CHAPTER 4 How does Shiatsu work, practically?

The unique flexibility of Shiatsu as a therapy includes its ability to work in different ways with the human system; it can be bodywork, employing physical pressure and stretching on the body tissues, and it can be ‘energy medicine’, working on the human energy field. Performed by a well-trained, experienced and skilful practitioner, it is both at once.

Shiatsu as ‘bodywork’ is distinguished by pressure, which has a specific effect on the connective tissue. Connective tissue makes up the ground substance of the body and can exist in many forms. If you have had any contact with the preparation of meat for cooking, you will have had experience of the connective tissue which sheathes the muscles in its tough, pearly-white membranes and extends to form the tendons. But it goes far beyond the sheathing of every muscle, joint and bone. Connective tissue covers the nerves, the blood vessels, the internal organs, the glands, the structures of the brain. A layer of connective tissue runs just below the entire surface of the skin. As ground substance, it fills all the spaces between all other body structures. In terms of volume, it is the largest ‘organ’ in the body.

One of the most commonly found forms of connective tissue, the fascia (encountered in the preparation of meat, see above) is made up, among other substances, of collagen fibrils and the ground substance which holds them in place, a colloidal gel which liquefies under pressure (the gel-to-sol transformation familiar to chemists).

Thus body tissues which have become congested, brittle or poorly circulated can rapidly regain hydration and flexibility through the application of pressure. But pressure in bodywork has an additional effect, the production of piezoelectricity.

So, if we use the Shiatsu technique of pressure, simply as pressure massage, we are encouraging health in the tissues through better hydration and more flexibility (gel-to-sol) and a better connection in communication throughout the cells of the whole body (piezoelectricity).

Stretching, another Shiatsu technique, similarly affects the tissues of the whole body, not just the area or limb stretched. The connective tissue is a continuous fabric throughout the body, and stretching it will affect areas far beyond the immediate vicinity of the force applied. If a sweater has shrunk in the wash and we pull down on the hem, a whole band of the sweater lengthens (Fig. 4.1). In the same way a whole area of connective tissue lengthens and opens as we stretch a limb in Shiatsu, which as the stretch is released rehydrates and softens. This newly flexible ground substance is more coherent (it knows where it is and integrates better into the body) and more receptive to the pressure which creates piezoelectricity, whether that pressure comes from the natural movement of muscle and bone in the process of daily life, or is applied during bodywork.

Fig. 4.1 Sweater stretching.

But once we have begun considering the question of the information system throughout the body, mediated by the piezoelectricity inherent in the connective tissue, we are on to new ground.

The Human Energy Field in Science

When doctors and scientists react dismissively to the word ‘energy’, they are forgetting that there are many medical technologies using different forms of energy for diagnosis and treatment. Examples of these are the electroencephalogram, the electrocardiogram, the magnetic resonance imaging scan, cardiac pacemakers and pulsing magnetic field therapy, and there are many more. Unfortunately, since the age of ‘vitalism’, energy medicine in all its forms has become discredited, and diagnosis and treatment in orthodox medicine take place via the human energy field without any general public acceptance of the field itself.

What is the human field, and how is it created?

The biomagnetic field arises from the pulsing electric currents set up by the tissues. The overall field, seen from a distance from the body, is a composite of all the fields, the largest being the field of the heart. Because the blood is a very good conductor of electricity, the whole of the circulatory system pulses with electricity each time the heart beats. The second-strongest source of electricity is the retina, which acts like a large battery that changes in polarity when light falls on it. The third-strongest field is that produced by the various muscles, with the larger muscles producing larger fields and tiny muscles, such as those that move the eyes, producing tiny fields.

The field of the brain is about a thousandth as strong as that of the heart. Even weaker are the evoked fields produced by the brain when a sensory stimulus is provided, such as a sound, a light, or a touch … Again, the overall field is a composite of all these fields.

(Oschman 2002)

The role of the connective tissue in distributing and interconnecting all these different fields has been mentioned above. It is a system that connects all parts and processes and delivers energy and information via the fastest means that nature has available. (The fastest system yet known to exist is that of microcurrents passing rapidly from cell to cell, creating oscillations in the electrical field. There is strong evidence to suggest, however, that even faster waves such as soliton waves can pass through the connective tissue effecting almost instantaneous whole-field changes. This research is still to be developed further.) The cells and tissues can then use the information from the rest of the body, thus delivered, to adjust their activities involved in maintenance, nourishment and initiating action.

Piezoelectric properties arise because the structure of much of the connective tissue is highly ordered, or crystalline. Specifically, many of the molecules in the body are regularly arrayed in crystal-like lattices. This includes the lipids in cell membranes, the collagen molecules of connective tissue, the actin and myosin molecules in muscles and other cells, and other components of the cytoskeleton, such as microtubules and microfilaments. The high degree of structural order (the matter field) gives rise to a highly ordered or coherent electromagnetic field.

(Oschman 2003, p. 270)

This coherence is what we would call ‘holistic’. The coherence in the field of our bodies enables us to conceive of ourselves as a whole and not a collection of separate systems and parts. All the parts of ourselves and all the processes which animate and maintain them are connected, largely due to the properties of our connective tissue, which can carry the oscillations of our electromagnetic field in a coherent way. This is why therapies such as Shiatsu are not merely bodywork; they can alter our chemical balance and hormones, and affect our metabolic processes and our emotions.

That is just what the state of coherence entails: a multiplicity which is singular, the ‘self’ is a domain of coherence, a pure state which permeates the whole of our consciousness, much as Bergson has described.

(Mae Wan Ho 1998)

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