Relax, NO RELAX!

It’s a word I don’t use with clients as it tends to generate tension

I prefer the idea of letting go, as holding is something we do a lot of

I have just returned from a 9 day meditation retreat; held in silence with no stimulus what so ever, I had lots of opportunity to let go. And it’s not easy. I found that I hold onto many things; ideas of who I am, ideas of what my body is, opinions, thoughts, the breath, muscle tension, memories oh just lots and lots and lots

Letting go is something that I aim for my clients to do, when I first treat them it’s often a good indication for me of how the session and the relationship is going. As we gain experience together letting go or the lack of it is a great diagnostic tool

I want clients to let go within the session because it’s so good for them on lots of levels, but my main reason is so they can experience the letting go and take it into their ever day life.

So much suffering is caused by holding onto things we do not need to. We then suffer what Jack Kornfield calls ‘mental rope burn’, a lovely way of describing the suffering  that comes from holding or clinging.

If we can take the feeling of letting go that we have on the futon and practice it when we are angry for being cut up in our car, when we are bored at work, when in an argument with our children/relative/friend, then we can change the situation in a really radical way.

It seems that letting go is a transferable skill, if we can let go of muscle tension then it feels very similar to letting go of our fixed opinion of ourselves and other. You have to see the holding but once we do the letting go feels very similar.

Like most transformative things it’s a simple process that needs applying over and over and it’s the application which is difficult. 

Is sitting going to kill you?

Is sitting going to kill you?

If you Google sitting at the moment you will be swamped by articles proclaiming that ‘sitting is the new smoking’, ‘sitting will wreck your life’ and ‘sitting will kill you’.

Is it the latest fad, daily mail ‘polishing your shoes will give you cancer’ scare story, or is there something in the claims?

There is some compelling looking evidence out there, in a 2012 study publish in the British Journal of Sports Medicine it claimed that every hour spent sitting (well watching TV, which we assume is done sitting) cuts 22 minutes from your life span, whilst every cigarette cuts 11, shocking stuff!

However if you really look into the studies it’s clear that it is nearly impossible to distinguish the sitting from lots of other factors. So is it ok to sit all day?

My short answer would no. But it’s not a yes or no answer, as always it’s more complex than it appears.

Modern western people do sit for too long, office workers in America sit on average for 28hrs each week during the working week. That does not include travel to and from work and time on the sofa.

Desk bound people (most working people now) spend way too much time sitting and yes it does have lots of issues. Workers need choices; they need to be able to stand at their desks when they wish to.  And the improvements to physical and mental health are many, elevating mood, increasing productivity (whatever) lowering blood pressure and lots more. So what’s not simple about this.

There is a Buddhist idea of the ‘suffering of change’. One example of this is sitting and standing. We have to stand for hours and we so wish to sit down, we sit down for hours and we should really wish to stand up. My point is that humans are supposed to move, to move!

If we really get in touch with our bodies we can feel when it’s a good time to stand and when to sit. At the moment I seem to be cycling around 10-15 mins for each, with it being shorter when I’m tired. We get into trouble with sitting when we learn to ignore our bodies and ignore the messages that we send ourselves. I have written plenty about how this happens elsewhere. But just standing and then ignoring the bodies’ messages about this is also not the answer.

For me the answer is to get in touch with our bodies, listen to what they/we tell us and act on it.

It’s important to realise that both sitting and standing are skills. And they are skills that we are not taught in school, so many of us have to learn them as adults. 

There are lots of models to use and lots of very intelligent folks working on this. I would refer you to Kelly Starrett and Kit Laughlin as good starting places. You can attend a good Yoga class, learn to sit well in meditation or if you are in the Rowhedge area come and see me.

The BBC have broadcast a quite interesting programme on sitting; you can find it here 

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0415hbv

The cost of treatment

I have written about the cost in money of Shiatsu and other alternative treatments and I’m sure I will return to that. This post is about other possible costs.

One of my main desires in treating people is to allow them closer, more immediate access to their bodies and therefore themselves. I strongly believe that the more we are aware of our bodies and the subtle shifts in energy or flow the better we understand ourselves.

This access to understanding does not have to be all hippy and out there, (although I did just write both energy and flow)! It can simply be by understanding that ‘when I am tense I hold the muscles in my jaw firm’, or ‘I've noticed that I tense my forearm’, ‘I think it’s when I’m worried’.

Simple little bits of understanding can lead to some powerful discoveries about how we are feeling and doing.  Part of the magic is that it can bring us into the now, it allows greater understanding of how we are really doing, now.

But there is a cost; one of the coping mechanisms we have is to learn to ignore just these signs. We are all inherently capable of being aware on the most deep level but for many, many individual reasons we learn that one way of anaesthetising our lives is to turn off these messages. In this way we are able to continue with the crappy job, the rubbish housing and the less than satisfying relationships.

In my experience when we turn back on these understandings we also can cause ourselves pain and difficulties as we experience in detail what we have been hiding from. Now I feel that the ultimate outcome is an authentic life lived well. And as we have been fortunate enough to be born into these strange bodies, in this strange place we must grasp the opportunity while we can. Sometimes the process is not pretty but the results can be. 

Authority and where do we get it from!

This year has been a really good/terrible year for authority. Banks and bankers have had a rough time, politicians have not covered themselves in glory, the church continues to stumble on and now the BBC is in the middle of a deep scandal.

These events seem to hit people quite hard, they shake our sense of trust in a stable and predictable world and leave people with a feeling not dissimilar from a lover disclosing an infidelity.

I’m interested in where this need for external figures to trust comes from. We need people to do things for us, we need news stories to be true, we need our bins emptying and someone needs to look after our money (I suppose). But it’s the deep feeling of disappointment which suggests to me that there is more investment than just the practical need for the above.

I have a sneaking feeling that the possible root of this need for external belief in others partly comes from our separation in our belief in ourselves. We learn from a very early age that we are not to be trusted, we are not to trust our thoughts, we are not to trust or emotions and we most certainly should not trust our bodies. They (we) are seen as unreliable, wrong, dirty, deviant. By the time we are adults, we have learned to ignore the clear messages we are giving ourselves so well that it’s almost impossible to tune into them. 

“Mr Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”

― James Joyce, Dubliners

So with this intuitive method of knowing what is correct, who can be trusted, really how the world sits, being dulled or silenced we look to external figures to fill the void and get into lots of trouble.

 I have been on a long journey to reconnect to my innate internal messages, it’s not been simple, but it has been fascinating. My training in Shiatsu has been a huge help and whilst I’m not 100% there I have made huge strides.

For me it’s about listening with a quiet intensity to my body as I take in external stimulus, this gives me greater understanding through my emotions, which leads to greater intellectual understanding which then leads to more feelings, emotions, thoughts and on I go until I am able to form a fully rounded feeling/understanding of where I am on a particular thing.

I am not saying that with a better sense of self authority one is not disappointed when one is let down, just that the emotional impact is much less, it’s much more like you have been told the train is delayed rather than you have been cheated on. It affects me but does not shock me in the same way, as my central core is still in place.

There is also an argument that if we lived in a society where each member had their own sense of authority we would be much less likely to place people in such important positions of authority, they would then be unable to abuse them. Of course we are taught that feelings (emotional and physical) are soft, maybe feminine and not to be trusted, that hard, rational thoughts are the only safe method, ideas and intellect are seen as the only valid way of coming to understand the world. I feel that this way of thinking is so wrong and so outdated and has led to so many issues, from relationship problems, addictions, to war and global issues.

Embrace your feelings, your emotions, your gut sense, combine them with your mind and intellect and you have a fantastic method of negotiating the world. 

The Cost of treatment, what can be done?

The Cost of treatment, what can be done?

Shiatsu treatment in the UK can be quite high, around £45-60 is normal. 

This price means that a lot of Shiatsu practitioners charge clients for treatments they can not afford themselves! A very strange situation indeed.

Shiatsu is of course not alone in this, in fact its one of the cheaper 1:1 alternative treatments available.

We are in a place with Shiatsu where the middle class can afford treatment, the very poor with 'issues' often get treatment for free through schemes but that the 'working poor' who make up most of the population (including most Shiatsu practitioners) can only afford treatments on rare occasions, as a treat or in serious crisis. 

If you can afford the price, then I suppose its OK, but I love Shiatsu, I feel its fantastically effective, can make huge changes to people lives. So I have a strong feeling that Shiatsu should be for everyone and everyone should be able to afford it as often as needed.   

But how do we make this happen? 

There has been a quite revolution happening in acupuncture which I think the Shiatsu community could learn from. Starting with Working Class Acupuncture in Portland Oregon, USA

a movement of multi bed affordable clinics has sprung up.  This movement has spread to the UK with the The Association of Community and Multibed Acupuncture Clinics spreading the word in Europe and the UK.  

The model is that patients get treated in a shared environment at the same time, that chat is kept to a minimum, but that professional effective treatment is retained. 
In this way the clinics can charge much less, typically £15-40 on a sliding scale. 
So one acupuncturist can  treat many people at the same time, which is not an option with Shiatsu. 

So how can we (Shiatsu folk) take elements of this approach, or at least the spirit and make it work for us? Two things come to mind; 

Room rental, many Shiatsu therapist do not treat at home, so have to rent a space, we are then  forced to pass on the cost to the client. I get around this at the moment by treating in a friends room, she gets a free treatment and I get to offer low cost treatments. 

Another way of doing this would be the idea of many practitioners treating more than one client in the same room at the same time, and splitting the cost of room hire. 

One of the features of the multi bed model is that a very quick but accurate diagnosis is made, then root treatment is given on the most pressing and underlying imbalance. So is this possible with Shiatsu, to offer a stripped down treatment where only the most underlying/pressing issues are treated in a shorter time. I feel it should be, and it's something I am going to offer to clients who really can't afford a full hour treatment and see how the feedback goes. 


We have a long way to go before Shiatsu does become affordable but the debate needs to happen. Its such a fantastic treatment, its a shame to exclude the 'working poor'.