The Book of Shiatsu: Vitality & Health Through the Art of Touch

Introduction

Shiatsu is a Japanese word meaning finger pressure. It is a new name for the oldest form of medicine—healing with hands. Everybody has the healing power of touch and responds to touch. It is a natural ability that people are now beginning to recognize again. Shiatsu uses hand pressure and manipulative techniques to adjust the body’s physical structure and its natural inner energies, to help ward off illness, and maintain good health.

Shiatsu is characterized by its great simplicity. It grew from earlier forms of massage, called Anma in Japan (Anmo or Tuina in China) which use rubbing, stroking, squeezing, tapping, pushing, and pulling to influence the muscles and circulatory systems of the body. Shiatsu, by contrast, uses few techniques and to an observer it would appear that little is happening—merely a still, relaxed pressure at various points on the body with the hand or thumb, an easy leaning of the elbows or a simple rotation of a limb. It almost seems a lazy activity and, to the extent that it conserves one’s energy, it is. But underneath the uncomplicated movements much is happening internally to the body’s energy on a subtle level.

Subtle energy in the body

The Oriental tradition describes the world in terms of energy. All things are considered to be manifestsations of a vital universal force, called Ki by the Japanese, and Chi, or Qi, in China. Because of the Japanese origins of shiatsu therapy, the Japanese word Ki is used in preference to the Chinese word, Chi. Ki is the primary substance and motive force of life. It is most often described as energy, but Ki is also synonymous with breath in the Japanese and Chinese languages. In Oriental medicine, harmony of Ki within the human body is conceived as being essential to health. All its endeavours are addressed to this end.

The aims of this book

This book is written for both givers and receivers of shiatsu. Shiatsu is for sharing with others, and you can enhance your health and your enjoyment of life by following the demonstrations illustrated in the book. By learning the basic principles of traditional Oriental medicine, you can also use your shiatsu to help when your friends or members of your family are unwell.

The study of the treatment of disease, or individual symptoms, can lead to a limited view of shiatsu and its benefits. So this book gives you a grounding in techniques and pathways for working on the body, from which you can develop your understanding of the body’s energetic systems—its network of energy. Rather than concentrating on curing diseases, you will gain a feeling for the relationship between illness and health. Shiatsu can help you to even out the swings between extremes, find an appropriate balance, and live more fully and creatively.

The development of shiatsu in Japan

Shiatsu was developed in the early part of the 20th century by a Japanese practitioner, Tamai Tempaku, who incorporated the newer Western medical knowledge of anatomy and physiology into several older methods of treatment. Originally he called it Shiatsu Ryoho, or finger pressure way of healing, then Shiatsu Ho, finger pressure method. Now known simply as shiatsu, it was officially recognized as a therapy by the Japanese Government in 1964, so distinguishing it from the older form of traditional massage, Anma. The role of shiatsu therapists is to diagnose and treat according to the principles of Oriental medicine.

Chinese origins of shiatsu

The earliest known book of Chinese medicine is called the Huang Ti Nei Ching (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine). In it the legendary Emperor questions his physician, Ch’i Po, about problems of medicine and health among his people. In one well-known passage Ch’i Po explains that different forms of medicine were developed in different regions according to the prevailing climate and the resulting constitutional problems from which people suffered. Treatment using herbs, needles and heat were attributed to Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western regions, but development of physical therapy including massage and breathing exercise was accorded to the people of China’s central region. Thus began the long association of massage and manipulative therapy with special physical exercise, breathing techniques, and healing meditations which represented the highest level of Chinese medicine. These came to be known collectively as Tao Yin, methods for guiding the subtle energies within the body to flow smoothly. Shiatsu is the modern inheritor of this tradition. Chinese medicine was introduced to Japan by a Buddhist monk in the 6th century. The Japanese developed and refined many of its methods to suit their own physiology, temperament, and climate. In particular they developed the manual healing and diagnostic arts, evolving special techniques of abdominal diagnosis, treatment, and abdominal massage (see pp. 162-3).

Styles of shiatsu

Many early shiatsu practitioners developed their own style and some, including Tokojiro Namikoshi and Schizuto Masunaga, founded schools that helped establish shiatsu as a therapy. There are many different styles of shiatsu today. Some concentrate on acupressure (acupuncture) points. Some emphasize more general work on the body or along the pathways of energy to influence the Ki that flows in them. Others highlight diagnostic systems, such as the Five Element system or the macrobiotic approach. But all of these are based in traditional Chinese medicine. This book is intended as a broadly based guide to shiatsu, drawing on the most useful and practical aspects of the different approaches, with traditional Chinese medicine as its basis. However, one particular source of inspiration should be mentioned—the Zen shiatsu of Shizuto Masunaga.

Zen shiatsu

Masunaga incorporated his experience of shiatsu into his studies of Western psychology and Chinese medicines; he also refined the existing methods of diagnosis. His extended system incorporated special exercises, known as Makko Ho, to stimulate the flow of Ki, and he developed a set of guiding principles to make the techniques more effective. He called his system Zen Shiatsu after the simple and direct approach to spirituality of the Zen Buddhist monks in Japan.

A note on the Chinese approach to understanding the body and health

In this book, you may notice a circularity in the logic of Chinese medicine. Westerners think of cause and effect as a linear progression of ideas and events from A, through B, to C. Eastern philosopy regards events as mutually conditioned, arising together. They are not seen as distinct from the environment in which they occur. The background is as important as the foreground. An example is given here to help to clarify the difference.

A headache is not just an event in the head, according to Chinese medicine, nor is it merely a pain, or something to be stopped without regard for its origins, nor even treated on the same basis as someone else’s headache. Rather, it is an obstruction of Ki, related to the overall energy patterns in the whole body of the particular individual, their circumstances, and lifestyle. Treatment might involve work on the arms or legs as well as (or instead of) the head and will bring more lasting and satisfactory changes than will an attempt to block the superficial symptoms with a drug.

Observe the cautions given facing page 5.

Part One Heaven, Earth, and Human Beings

Learning the Basics

Chapter One The Oriental Tradition

The traditional Oriental view of health takes wholeness as its starting point. It recognizes the universe as an energy field and all it contains as manifestations of energy in different patterns. Though infinitely varied, everything in the universe is connected; people are an intimate part of their environment and depend on it as much as they influence it. The primary tenet of Oriental medicine is to live in accord with nature, rather than trying to adapt nature to the needs of people.

Oriental medicine is based on observation of people and their response to the environment over thousands of years. Without the anatomical knowledge made available much later, Oriental theory established its own framework to explain how the body works and to explain natural phenomena (see Yin and Yang, pp. 18-23). The focus of attention is on how to maintain harmony within the body and with the outside world.

The Chinese observed the influence of the natural world and linked people’s tendencies to particular types of ailment to the characteristics of the natural world (see The Five Elements, pp. 23-5). The emotions and lifestyle were also acknowledged as contributory factors in health and disease. To stay healthy, a person must continually adapt to the changes going on, both inside the body and out. If these adaptations are not made, illness manifests as disharmony within the body. Universal energy, called Ki, flows within the body forming a matrix that links the vital Organs with all the other parts. In treatment the emphasis is on restoring harmony to the Ki in the body. The physician’s task is twofold: to interpret the cause, then to advise on appropriate lifestyle adjustments and to find a means of restoring the functions of the body.

Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang are concepts that are central to the unique viewpoint of traditional philosophy, science, and culture in China and Japan. Established from the observation of nature and society, they came to form the basis of traditional Chinese medicine, which then spread to Japan. Understanding the role of Yin and Yang is essential in learning about shiatsu: it forms the basis for all diagnosis and treatment.

The 8 trigrams of the I ching

Yin-Yang theory was first elaborated in the ancient and famous Chinese book of divination, The Book of Changes (I Ching), which dates in its earliest form to the 2nd millennium BC. It was well established by the time of Confucius, who added his commentaries in the 5th century BC. In this book Yang was represented by a continuous or firm line conveying direction and movement, and Yin by a broken or yielding line suggesting space and stillness. These lines were grouped in eight combinations of three, symbolizing all the basic permutations of natural forces and phenomena. Among these, three Yang lines grouped together represented Heaven, the Yang archetype of the creative, active principle. Three Yin lines represented Earth, the receptive or passive principle. Yang was regarded as masculine and Yin as feminine, and all life was seen as being dependent on their harmonious interaction. Light, warmth, and the passage of time were associated with the sun and its movement through Heaven; Earth offered material nourishment—food from the fields, shelter, and rest. The changing seasons and the repeating cycle of nights and days were deemed to be natural indications of the interrelatedness of Yin and Yang.

The Chinese characters for Yin and Yang mean, literally, the shady side and the sunny side of a hill, respectively. The hill represents existence, the ground in and around which Yin and Yang are in constant but ever-changing interplay.

Alone, Yin and Yang have no meaning. They cannot be separated either from each other or from existence itself.

Unlike the idea of opposites inherited by Western culture from early Greek philosophy the opposing qualities of Yin and Yang are seen as complementary and interdependent. They both create and control each other. When Yin declines, Yang expands, and vice versa, but there are no absolutes. Nothing can be wholly Yin or wholly Yang. Each contains the seed of the other: Yang will change into Yin; Yin into Yang.

Because everything has Yin and Yang characteristics to varying degrees, things can only be Yin or Yang relative to each other.

YIN AND YANG IN NATURE

The Tao

According to Lao Tzu (6th century BC), everything in the universe arose from the Great Ultimate Source, or Tai Chi, represented by the famous symbol . Beyond this was only emptiness, Wu Chi, represented as an empty circle . The light and dark segments indicate the inherent duality in all things, as well as the interaction of Yin and Yang—the dynamic out of which life and all phenomena arise and continue to move and change. The law governing all these transformations was called the Tao, meaning the Way of nature.

Relative to the sun, the moon is Yin (cold, dense), but even the pale and watery moonlight is Yang relative to the surrounding night, and the shadowy caves and hollows where no light reaches.

Ki

The Oriental view of life, nature, and the body is firmly founded on the notion of a vital force, or energy, which can be compared with the prana of Indian yogic philosophy. Its significance is so great in Oriental thinking, and its meaning so full of breadth and subtlety, that it is best to use the untranslated word Ki in the same way as we have become accustomed to use the Chinese words Yin and Yang.

Energy and matter

Ki arises from the interaction of Yin and Yang, and is the primary substance of the universe. This profoundly elegant understanding has existed in Eastern cultures for thousands of years. So it is said that all things are formed from Ki and that every different thing is determined or characterized by its Ki. Ki encompasses both the material and the non-material. In its purer form it is subtle and rarefied; it is substance with no form. It is more Yang. Matter, on the other hand, is a condensed, slowed-down form of Ki. This is more Yin. It may seem paradoxical that Ki should exist as both matter and non-matter, but you may understand it more easily in terms of transformation and change.

Take the simple example of water boiling in a pot, transforming into steam, then condensing into droplets. Water is a more Yin state, steam is more Yang. The heat of the fire needed to boil water is intensely Yang (active), transforming the water into an expanded, Yang form. Coldness—relatively Yin—causes the condensation to form droplets that collect on cooler surfaces or fall to earth. The most Yin form of water is ice. Ki is manifest in both the transformation and the substance: Yin Ki (of water) transforming into Yang Ki (steam) and then back into water. The paradox is contained. Ki is both matter and its capacity to change. The universe, in its state of flux, sees the constant interplay of Yin and Yang, matter and non-matter.

Yin, Yang, and Ki in the body

The body depends on Ki, Blood and other essential substances, which change, flow, and circulate, and so are more Yang than the structural elements of the body. But here, too, Yin and Yang are at play together. Within the body Ki circulates in Channels, often called Meridians, which have no material form. Ki, similarly, has no physical structure and is, therefore, relatively Yang. It is the transforming power of the inner organs and is associated with activity, protection, and warmth. Traditionally, Ki is subdivided into many types according to its role in the body.

The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (c. 100 BC)

Human Being results from the Ki of Heaven and Earth. The union of the