Balance

When people come in for Shiatsu treatment, some of the most common statements I hear are:  “I just moved wrong …” ; “for some reason, my body isn't responding”; or “I just don’t seem to be able to get over this”. People often feel fearful, that they may or may not have done some obvious thing just prior to their onset of pain that caused their malady, and that they should be recovering but aren't. My response is that it often isn't just what they were doing at the time of their onset of pain, but that different demands or elements of their life can create an imbalance in their body that culminated at that moment in order to influence the effects of their present injury or problem and keep it from improving.

There are many combined things that contribute to balance. Certainly we all have strengths and weaknesses including a propensity for inherited conditions and diseases, or to have overall health.  It's true, we can strain or traumatically injure ourselves, but often it's not clear as to what we did to cause a problem, or to keep it from resolving. There are factors both internal and external that can influence the subtle balance that affects our quality of life and the ability of our many different systems to integrate and maintain strength and health. Without this integration individual systems or the balanced flow of blood, lymph, nerves, hormones and such between them, presents problems to adequately be able to recover from stresses that this world presents.

Internal factors I’m referring to might be things such as: health history (including injury, disability, or infection), postural habits, inherited physical traits, strength and flexibility training necessary for us to accomplish the tasks that we ask our bodies to do, eating the proper nutrition and water to feed and maintain our bodies, getting enough sleep or rest, and last but not least, maintaining healthy mental habits. I will talk at length about each of these influences later. External influences that I’m referring to include: cold, heat, dampness, dryness, wind, and barometric pressure.
 
Bringing balance to this picture does not just entirely entail going to see someone and have them do their “magic” on you. The Shiatsu practitioner’s job then is that of teacher (the root meaning of the word "doctor") and to give you a push in the right direction (pun intended).  To do the part of teacher, I'd like to define the word "stress" as meaning change. A contractor or engineer puts certain materials together in such a way in order to withstand "stress loads" or changes of force. Our bodies differ in that how our mind or our body perceives a given change, to a great degree, also influences the amount of effect that a given stress has upon us. Pressing certain points on the body in a gentle and rhythmical way helps bring the body and all of it's systems back from it's "flight or fight" response... in effect restoring homeostasis. 

Two pressure points, among others, that are powerful in helping to sedate and bring balance in a general way to integrate the different systems of the body and mind are: the medulla oblongata point in the hollow just below the back center base of your skull, pressing towards your eyes; and a point located on the top of the head following a line going up from the base of your earlobes through the apex of your ears on either side. This point is called “the meeting of a hundred nerves” and is an excellent treatment point for calming the body and mind. In this case, you would press perpendicular to the skin. In a child, because of the soft spots on their skull, you would just even rest your hand gently on the top of the head in this area. Pressing these points, helps to calm our minds and bodies in order to assist in bringing balance and integration to our autonomic nervous system.