CHAPTER 1 What is Shiatsu?

Since the first edition of this book came out, public awareness of the many forms of complementary therapies has increased immensely. Shiatsu has become a widely practiced and popular form of bodywork … but what is it? What differentiates it from the myriad other offshoots of the great tradition of South-East Asian medicine – Jin Shin Jyutsu, Ki therapy, acupressure, Jin Shin Do, Seiki, Reiki, Thai massage, Qi healing, Tui Na, Anma? How is it different from Polarity therapy, kinesiology, trigger point therapy, Zero Balancing, Spinal Touch? These questions are difficult to answer, since Shiatsu has influenced and been influenced by other therapies for thousands of years.

Its history goes back to the dawn of Chinese medicine, and its practice probably existed even before that – but not under its current name, since the Japanese name Shi-atsu, meaning ‘finger pressure’, first appeared in 1915. Currently it is practiced all over the world. It is practiced by therapists who give their skill a label such as Zen Shiatsu, Movement Shiatsu, Classically-Based Shiatsu, Healing-Shiatsu, Barefoot Shiatsu, Quantum Shiatsu, Tao Shiatsu, Ohashiatsu; the differences between these styles often being the subject of vigorous debate in professional journals. There is also a long and continuing process of exchange between Shiatsu and other forms of bodywork which means that Shiatsu techniques have found their way into countless other touch therapies, in the same way that Shiatsu itself has been enriched by the techniques of chiropractic, massage, craniosacral therapy and so on. Traditional healing methods from Japan which have become absorbed into or associated with Shiatsu include Seitai, which uses resistance techniques and stretching, Seikotsu, derived from ancient bone-setting techniques, Kenkujutsu, which works with the alignment of the body via the head, and Shindenjutsu, a complex of techniques for the ligaments and joints which also balances the whole body. Ampuku, or visceral manipulation, in its various forms, is now also an integral part of Shiatsu technique, or can be practiced as a therapy on its own.

Shiatsu’s greatest weakness is also its greatest strength. Shiatsu’s great strength is that it is a uniquely flexible therapy, capable of being applied with the depth of Rolfing or the subtlety of cranial osteopathy: it embraces the mobilization techniques of Thai massage or chiropractic, the resistance and release techniques of kinesiology, the magnetic principles of Polarity therapy. Its great weakness is that it is impossible to define or contain. This is not a problem for the receiver, who will lie happily on the futon, unaware of whether the hands skilfully relieving his discomfort are performing Five Element Shiatsu or Integrative/Eclectic Shiatsu. It can be a problem for the student or practitioner, however, who finds the safe structure of the conceptual framework within which she learned her skill challenged as she encounters her peers or reads professional journals. It can also be a problem for teachers who, as their practice brings them into the ever-widening fields of sensory experience which Shiatsu offers, feel obliged to confine their representation of what they do to a limited conceptual model in order to standardize their teaching.

The difficulty of defining Shiatsu has led to differences within the profession and has also limited the recognition of Shiatsu in the wider world. Shiatsu’s special status as ‘acupuncture without needles’ led to great expectations of its curative powers in the early days after it was introduced to wider practice in the West in the 1970s; it was expected by both giver and receiver that it would be a more dramatically effective healing method than therapies such as massage. When it was found that sometimes it was and sometimes not, as is the way when practitioners are relatively new to their therapy, the expectations passed to the next fashionable modality, and Shiatsu was superseded by aromatherapy, then reflexology, then Reiki, then the Bowen technique … Meanwhile the medical practitioners who began cautiously to welcome acupuncture into orthodox practice (within the limited sphere of pain relief) passed Shiatsu by: it seemed unable to give a good account of itself, its modus operandi and its benefits.

This may have been a blessing in disguise. As the public at large has educated itself in the respective benefits of different forms of complementary therapy, so also humanity’s perspective on itself has widened; science has explored further into the subtleties of the relationship between consciousness and matter. The different traditions within the Shiatsu community can all benefit from a step forward into the 21st century, understanding and accepting the differences whose roots lie far back in history and uniting in the common goal of reconciling the practice of Shiatsu with present-day science and the needs of the modern world.

A common cause for the many divergent styles could be the acknowledgement of their common source in the science of Qi, that extraordinary intuitive understanding of the energetic properties of matter first recorded in China in the second half of the Han period, 2500 years ago.

The science of Qi has survived through the centuries in many aspects of East Asian life; often in coded or symbolic form. It can be found in the areas of self-defence, art, literature, cooking, flower arrangement and the building trade. Yet the field in which the practical application of the science of Qi has been most tested, experimented with and recorded is that of medicine. Within the allusive and poetic licence of the Chinese and Japanese medical texts, preserved and explained throughout the intervening centuries, lies a truth which has come down to us today at a time when modern Western science can, if it chooses, justify and make sense of it.

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