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January 16, 2011
Does your body speak to you? Do you know how to listen to it? My body is constantly speaking and it is sometimes really loud. What do I mean that it is talking? I am often aware of acupuncture points on myself even though I have not taken the training in acupuncture to truly know what each point is called or mean but they still talk to me. Sometimes I will get a bruise in an area that I know I did not bump which will often remind me I need to seek help in either some herbs, a treatment with another practitioner or even to just take a few more baths to help relax.
My body tells me to just take each moment. My mind sometimes gets distracted and wants to do so much when really all I need to do is just focus on what is occurring right now. One thought I had was why did it take me so long to write again in this blog. Fear of being too open and sharing too much was the main reason.
I went for a walk tonight with a friend. It was raining. I pushed my baby in a stroller as my friend and I had a beautiful conversation. She told me that some of the stories I have shared in the blog have helped her in her life. That felt wonderful to hear for some days I am uncertain of what to share and not to share. Fear can be such a block for so many different things in one life.
I was not taught basic zen shiatsu, instead I jumped right in to learning shin so, which is another level of zen shiatsu as it works with many different layers of energy surrounding and within a person. Shin so means deeper meridians and is different than any other shiatsu session as it is very similar to acupuncture. In shin so we use different tools that can help balance the body such as ip cords, yaki hari circle drawing and many other techniques. A lot of my work has been intuitive, where instead of needing to know what a point is called or meridian is located I just listen to the clients body through a technique I was taught called finger testing. I will ask within myself yes or no questions regarding what the client may need and I will get a response that allows me to know what the client’s body is asking for. Sometimes I have to ask the same question in a different way as I have to make sure I am not being influenced by my own filters on that moment. As I am human and have my own ideas of things sometimes my mind can misguide me into thinking I know what is best. Often after I have asked questions on the inner I will also ask a simple question to the client to see if my inner knowledge is correct, most times it is. If it is incorrect I often realize it is because I am distracted by my own thoughts of what I think should occur or should happen to make the client feel at peace in that moment. Though I might not know that names of acupuncture points like I said before, my hands are drawn to the points and I have discovered that the points still want me to work on them and it does not matter all of the time for me to know. Its a matter of doing rather than thinking.
Namikoshi style shiatsu has 660 basic points that I was first taught were not given names and only numbered. Besides the basic points there is also the zen style of shiatsu that incorporates the meridian system of acupuncture on which we are to focus on the points related to meridians with not just our thumbs and fingers but with our elbows and feet. I was taught to just use my hands and so most of my practice has been using my thumbs. Though I am curious on what it is like to work with all of my body in a session rather than just the hands and so I have been drawn to learning Thai massage.
I took a 5 day basic Thai class where we learned to do a 90 minute session. I have also gone for Thai sessions myself and I find Thai and shiatsu to be very similar. The two styles of massage are for me like yin and yang, feminine and masculine. Both a form of dancing, each with their own way of being. In thai there are more stretches where in shiatsu there is more pressure points held. I am fascinated to learn more about Thai and look forward to sharing my thoughts on it as well. So far my body is telling me to take things slow and steady. I am letting go of certain fears and I am grateful that I am able to share what I learn with others.
July 7, 2010
If you are pregnant, wanting to be pregnant or are just interested in pregnancy in general there are three books that I will share with you that have inspired me. They helped me as I prepared to become pregnant as well as to allow me to help clients go through their own pregnancies during that time. I am happy to share with people these important books for they have helped me prepare to get pregnant as well as when I was pregnant.
The first book opened up the door to the world of pregnancy for me: “The natural pregnancy book: herbs, nutrition and other holistic choices,” by Jill Aviva Romm. The book explains what herbs are important to use during pregnancy. There are many herbal recipes that are easy to make. I often used one particular recipe called the Nourishment Tea during my menstrual period. Jill Aviva Romm has this to say about it: This is my favorite beverage in pregnancy. It is a nutrient supplement (iron, calcium, and many vitamins and trace minerals), and is an overall partus preparatory or birth preparation brew. The dried herbs can be mixed in a large batch to have on hand. The tea is delicious both hot and cold, and it can be enjoyed by your whole family. You can vary the quantities of the ingredients, or add and omit herbs from time to time. It is safe to drink this brew through out pregnancy and during labor. It is beneficial for the postpartum as well, as it helps with milk production.
Nourishment Tea
2 parts red raspberry leaf
2 parts nettle
1 parts oatstraw
½ part alfalfa
½ part rose hips
¼ part red clover
¼ part spearmint leaf
Mix all of the dried herbs together and store in an airtight container away from heat and light. To prepare your infusion, place a heaping ¼ cup of the mixture in a quart-sized jar. Add boiling water to fill the jar, cover, and let steep for a minimum of 30 mins, a maximum of 2 hours. Strain, sweeten, and drink ¼ cups daily.
Many of the recipes can be used not just when you are pregnant. Not only does the book have herbal information but there is a lot of information on what occurs when one has a miscarriage and how to heal your body during that time.
The second book shared other women’s experiences of giving birth so that we may be able to understand how each birth is unique and amazing in their own way. The book focuses on the positive experiences women can have during childbirth. The book is called, “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth”, by Ina May Gaskin. The first half of the book has women’s own words of what they remember of their births. The second half of the book is a midwife’s guide to what occurs in a woman’s body when it does get pregnant. The second half also helps you prepare yourself for either having a home birth or hospital birth. The book also explains what each drug does that is offered to you during the labour.
The third book inspired me to be creative and paint my way through the preparation period: “Birthing from Within: An extra-ordinary guide to childbirth preparation”, by Pam England, Rob Horowitz. The book has many different creative exercises to help you let go of what you think the birthing should be like and allow it to be it’s own way. The book is supportive through sharing woman’s experiences; one in particular section discusses c-sections. Pam England changes the wording to be cesarean-birth and not cesarean-section. When a woman tells people she has had a cesarean-section people often say, “Oh, you had a c-section, well wasn’t there anything you could have done?” This book helps women understand that they do not have to be pulled down by other people’s negative views on c-sections but to change the thought pattern via changing the name of it. The book also talks about how birthing is not just called labour for nothing; it takes work to release the baby from the body. Ultimately this book helps us understand that each birthing experience is going to be how it is. We can plan as much as we want but in the end we have to allow whatever to happen.
I hope you find support from these books as I have done as well.
My journey to becoming pregnant took three years of preparation. I was preparing all aspects of myself. Most of all I was learning to let go and to find patience with just living in the moment of now. Even as I write this I am learning to find my center each day.
Three years ago I was in the middle of my shiatsu training, living in a city far from my husband. We would take turns traveling to be with each other every weekend. Not only was I stressed from the mental training, practicum and sleeping on a futon that had a metal bar that pushed its way through the thin cushion every night causing back pain, there was also the travel. But I got pregnant due to the romantic weekends we both enjoyed as it was so hard to be away all week from the one you love. We decided to talk to a doctor about whether it would a good idea to keep the fetus or not due to all of the stress I was in. Through an ultrasound the doctor and I could see that the fetus was being blocked from receiving proper nutrients by a large blood clot and had little chance of surviving. So I decided to have an abortion. An abortion is a hot topic for most people. I use to say that I am pro choice for it depends on what is happening in the woman’s life. But I always thought if I ever got pregnant I would have the baby no matter what. Well it turned out I had to make the choice since my body really was not healthy for it. When I tell people about the experience I still consider it a miscarriage since I don’t want to have to explain the details.
Each woman has to deal with abortion or miscarriage their own way. For some it’s not that big of a deal, where others go for years with depression and guilt about what they may have done to cause the loss. It took a few months before I felt comfortable enough to share with family and friends what had occurred. I had to allow myself to grieve. And that is a whole process in of itself.
Three years later I felt ready to be pregnant and nothing was going to get in my way since I had this knowing that I was going to get pregnant soon. I wonder if most women get that when they feel ready to be pregnant. They get a feeling that it will happen but the unknown of when can be stressful. And yes some women have difficulties due to physical issues that stop the actual process of occurring naturally and must seek out support from doctors or alternative health care providers like myself. And yet even more have to make the choice to adopt instead. But in the end the child that is suppose to be with them will come one way or another. I didn’t realize that I could get in my own way of becoming pregnant until I learned to let go of the need.
When I had a second miscarriage I was able to let go of the need even more. Instead of being upset I took a look at how I was treating my body. So I found support through my naturopath and massage therapist to help let go of the stress I put myself under. I had to learn to nurture myself just as I was teaching clients to nurture themselves.
I read a few different pregnancy books that helped me understand the process of being pregnant. One book in particular showed me that if I opened up to my creative self I could let go of the drive to be pregnant. So I took out my acrylics and began to paint. Through working with different colours I was allowing myself to release the need. I stopped focusing on reading the books or even counting my periods. I was allowing myself to enjoy each day and focus on the painting. Later I will be adding the paintings to the site. At that time I allowed myself to enjoy life of the now and not of the future. Even now I am focused on the now. I took NIA classes that helped me be creative through movement. And soon the drive to be pregnant left me. I just wanted to enjoy myself and enjoy this body of mine.
I got pregnant four months after I said I was ready to be pregnant. For some people they say that is fast but for me I look back see the journey began those three years ago after I had that abortion. I had to nurture myself before I was ready to nurture a being growing inside of me.
April 27, 2009
A few weeks ago a friend asked if I could attend her birth so that I might be able help her and her husband relax with shiatsu. I was ecstatic since I had been pondering on whether I wanted to take doula training in the near future or not. She knew this. I thought it would be a great opportunity for my learning curve, as well as the doula training would require me to attend several births. It would have been an honor to attend her birth, to be there to support her.
Four days before my friend was suppose to go into labor we made plans to visit in the afternoon. I had been pushing myself a lot that week, working on many clients, when my body told me I needed to not think about others or do any work for at least one day. That was the day when I was expected to visit my friend.
I was having breakfast with another dear friend when my pregnant friend called me. She seemed frantic since her husband had just hurt his neck. I could feel her stress and wanted to zoom over to their house to work on his neck right away. But I had a doctor’s appointment for myself, which I could not skip out on. My friend told me to get to the house as soon as I could. After my appointment I had still important errands to attend, but I tried to rush through them all. On my last errand I parked at a parking lot that you have to pay for, and I was just dropping something off so I thought I didn’t have to pay. Well as soon as I got back to the car the ticket man was writing up a pink slip for me. I told him I was only 5 minutes. He said, that’s what they all say. I got angry. I sat in my front seat with my face red and fuming from his meanness. But then I was able to pause. When my friend had called I had put on the hero’s hat and felt a need to be there for them as soon as I could. I had forgotten that my body asked me earlier, to take it easy.
After I allowed myself time to pause I felt ready to visit my friend. I worked on her husband’s shoulder, neck and back for an hour. After that I went for a walk with my friend. I stayed with them for a few hours. I told them they could call me anytime they were to start labor.
But then on the day she was suppose to go into labor I woke up with a severe inflamed throat and other cold like symptoms. I tried everything I could think of to fight it. I wanted to attend the birth and I wasn’t going to let a cold stop me…. but then the next day my friend had still not called me, I felt worst. I realized I had to let go of wanting to be there. (I had known it the moment my throat flared up but I was hopeful.) I called my friend and apologized. She understood. I also had to cancel all of my sessions with other clients.
I know there are reasons for everything in life and sometimes we just aren’t ready to know the reason. Sometimes those reasons in life don’t make sense to us at that moment but years later they do. It didn’t take years later for me to get why I had gotten sick on that day. My body had told me earlier to pause for myself but I had not listened. My body knew I was not ready to attend the birth for it knew I was still holding on to the hero’s hat. I wanted to take away my friends pain. Some people call it being too attached to another person’s experience, or you could call it over-caring for someone. By over-caring you don’t allow them to experience their own life’s joys and pains. My body reminded me that I had to let go of making sure my friend had an experience the way I thought it was suppose to be. She had the right to experience it her way. In the end a birth is how it is suppose to be and we must all let go of the results of how we think it should happen. I had thought I was suppose to be there to help relax my friend and her husband but when I look back I realized I had been there, just not when I had planned.
April 1, 2009
I am sick and it sucks. I had treatments booked, now canceled. A lot of times we want to ignore the cold or fight it like its WWIII. Doing both won’t help you or anyone else. Yes, there are many techniques out there on Google, to help you fight it such as drugs, herbs or nothing. My preference is the herbs. Someone suggested I try oil of oregano. I use to take it often in the past but had forgotten how potent it can be. I took a few drops under my tongue and felt a warmness spread all over my throat and mouth for a few minutes. I have never used tiger balm until last night, and wow, it makes your skin cold for awhile… but in a way that is calming. But besides taking the herbs I have realized that I need to pause. To be OK watching silly movies and drinking lots of fluids, and doing nothing. I think colds are reminders to stop.
When you are in a small business dependent on yourself, as well as if you are in a job that requires you to focus on others, you forget about you. But I have come to realize I can’t. I need to be well to work, and that also means I need to have courage to cancel clients.
I was sick for 3 weeks, most of last February. I did nothing for a lot of it, or at least tried not to work too hard. After three weeks of coughing I went to the doctor, who said, your lungs sound bad, here… he handed me a prescription for antibiotics. I held on to it but I also knew I was going to be taking a shiatsu workshop that weekend so I wanted to see what would happen.
The Friday I felt like I was mud surfing with out the proper gear. My body was heavy and weak. I forgot to mention that I had insomnia those three weeks as well. During the class we did some qigong exercises as well as we were taught how to find organ refer points on our hand, similar to reflexology but with a shin so twist. And those organ points move depending on how healthy they are. If the organ is OK it will stay in the location our teacher showed us on the hand. If the organ was not well, or off in some way it will move down the hand to the wrist. Once you find where the point is you press it for a few minutes at different tension, so soft and hard. I asked my teacher if he could tell me which points I needed to work on: liver, lungs,spleen, kidneys, and triple heater ( which I often consider the immune system in Chinese medicine). That day we worked on each other giving short shiatsu sessions. And I slept a little that night. When I woke up I worked on the points on my hands.
The next day we learned more techniques to further our understanding of how to help bodies heal. I asked my teacher again what was wrong, and this time: lungs, kidneys and spleen, were still having issues. He did say they looked a little better for they didn’t go down to my wrist. It was a relaxing class. That night I slept through out the whole night.
The last day I felt grounded,relaxed and curious to learn more. We had a visitor come in to be worked on. The teacher had two assistants ask the woman questions similar asked at an acupuncture visit. They also then studied her tongue and pulse. It took them 20 minutes to discuss with the visitor her issues. After they were done the teacher went to check on her and it took him 10 minutes to find all that he needed to do. He did not check her tongue or ask her questions or read her pulse. He did it the shin so way. The shin so way is using sounds and hand positions that are related to meridian, organ and actual body parts. There is one sound called NEH will allows him to know where there is a structural issue. The other interesting thing is that he does not need to say the sounds out loud, but think them and they will still respond. This goes to show you that it is important to have a clear head when working on people.
In the end his results were similar to the assistants but better. He then proceeded to tell the assistants to do the treatment that we had learned the day before using ion pumping cords that will help circulate negative ions in her body to where they need to go. She had the cords on for 15 minute.One of the assistants then gave her some shiatsu pressure point massage on her back to finish the treatment. After the session I asked the teacher if he could see if any of my organs were off still. He looked at my hand and said, what was wrong with you again? He genuinely could not remember. And I felt great.
That week I slept straight through each night again. I felt wonderful. I also recieved a lot of new clients that following month. March was my best month for work for a long time. I also kept busy with personal engagements, with out saying no to invites I would go. I forgot that I need to rest too.
So today I am sick. I will do shiatsu on myself. I will take herbs. But I will also be OK with being sick. I am not trying to fight the cold, just allow myself to feel better during it.
March 31, 2009
Being new to the business world, sometimes I feel like a small fish in a big ocean. That is of course a cliché statement, but true for there are those times that you just don’t feel like you have a unique way of selling yourself in the business world. I am learning that it just takes time, patience, getting your self out there and courage.
I am going to list for you what I have done so far to market myself since I am not in the mood to write paragraphs.
1. Got a kick ass website that is first on the list on google when you look up shiatsu, Victoria, bc, but you already know that since you are now reading my journal on the site. I have also set up this journal so that people can get to know me as well.
2. At my old location I had a sign made for my very large window by a company called Instant Signs, owned and operated by Dave Barrett. He doesn’t have a website yet but his number is 250 475-1008. He was very helpful and a nice guy. The prices were very reasonable too. A few weeks ago I had a new client come in; she had seen my sign a year ago but had not called me until just recently. It didn’t matter that I had taken the sign down and moved to a new place. She had kept my number and called.
3. I connected with the manager of Lifestyle Markets and asked if it were ok for me to do chair massage at their Douglas location. They said yes. Once a week I would go into the grocery store and give shiatsu 10-15 mins to people. A lot of the times I would just be a greeter and either help people find things or send them to people who could help them. I enjoyed being at the store, and had many clients come to see me because of the time I spent there. People who worked there were very supportive to me as well, and I highly recommend shopping there for they have an awesome selection on organic products, being an organic grocery store. www.lifestylemarkets.com I stopped doing the chair massage at the store, but it was a good experience. I learned how to talk to people about what I do and learned to be comfortable with what I do as well.
4. I have set up booths at health fairs and at an organic festival in the summer of 2008. http://www.organicislands.ca/ is the website for the festival. I will not be setting up a booth for 2009 but I am planning on attending for there are often amazing music and great presenters. I also had t-shirts made with my logo on it for this event, that I gave away during a draw.
5. Networking is a major key for marketing yourself. It is important to find networking groups, ones that you feel comfortable with. The first group I joined was called HOST, their website is http://hostvictoria.org/hostsite/index.php. I stop going to them due to life changes but I met some wonderful people who helped me in this business world. I have been offered to join other groups but the one I feel connected to at the moment is the Victoria Women’s business networking group. There website is: http://www.viwbn.org/index.html
Another really great group is green drinks, their website is http://greendrinksvictoria.ning.com/
Networking is also about being open to meeting people for tea and getting to know what they do in their job. It is about having good conversations and being interested in other people.
6. I have placed my brochure at many different stores. A couple of weeks ago I left some brochures at this coffee shop, http://khona.editnew.com/templates/textPage_2column.php?pageid=1 Khona coffee shop, which is just down a bit from my office space. Last week I had my first client come in from finding the brochure there. The coffee shop has a calming atmosphere, which is funny since coffee is so stimulating but it makes sense when you are in there. I like the waterfall wall display and the food they sell. The workers are also nice people. Last time I was in they were all wearing funky hats.
7. I led an all day workshop September 08 and plan on leading some more workshops in the future.
Marketing is about being creative. I am enjoying finding ways to help people find me. Marketing is about patience. Marketing is about trying many different ideas and letting go of the results. There is so much more I am learning about marketing and looking forward to sharing with you.
Once I was finished school I wasn’t sure whether I was going to start a practice or work for someone else. I got a call from a previous coworker at the spa asking if I wanted to work there. I said I would if I could have both my weekend days free. She laughed, and said, yeah right, maybe one of the days. I declined the offer since I knew that not only did I want to have time for my family but I remembered how the new practitioners at the spa had very little clients for a long time, and would have to help the spa attendants clean the spa. I didn’t want to do that again.
I did some searching within myself and through out town and decided that I did want to work for myself. The name Shanti Shiatsu came to me during my training. I would have to concentrate for 75-90 mins on a client’s body following the basic shiatsu pattern. We were told to clear our minds, but that’s hard. Some days when I couldn’t stop thinking I chanted SHANTI inside my head to the rhythm of my movement as I pressed. Shanti means peace, as you have read already on my website. When it came to figuring out a name for my business the word just felt right. And they sound nice together too.
I tried finding a room to rent or share with other like minded people but could not find anything. My husband happened to come across an ad on Craigslist for a space listed. The space was located at http://www.evergreenoffices.ca/ . When I went to go see it, I felt very calm and connected to the location. I like the title of the office, evergreen. I love trees, as you can also tell since my symbol for my business is a maple leaf, and the arbutus on the front page of the website. The office managers were very welcoming and supportive to a new business owner. My office faced out on Douglas street, a busy street, and was above Lifestyle Markets, an organic grocery store. I stayed at the location for a year and half before moving to my new space. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to move since I felt so at home there, but it was time for a change.
The new studio is closer to my home and in a pretty heritage house. It is also in the area of town that I had always wanted to work in, fort and cook street, I like this trendy neighborhood. I share the third floor with an aromatherapist and a graphic design company. www.amphoria.ca is Brigette’s website for her business called Amphoria Aromatherapy. I just had a session with her, which was beautiful, relaxing and gentle. http://fiveht.com/#/FiveHT-Media?id=110 is the website for the graphic design company, called FIVEHT. Not only do they make websites but they also do business cards. They made my new cards. I am very pleased and love showing and giving my cards to people.
February 2, 2009
Life at school was intense. I decided to do the program at a faster pace than most of my new classmates, since I wanted to move back home as soon as I could. So instead of separating first and second year I decided I could do 8 classes a week and travel home on the weekends. I ended up finishing the course side of the program in 9 months instead of 16. There were two major aspects of school life that I did not know until I actually was in it. The first was the nine months of class work. The other was the practicum, which I will explain later.
The first day of class on Oct 3rd I had kinesiology and Shiatsu II with my second year classmates. During the expert shiatsu class I had a smile on my face that went from ear to ear, as my teacher taught us Tsubo points on the shoulder. (Tsubo means important in Japanese.) During the break he came up to me and asked in a gruffly voice, why was I smiling so much. I had been nervous before class since I didn’t know if it was a good idea that I was going to be taking the expert class before I learned how to do the basics. But once I was in the class I didn’t have to worry, shiatsu felt so familiar and comfortable especially what he taught us.
He mentioned a line during class, well he often said this line during the months that he taught us but it wasn’t until I talked it over with a friend did I really get what he said. The line he often said was this… “Its not how hard you press, it’s how you press hard!” Now what does that mean? My theory of the statement is that shiatsu is not about hurting the client and pressing so hard that it hurts the practitioner’s thumbs and arms and leaving the client with intense pain. Often a client will want intense pain and this teacher believed the client just did not understand that the pain is not actually helping the client. Its not to say that shiatsu can not be intense or that practitioners only press lightly on clients. It is about how the practitioners need to press with their body not just their arms and thumbs. Once they have learned to use all of themselves they also must work on listening to the clients’ body and learn to press with the clients’ body and not on their body.
Besides taking a full course load of learning about the body in a western perspective and a little of eastern, since one of our classes was Kampo (Japanese name for traditional Chinese herbal medicine) I also took an introductory Japanese class. Though if you try talking to me in Japanese I will just smile and nod. The school I went to was run by a Japanese man who wanted to help us understand all aspects of shiatsu and where it came from. So we learned how to speak a little and mostly the history of Japan since shiatsu came along in the early 20th century. Most of my classmates were either Japanese or Korean. There were about 35 of us in both my first and second year class. Nine of us were Caucasian.
The style of shiatsu this school taught was the original style named after the founder Namikoshi. My teacher of the expert class believed it to be the only true style of shiatsu. The style that most people in North America know, (and the style my first experience was) is the Zen Shiatsu style created by Masunaga. He was a student of Namikoshi’s. And most other styles of shiatsu all come from students of Namikoshi. The founder of my school was also a student of Namikoshi. He started the school to further the education of the traditional style in Canada.
For my practicum I had to do 300 sessions, with hopefully just as many different clients as possible. We had to work (for free since we were students we didn’t get paid unless a client decided to give us a tip) at the student clinic, so that the school could keep track of all of our sessions. We also had to work at events for approximately 70 hours doing chair massage.
The school allowed us to put our name down on the schedule as much as we wanted. It was our responsibility to know our own limits. Since I was racing to finish as soon as possible I thought I could do 4 clients a day for five days a week, no problem. Well there was a little problem. The sessions were 75-90 mins long and my body was not use to working so much. As well like most new students I didn’t know how to use my body during the sessions I would often press with just my thumbs rather than my whole body. Like many others I would have to stop working because my thumbs became out of commission due to incredible pain. I also would get stressed out since I wanted to finish but my body was just not allowing me to work very much. So I went through different trials of pushing myself too hard to work and then hurting myself and then not being able to work.
It came to a point that I realized I needed to take some time for myself so I left school for five months and furthered my healing by learning to listen to my own body. I realized I needed to heal myself first before I wanted to help others heal themselves. I learned it is important for the practitioner to truly listen to themselves. If we practitioners are not balanced how can we help others become balanced?
I went back to Vancouver after I had taken time at home for myself and continued working in the clinic at a steady pace so I was able to finish five months later. In the end I was able to finish my practicum in 10 months ready to start a career.
January 8, 2009
I had a positive connection with my spa manager and we would talk about my future plans. She knew that I wanted to go to school to learn massage soonish and she totally supported me. At that time I was considering going to school for however long I needed and then either stay at work part time or go back with my diploma. Even though it was hard work as an attendant and I saw how it was for practitioners I still really enjoyed the place. I never thought I would want to open up my own practice, let a lone work by myself. To work at the spa the practitioner had to have at least 2200 hours of training. So I had my goal.
I also decided to set a foundation of ideas of what I wanted to learn from the school that I would go to. I described it often to people that I was building myself a house. In the past I have had experiences that were like the roof of the house, but I didn’t have the walls or foundation to really get what those experiences were teaching me. So learning about the body was me putting down the cement for the foundation.
After I had my first shiatsu session I decided to take an introduction shiatsu class at a local acupressure school in Victoria to see if it was what I wanted to learn. I also took another class that was on a style of healing I had never heard of before called Jin Shin Do. Both classes made me feel happy but I liked how shiatsu focused on the whole body not just the emotional issues.
Jin Shin Do focuses on 45 acupressure points. The practitioner will pick a few to work with during the session and they may hold only 2 points for an hour. (Later when I went to the school I finally ended up, there was a Jin shin do therapist across the street from my school; I have a link to him on my links page. I went to see him a few times and found it to be very healing.)
So after the introduction class I was certain I had chosen the right healing path. I decided to apply to the school the introduction was located at. They of course accepted me. This was in the spring time, but I was not to start classes until September. The summer went by and I was looking forward to starting class.
A week before I was supposed to have my first class I got a call. The fulltime shiatsu program was canceled. There were not enough students. The owner of the school gave me two options. I could take the part-time program starting October 3rd, a month later. That program was still filling up and there was a slightly better chance of it actually happening. Or I could learn Jin Shin Do. I would have to take the anatomy course with the Jin Shin Do students though.
I decided not to take the Jin Shin Do program since it is not used at the spa and I had the intention of going back. My manager at the spa was again very supportive. I was suppose to work only one day a week in September but they allowed me to go back to full time during that month as I waited to start the Shiatsu part-time program.
The anatomy class at the school started to make me feel uncomfortable since most of the students were practitioners of other healing fields so they already knew stuff. One classmate even started taking over the class, by talking about how she could see auras and that she could teach us that. Everyone else in the class was impressed, including the teacher, and she said she would give the floor to that student the following week. I am not saying that seeing auras is a bad thing. I just felt like it was inappropriate to talk about this when I was still trying to figure out about the meat of the physical body from a western perspective.
In the middle of September, after I had taken two anatomy classes I heard the owner talk with someone else about how there were still a chance that people would sign up any moment. But I knew right then that the program was not going to happen. I talked with the practitioner who had originally suggested I work at the spa about how the program wasn’t going to happen. She asked if I had considered Vancouver since she had a friend who had a school there. She gave me his information and website.
My husband and I decided that we could make it work. He would stay in Victoria with our cat, and his already established career, and we would see each other on the weekends. So I emailed the school, and called him the next day.
The owner of the school said no. He believed that it would be unfair for the current students to allow a new person in after they had already established a bond. I was going to be three weeks behind after all. I was crushed.
Later that day I went to a friend’s house and talked with her about my dilemma. I told her how there was another school in Vancouver, but I had little hope that they would allow a late person to be accepted as well. But my friend suggested I call them anyways. The secretary knew of the situation of my original school, since they had a connection with the Victoria school and the owner was totally understanding of it and was ok with people transferring. The following day my husband and I went over to meet the administrator, as well as to check out the school.
The funny thing was the first two schools were only 1000 hours. The first school had said I could take more classes afterwards to make up the full 2200 hours and so I had thought that would be ok. I didn’t want to have to move out of Victoria after all. The final school was actually the best since its program was a FULL 2200 hours based on western perspective of the body. I started school, a week later, on October 3rd.
January 4, 2009
I decided that a poem was the best way for me to describe my first shiatsu experience. Enjoy!
Ocean breath
The hum of waves
roar from her mouth, calmly.
By a simple brush of her hand
along the spine. I feel
my back let go. Worries
drift away. I am
in this moment aware. Silent
thoughts release pain
as she holds
one point and then another.
I remember to breathe
while the ocean surrounds.
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