Besides its more recent definition, Shiatsu has got its roots in different antique oriental cultures around 3000 before Christ. The human beeing is seen as an integral whole of Mind-Body-Spirit, an energetic reality rather than just a physical one.
Shiatsu is a type of massage that utilizes pressure points that correspond to organs and energy pathways throughout the whole body. These activate the Life Energy and stimulate the organism to restore and manifest its own vital ressources. By working on the whole person and not only on the single symptom the therapist stimulates self-healing.
Today the Japonese health system officially recognises the Shiatsu tecniques and has included it among the official treatment methods.
Shiatsu is of great help in the following circumstances:
- Traumas of different kinds
- Syndroms of anxiety or depression
- Insomnia
- Stress
- Migraine and headaches
- Patologies of the locomotory system (arthrosis; lumbar, backbone and cervical pains, sciatica, discopathy, periarthritis, etc.)
- Disfunctions of the metabolism
- All situations that derive from stress (headache, gastritis, colitis, etc.)
- All situations of imbalance
- Pregnancy and post-parturition
It also accelerates healing times, indicated in the elderly person and in disability, as an aid to those who want to detoxify from addictions, soothes the problems of the locomotor system in patients with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, in aid of palliative therapy in terminally ill patients. The symptomatic benefits and prevention are not the result of an activity aimed at treating the disease, but a natural process of self-healing.