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Zen Shiatsu: 30 Years On

Authors Note:

Michael Rose is one of the UK’s most experienced Shiatsu
teachers and the only one to have been graduated by Shizuto Masunaga. He has
taught almost all of our most experienced teachers and is invited as a regular guest teacher to a number of schools. He is much valued for his unique
approach, enriched by his Sufism and emphasising quality of touch and connection:
heart-to-heart connection and
connection to the spiritual via the physical.

Shizuto
Masunaga,
photographed by Michael Rose

 

Splattered on the wall

by Michael Rose

I have been asked to contribute some thoughts to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Masunaga Sensei’s seminal book, “Zen Shiatsu” (Masunaga S. Japan Publications 1977).


It is difficult to do justice in a few words to the tremendous significance that this book, and Masunaga Sensei’s work, had, and continue to have, on the Shiatsu world.


It was a milestone in establishing Shiatsu as we know it today. This was true universally and, especially for me, personally.


For my own journey of discovery (thirty something years ago) prior to “Zen Shiatsu”, there was Namikoshi ‘One Point Shiatsu’, based on Western physiology, ‘Macrobiotic Shiatsu’, based on a somewhat extreme dietary philosophy, and ‘Acupressure’. With due respect to these approaches, I was finding increasingly
through my own practise and experimentation, exciting and profound relationships between my two hands and a more extensive network of connections than the classical Acupuncture channels.


In San Francisco in 1978, a mysterious and psychedelic encounter with Zen Master Reuho Yamada, himself a student of Masunaga Sensei, turned me on to “Zen Shiatsu” for the first time. It was a revelation! It described qualities and connections which I had been feeling myself and which I yearned to develop. It opened up and systematised a profound and beautiful approach which was both spiritual and practical. It encompassed traditional knowledge and contemporary psychological understanding but most importantly, it elevated Shiatsu to be a prime therapy in its own right, with its own coherent diagnostic method, and not just a
poor cousin to Acupuncture. Reuho told me that I had to meet this guy!


My dream came true in 1979 when I had the great privilege to spend a year in Japan studying with Master Masunaga in person.

"My dream came true in 1979 when I had the great privlege to spend a year in Japan studying with Master Masunaga in person."
Important and profound as his book is, it does not reveal the charisma, the compassionate presence, the humour and the high energy of the man in the flesh. For my first month in Tokyo I sat silently every day in a corner of his
clinic and just watched and watched and watched….


Masunaga Sensei had the most beautiful hands and ‘x-ray eyes’. When he put his hands on you, you just opened up. You felt he could see deep inside. He had a keen intelligence and a wide-ranging knowledge – from East to West – yet he was playful and child-like in his energy.

Above all he had a strong spiritual yearning and presence and his Shiatsu was a kind of devotion as much as a treatment for illness. It was a search for the ‘echo’ of life – a truly heart to heart connection.
In his teaching he stressed the importance of ‘catching his feeling’ and derided students who took notes rather than connecting fully to his ‘transmission’ and the reality of the moment.
However he also had a thorough system and methodology which he emphasised and which, to this day, I believe to be the most helpful and comprehensive framework and ‘map’ for students and the best platform from which
individuals can develop their own particular directions. Many talented practitioners have indeed done this and thus enriched the scope of Shiatsu practice and theory.

 

Masunaga Sensei expended much energy in elevating the status of Shiatsu in Japan and throughout the world, for which we should be eternally grateful. It is easy to take for granted the importance of “Zen Shiatsu” in transforming Shiatsu forever. But my overriding memory is of his deep spirituality. On his sick bed, when I asked him if he would do anything differently when he ‘recovered’, he said that he would try to treat people’s souls rather than their bodies. May his soul be in eternal peace and be rewarded for the benefit his work has brought to humanity.

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