Zen Shiatsu is the culmination of a lifetime study into shiatsu by a remarkable Japanese man, Shizuto Masunaga. Shiatsu in the western world as we know it today is generally based on his theories and many years of clinical practice and research. His student’s, such as Wataru Ohashi, Ryokyu Endo, Michael Rose and Pauline Sasaki to name but a few, have taken shiatsu to all corners of the globe to continue the path of exploration and development that Masunaga started.
Shizuto Masunaga was born into a family of Shiatsu practitioners in 1925 and after studying psychology, he decided to pursue shiatsu as well. He studied the traditional shiatsu methods, the classic oriental medical texts along with the practical clinical aspects, whilst at the same time maintaining his interest in western psychology. Masunaga became a professor of psychology at Tokyo University and, at the same time, he taught psychology at the Japan Shiatsu School before opening his own school in Tokyo, the Iokai Shiatsu Centre. His interest was in integrating the traditional methods with western physiology, and his great achievement was to develop the extension of the classical meridians to cover the whole body along with a coherent theory to back his approach.
Therefore we now have two major distinct methods of Shiatsu; the Namikoshi method of applying pressure to specific points and the Masunaga or Zen Shiatsu style which focuses on the channels or meridians. The meridians are essentially the same meridians used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for Acupuncture, but slightly modified and extended by Masunaga, and are often referred to as the Masunaga Meridians.
The specific features of Zen Shiatsu:
For diagnosis, abdominal palpation is the primary technique used. Abdominal (Hara) Diagnosis is an ancient Chinese technique which by and large is no longer used in China. It became used in Japan during the 18th century and is still used there today for herbal medicine, acupuncture and of course Zen Shiatsu. The main purpose of the diagnosis is to determine which meridians are the most under-active (kyo) and the most over-active (jitsu). These two meridians represent the two parts of the same imbalance, one as a state of need (kyo) and the other as the action being taken to meet the need (jitsu). The basis of treatment is in working with the deep need or kyo to start meeting that need so that the resultant jitsu, which is where the individual is often experiencing discomfort, no longer needs to exist. In practice this often needs some help along as well. Often in our modern world, therapies focus their approach on working the external action or jitsu to relieve the surface symptoms without really addressing the deep underlying need. This approach simply means that the tension simply returns again and again. |
