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| Siacu / Massage Siacu / Styles of Shiatsu |
Styles of shiatsu
Many early shiatsu practitioners developed their own style and some, including Tokojiro Namikoshi andd Shizuto 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 emphasise
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 macro-biotic approach.
But all of these are based on traditional Chinese-medicine.
Zen shiatsu
Masunaga incorporated his experience of shiatsu into his studies of Western psychology and Chinese medicine; 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.
The Chinese Approach to Understanding the Body and Health
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 philosophy 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 fore-ground. 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.
  
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