say “I can come back to centre, to a state of ease in my life”.
In that sense, healing is more to do with re-education rather than ‘treatment’ or
getting rid of something.
Ill health is when there is no change, no growth, no evolution in a person
at all. If I use the example of a recent case with a lady who is not at all
well, but through her un-wellness she is making many changes, having lots
of realisations about herself, her emotions and her lifestyle. To me, that
is healthy and, it is in that sense that I use the word evolution.
P. Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by evolution and growth. Evolution to what? Growth in what way?
S. If you think of evolution right
from before we became human beings, there has been a whole movement to lead
us to where we are now and all the time that has happened not because people
stopped growing, but because they kept searching and adapting, transforming
themselves at great discomfort. That is one of the interesting parts of so-called
health and healing. It can cause great discomfort as we adapt, grow, expand
and change and it needs to be ongoing so that down the line there will be
a human being who has many more possibilities and potential than we had, say,
a hundred years ago.
At the personal level, I would hope to walk a path that my own ancestors
didn’t walk, so that I add a little bit to that evolution. It may not
be outwardly very visible, but inwardly I am no longer acting out the same
scripts or scenarios, the conditioning given to me, or the conditions in which
I was. I have, a little bit, ‘transcended’. That to me is evolution,
therefore that to me is health.
P. So just to clarify this movement within a person, could you explain?
S. Well really we need to get
in touch with the ‘drive’ in ourselves, to transcend, you could
say, our conditioning. That is really beyond theory. It is just something
you can observe in every person and it is quite strong. It will make people
do crazy things….. Internally it is an incredible drive that you could
translate as restlessness.
We can take something simple like so called mid-life crisis. Very often
it is mishandled or mismanaged because there isn’t enough skill, but
it is basically that drive of “I want more, I want something else. It’s
not enough.” So, of course, it is often projected either on to the family
or job or environment, but the essence of it is very good. It’s, “I
want something different. How can I get that?” It is really this search.
We come back to the Kidney energy that wants something different. So we can
speak in the terms that if you don’t have good Kidney energy, you don’t
have good health.
So we come back to the whole issue of health. Illness is really when you
have lost this drive. This drive to have better conditions. Whatever that
means, and maybe people will go into it materially, but I’m looking
more at that seed inside and if it can be shaped in another direction then
you come to, really, a different form of evolution.
P. So health, ill-health you have explained. Is there anything about the word ‘healing’ that you would wish to add?
S. I think the word ‘healing’ means
to make peace with that sort of situation. If we define health as the ability
to come back to balance, health is also accepting that at times you won’t
be well, at times there will be discomfort. I find that really important because
so often clients complain of pain etc., but if you can accept it as part of
the whole picture that one needs to make friends with, that is for me part
of the healing process. Like the first Noble Truth, “There is suffering”.
There will be pain, restlessness, grief, unhappiness, but who says there shouldn’t
be! Nothing is permanent.
I think healing is having this broader view. Discomfort is okay as long
as there is this movement of growth. This “I want to go through and
in order to go through something I will be in discomfort. I will have to create
change. I will have to move the pieces around in my life.”
I find that fascinating because once we accept it that way, it’s fine.
Once we’ve accepted that the state of happiness or health is not just
having a nice house, money in the bank, good relationships, although of course
all this can help, it’s not the aim. If we accept that sometimes we
could be homeless, friendless or have a feeling of aloneness and “What
the hell am I doing?” then there will be healing. There will be movement.
So it’s a little bit like changing our picture of the fairy tale. There
is suffering, but there is a way out, but it’s not what we think it
is. Here we come back to illness which is dis-ease, which is “I want
to stop this change. I want to make things permanent. I want, for example
to say No – having a house, money in the bank and a repaid mortgage
is the ultimate happiness or the ultimate health. So I want all this energy,
this movement, this drive, to stop.”
That is the big picture for me. It’s what helps me to understand what’s
going on in my life and also to understand what’s going on in other
people’s lives. Then I can see why someone keeps holding back and holding
on, arresting this natural drive, this urge that wants to fly higher. Therefore
there are conflicts and there is disease.
P. How do you see Shiatsu assisting the healing process?
S. I don’t use many words
with my clients. I just hope to calm the restlessness and the confusion, which
is in the kyo and jitsu and the bewilderment of “How do we live?” Really,
to come to deeper and deeper levels in a person. Then they begin to get in
touch with their deeper aspirations and because I know that language, that
experience, I can pick that up so that when they say “What can I do
next?” I can offer something – literature, meditation or whatever.
Shiatsu is really planting the seed of getting in touch with our deepest
aspirations. Not just “How do I survive?” There are many levels
of giving Shiatsu or feeling Shiatsu, but for me if I can hold that view then
hopefully that will make way for the client to see that bright diamond point
(as my teacher called it), so that they can connect with that. At that moment
one gets very hungry for “I want more”.
P. You’ve probably mostly expressed your view about your role as a practitioner, but is there anything you would add?
S. Well it is something I would
put another way. When I give Shiatsu, it is giving direct experience to people
of what I have already described. Even if it is only fleeting, and it is usually
fleeting at first. A moment of deep peace can express itself with just an
out breath. The whole facial expression relaxes as if for a moment there is
no “me”, the “me” that’s troubled, restless
and confused and that is big. It’s just a moment, but it means for that
moment that you have really contacted that deep source within and that will
do its own work.
As a Shiatsu practitioner, I have to create the right conditions for that
to happen. That comes back to me as a practitioner. I must live what I am
saying, which means that I have to do that every day in my own life, in my
own personal practice. When I am ill I also have to bring that view. It is
automatic now and not a question of “Oh, I must remember”. Automatically
I think, “Nothing is permanent” etc. So I really have to be that
and from that place hopefully to inspire, but just to be there. Maybe as a
mirror that says “It’s okay to have those contradictions, but
also to have this diamond”. So my role is just to try to express that
in the way that I am and in the external conditions I provide and that means
I have a big job to do, to cultivate that for myself.
Again, as a practitioner, definitely only to speak from my experience.
If one’s experience is just of a particular aspect of all this vast “thing”,
if one can speak just from that place with sincerity, then that will touch
the person in a good way. That in itself will begin to make the changes. I
think we are all starved to hear sincere things. Not just a concept of good
ideas but someone who can say something very simple and as they say it you
feel they have lived it. So that is what I try to be in my own Shiatsu and
not go into areas that I haven’t explored or that I know very little
about. To stay within my understanding and my practice and because of my practice
I keep growing, so I am not limited in that it keeps changing.
P. When people come to you they have wide spectrum of expectations. How do you marry these with your own understanding?
S. Well definitely I’m not
trying to convince people with words. I come back to the practice of ‘Loving
Kindness’. The more I practice it the more my understanding and experience
of it changes. It is very much that others are not different from me. So if
I can see the other person as just an extension of myself and I want good
things for myself – I want to be happy, to be well, I want to take care
of this drive, I want to maybe at the end of my life think “Well, I’ve
done a few things different to my ancestors. I’ve moved on a little
bit”.
So if I see others like myself I know this is also what they want. It is
about applying Loving Kindness to their expectations. Very often people will
come at the beginning for a shoulder pain or a backache and it’s on
the surface, isn’t it? But if I also plug into the deepest aspirations
of the human being I think we then have a meeting point. Perhaps not in the
first session, but very often people will say “I know I’m coming
to you for much more than my shoulder pain”. That is not a surprise
to me. Neither is it a praise. It’s what we are all about, but at first
we are shy.
Maybe the first few sessions we deal with the so-called symptoms or presenting
conditions, but very soon there is another dimension, a layer that opens up
because you have given them a taste of a place of deeper ease. Then you start
relating to that. It’s like an echo. They’ve heard it themselves
and that is why they want to come back, even when their shoulder is better.
It is like you are talking that language or they are hearing that echo again
when they are in that environment, in that room, with that person. That is
how many meditation teachers work. Just being in their presence puts you in
touch with that echo that you are looking for which is universal. So in my
experience there is no conflict. I don’t have the view that they come
for one thing, but I have the wider view.
P. Sometimes I feel ambivalence in my Shiatsu practice because I’m pulled between working on the presenting conditions and the deeper issues and I’m not looking at the totality and relaxing with that, which makes the Shiatsu less focused and less satisfactory.
S. We really have to cultivate
this ‘bigger view’ though our own practice so that we can literally
hold all those possibilities and contradictions and within that to know we
are very limited, in some ways as practitioners, as to what we can truly do.
I really believe more in the aspect of setting the right conditions and living
what you speak, so that you come from sincerity and the rest is really up
to the person’s, what we call, “path”. There is not so much
an external person can truly do. They can inspire by their example and in
their interaction, they can help you sense the amount of work there is to
be done and, for example, pacify etc., but physically as an intervention there
is not so much that one can do. It takes years to realise this because at
first as a practitioner you really believe you can make big changes, but if
you are sincere the changes that do happen are just the person walking in
that direction anyway, and you were there. You did something valuable but
it was not you who did it. It’s not that I am putting down Shiatsu or
myself; that is just how it is.
You point the way by working on certain meridians, creating a sense of
ease, rebalancing and helping the energy to move, but if internally there
is resistance, a holding back, a stopping, ill-health or ill-will, there is
nothing you can do until through the knocks of life the person just drops
it.
For me, the greatest ability Shiatsu has is that it is non-verbal. That
is very powerful because words can be confusing with different associations,
interpretations and so on. I think because it is non-verbal it is a very beautiful
tool. The hands are doing the communicating, the speaking. One of the ways
in which the client can help themselves and, take part in the healing process
is by witnessing what is happening to their energy as a result of what I am
doing.
A sign, for me, of what is going well is what is happening to their breathing
The breathing will become deeper, especially on the out breath. At the time
of deep ease and deep letting go there will be, between the out breath and
the in breath, a gap. Nothing is happening and very often the client will
say later on “I didn’t want to breathe in, is that all right?
What does it mean?”
So there is great stillness and at that level they have contacted that
inner meditation space. At that moment there was healing. For me, as a practitioner,
I kind of look for that throughout the session, to see if the work I am doing
is bringing this. So this is something you can tangibly check. During that
pause, that gap, the client is very acutely aware and very with it. Again,
as a practitioner, I need to have experienced that many times to respect how
to be at that point. I continue my work, but very deep and meet them in that
space. Really this is an incredible space for them and the moment of self-healing.
You just need one moment in your whole hour session like this and the whole
thing is doing itself.
So as a practitioner, I feel I do less and less. It’s really not me.
My responsibility is to put the right conditions in place and to be listening,
to work with loving kindness and non-interference so that I witness what is
going on and I am able to give the right interpretation to this. I am aware,
e.g., that this is wholesome, not wholesome, not moving in the right direction
so the client does most of the work, in that sense, and that makes them very
active. It, in that way, empowers them and they feel it that way. They feel
more active so they have more to say at the end of a Shiatsu session than
I have, such as “This happened, that happened” all I have to say
is “yes”.
P. You have already described what some aspects of communication mean to you. Is there anything you wish to add?
S. The issue of communication
is about the practice of Loving Kindness, that I need to feel that we are
not so separate. Their anger is also the anger I know. It’s anger, hatred,
envy, jealousy, grief, loneliness, despair, joy, hope. We all have the whole
range; none of us are exempt. Communication means I need to have that understanding;
I need to know that it’s okay. Then I will not be afraid of those feelings,
emotions and sensations in them or me. I will think “Ah, that is deep
aloneness.”
It brings me back to the value of Shiatsu as I learnt it with Ohashi when
he said, “You are on the floor with the client; they are not on the
couch or standing next to you. You are touching, on the same level.” Ohashi
is a small man; he took the tallest man in the room and stood next to him.
There was a huge difference, but when he sat on the mat and the man sat, the
difference was much less. That for me is what Shiatsu is. There is much less
separation. The intention is really to touch, really contact our body and
their body; really become more like one.
That is why I cannot use the word ‘treatment’. How can I ‘treat’?
I can only have this two-way communication which becomes just one communication
and in that I share my experience, my humanness and share theirs. In the midst
of all that, there is, hopefully, a moment of deep ease which resonates in
that person and puts them in touch with their whole human potential.
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
