I find promo so cringe but also I love shiatsu and truly believe in its healing powers and the entire point is to SHARE it so here we are!
I first went to shiatsu a few years ago when it helped me recover from a horrendous chest infection. It also supported me through long covid. I've seen it help people with chronic fatigue, insomnia, hormonal issues, all sorts of pain including chronic back pain and migraines, neuralgia, and its also so supportive for any kind of nervous system or emotional dysregulation.
It has totally tangible effects.
But it's also the experience of some deep ancestral magic, co-regulation via the most historic and obvious and universal means of healing - touch. Sharing presence opening a field of compassion in both giver and receiver. It is grace.
Bringing awareness to the body and its inner landscape, also connecting with external sources of support.
Rooted in the oldest of healing technologies as well as the holistic framework of traditional Chinese medicine for understanding the complexity of the human body - shiatsu is so cool.
DM with questions or if you want to book a treatment, or if you have any ideas - would love to share this at retreats, events etc. Will also consider trade swaps. 😊🌷
#shiatsu #Todmorden #acupressure
I used to think I hated movement.
Focus on competition and achievement over actual somatic health/awareness in sports taught at school did not suit my natural peacemaking introspective person.
I have a fear of things coming towards me at speed from experiencing violence, so all ball sports were literally terrifying. Excruciating judgement and cliqueism at school caused me to shrink and hate my body.
I started cycling out of necessity at university and realised I wasn't totally uncoordinated. my beautiful new friends took me on long walks and hikes. In my final year I started ashtanga and realised I was actually strong and flexible.
After ashtanga I practiced daily at a yoga shack in Taipei, grimy, sweaty, and so delicious.
Two yoga teacher trainings later - in India and Tokyo - I felt the pull to something else.
Yoga felt too warped out of its original practice, its essence lost in the warping, a new convoluted cult around the very form-based practice,
which despite yoga teachers instructing in calm voices not to compare or compete,
the legging clad masses suggest otherwise...
western conditioning of stubborn staying power is possessed by that "competitive spirit" people so love about football and the Olympics,
validating the creation and perpetuation of a culture that does violence to our bodies in unsafe spaces in schools,
yoga studios,
gyms, etc
across the globe.
So I found taiji daoyin
Taiji 太極 the nebulous force that governs the cosmos
dao 導 to guide
yin 引 to pull
and magic was spun in a class full of Taiwanese and me in formosan jungle,
spiralling in movements so subtle
that Time itself dissolved
through this medley of experiences I have learned how to create my own safe space,
to return to safety within my body,
and to move in a way that is honest and healing.
I wish this freedom
for all bodies
everywhere.
Finally an actual #Shiatsu post! I'm in my second year at the #Manchester College and all being well should graduate next year.
Weekdays (10am~5pm)
Waged £40
Low waged £34
Unwaged £28
Allow 70mins for a session
in #Todmorden. Msg for booking or any Qs 😘
☯️☯️☯️
On a personal note, studying Shiatsu is probably the best thing I have ever done. It combines the many threads of my background in a beautifully holistic way and I love the new dimensions that open up as we are taught to "listen" & receive information beyond + within the ways we have been typically trained in our head-centric societies.
It's offered a new way of being both with myself, with other bodies, and within the ecosystem.
Many more posts to come 😙
Shiatsu has helped me through my own experience of chronic fatigue/long covid, and has helped clients who come for fatigue symptoms.
Whats interesting is that while the western medical world is just like 🤔🧐🤷🏻♀️ about what causes fatigue, in TCM there are a bunch of different possible causes, and just as many suggestions for what might be supportive.
Get in touch if you have any questions 🌷
#todmorden #shiatsu #acupressure #cfs #chronicfatigue
Some things that stood out to me on recent visit to the British museum aka, I know, bastion of colonial atrocities and plunder. It's always a conflicting experience to be so touched by the beauty and often immense power of the stolen artefacts whilst aware that they shouldn't be here at all. The grandeur does giddy things to my head and perspective overwhelmed by how much spirit these objects still exude miles from home and centuries later. Are their animate voices stronger still because they cry in injustice at the crime, their dignity amplified by it?
I was particularly drawn to the Iranian art this visit, which we happened upon unplanned. The first four pics are of Iranian crafts made during the Mongolian dynastic era, 13th century, an amalgamation of Iranian × Mongolian × Chinese aesthetic influence. I suppose I'm naturally drawn to the synthesis of cultures. And with an extra deep sadness and anger for what is happening there now.
5th slide shows gold coinage embossed with the zodiac symbols from 7th century Syria which look so modern, and have remained so popular, similar things all over Etsy. 6th slide is an Astrolabes "star-taker" from modern day Turkey/Iraq/Syria.
7th slide of a talismanic necklace, a reminder that jewellery has always been about protection, warding off evil, preventing illness.
8. Sufi artwork
9. Mystery cat in the Japanese section
10. Grumpy netsuke cat
11. Can't remember where or what this is but just really like the shape
12. Big Buddha just casually hanging in the stairwell
*BTW the Mongolian empire committed just as many atrocities against humanity as would be expected of the largest contiguous empire in history.
The character for water 水 is oracle bone old. 3000 years, maybe more.
The trigram from the Yi Ching representing water is of two broken "yin" lines - -
either side of a solid "yang" line —
at its centre.
Winter is water season. It is apparently yin - - slow, dark, still, quiet. Yin is substance, the body and its bones, the sinking of flesh into earth.
But a seed of yang nestles at Water's core — of activity, motion, sunshine. Yang is the stuff of dreams, of spirit, the bubbling fizz at a party.
When Water is in balance, it is resilient, adaptable, resourceful. It follows the path of least resistance. The wisdom of Water is in its patient, unhurried descent.
Water can stagnate, and it can overflow. It is deeply linked with the nervous system : the associated organs are the Bladder and Kidney meridians, which run either side of the spinal column.
When out of balance, Water manifests as fear, which can show up as freeze or flight response. We get paralyzed unable to move forward, or we rush rush and keep busy but only as a distraction from the thing we are actually running from. In either case our adrenals weaken; we get tired.
If we are to birth our seeds of yang in the spring, we need to nurture them now. Now is still the time for rest. Take naps. Drink broth. Stay warm, wear a scarf. Get some shiatsu 😉 Do some qi gong.
Take note of your dreams, but let them be tucked away for now, let them be shy.
Let yourself be like the river.
Fearless, abundant, rolling.
Water art by Georgia O'Keefe
#Todmorden #shiatsu #qigong #yiching
Some qi gong shapes from the 十八式 shíbāshì eighteen form series that I've been practicing since last spring.
The qi in qi gong is indeed the qi 氣 we work with in shiatsu (and also the 'ki' in reiki 霊気).
Qi is the breath of life that animates all living things, that feeds all our organs, emotions and interactions. It needs to be plentiful and free flowing through all our channels (meridians) for good health.
No qi, no life.
Qi gong 氣功 is literally "qi work": the practice of restoring the flow of qi in and around us. It's taught as an integral part of our three year shiatsu training.
I started my qi gong and taiji studies in Japan, then Taiwan, from 2017, and these are what led me to studying acupressure and shiatsu.
I'm open to shiatsu bookings now having recovered from a silly little knee injury.
£25~40 pay what you can
📍Todmorden
#Todmorden #shiatsu #acupressure #qigong #reiki
We are the land. The land is us. Tomorrow, three contributors local to the land of the book’s making, Cosima, Kate and I, will share our longing to belong. Join us for the Homecoming Book Launch for With Love. From an Invader. - Rhododendrons, Empire, China and Me at my local, the legendary Golden Lion in Todmorden. 2-4pm. See you there over a pint. #rhododendron , #invasivespecies , #withlovefromaninvader , #todmorden , @_oakshine , @spaceshipmark , @goldenlion_todmorden
Yan invited me to join her project in August 2020. I'd returned to England end 2019 after 7 years in Japan/Taiwan. It was my first time living in England as an "adult" and it was lockdown. Despite England being one of my home countries, I felt alien and confused about who I was here. Tbh I still am 🤣
at the time I was channelling a lot of this confusion around identity, belonging and land into poetry.
Yan was in the midst of her project photographing this gorgeous rhododendron love heart every other day for the year 2020. The rhododendron is considered an invasive species here and there are practices across the UK to eliminate them, known as "rhodo bashing". Yan was setting out to investigate that tension between perceived invader and native ecology, initially in the plant world but extrapolated to the human.
I joined Yan on several walks and side projects around the love heart and was touched each time with images that bloomed into this poem.
I was honoured that the poem is on the back cover of her recent book published by @eriskayconnection
The book launch is a conversation between Yan Wang Preston (award winning photographer from China), Cosima Towneley (whose work has been instrumental in making the Pennine Bridleway accessible), and myself. I'll be reading my poem too.
Sun 14 Dec 2pm Golden Lion. Free but book so we can gauge interest! Link u no where.
2nd pic is the only clothed pic of Yan and I together 🙃
With big thanks to Junko Popham for connecting us initially 💗
Finally! Homecoming Book Launch and In-Conversation at my local, the Golden Lion in Todmorden! 2-4pm, Sunday 14 Dec. With @_oakshine and Cosima Towneley, both are contributors to the book. All welcome! Eventbrite link in bio. @goldenlion_todmorden , #rhododendron , #invasivespecies , #todmorden , #goldenliontodmorden
This artwork is The True Trinity in True Unity by the abbess and mystic artist, Hildegard von Bingen c.1165.
I like it for its allusion to healing hands in the Christian tradition in Europe.
Many of the healing touch practices we know today are inherited from the East - shiatsu and reiki from Japan, acupuncture and tuina from China, ayurveda from India, Thai massage, etc.
But that's not because there were no hands-on healing traditions in the West.
They simply got lost for the same reason that herbalism was branded as witchcraft.
Grassroots Shiatsu is about reconnecting us, as humans, to our basic instinct to use touch for healing.
Regardless of our lineage and beliefs, the power in our hands is universal. We want it to be possible and accessible to all.
Join me and two other talented practitioners for our Grassroots shiatsu workshop in Todmorden on 3 October.
We will explore the foundations of energy work (Ki/Qi 氣) with Qi Gong exercises, a range of acupressure points for common ailments, and some shiatsu routines you can use as a guideline to practice on friends and family.
Bookings details in bio.
#Todmorden #hebdenbridge #shiatsu #grassrootsshiatsu #acupressure #qigong
