Shiatsu massage
Shiatsu is based upon Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM practitioners aim to return a person to normal health by stimulating `points’ / specific areas on the body to activate an internal body-fight against the cause of the problem(s) / disharmonies experienced, by referencing `energy channels’ (named after specific organs).
TCM has been practised for thousands of years and it’s underlying basis refers to the physical, pathological (disease) and emotional wellbeing of a person’s body as a whole.
TCM practitioners understand symptoms experienced are a result of underlying cause(s) and aim to treat the cause, in order to reduce / remove the symptoms. Consider having a stone in your shoe. All the while the stone is within (cause), a sharp pain is experienced (symptom) every time pressure is placed on the stone. This inconvenience can also be demonstrated in our emotional behaviour – we can become irritable and impatient (more symptoms) if we are not in an immediate position to remove the offending stone. It is only when the stone is removed (the cause is taken away) that we can feel refreshed both physically and emotionally.
Shiatsu practitioners use a variety of tools to diagnose a person’s health and then appropriately massage specific `channels’, by the sense of touch. Most people can distinguish what we touch. For example, if we find ourselves searching for a pen underneath a pile of papers on a desk, we repetitively place our hand flat on different areas until we feel a hard, cylindrical lump. Shiatsu practitioners feel their way along a channel and can determine the `state’ of the channel in a very similar way. It can sound a little overwhelming and fanciful, but consider the objects you touch everyday and how each feels – dry/wet, smooth/rough, hard/squishy, velvety/lumpy. Each object has it’s own make-up and shape, and by the same token, so do channels and their pathways.
The aim of Shiatsu is to re-balance a person. With twelve main channels running through the body, a healthy channel moves energy continuously without hindrance. However, energy can sometimes get stuck in one or more areas – implying a `full’ condition and leaving less energy to flow through the remaining channels; this can then leave other part(s) of the body feeling `empty’. In simple terms, Shiatsu redistributes energy around the body – dispersing `full-‘ and filling `empty-’ areas.
Try a Shiatsu massage and discover how different you feel.