Expectations

Personal Development, Shiatsu Practice

I have to drive 30 miles to work and share the road with all the stereotypical drivers of our time. Big cars, sporty cars, cars driven by youths in hoodies and baseball caps. It is hard not to spend my time on the road knowing what these individuals are going to do. Often they do cut in or drive too close but very often they do not.

Good Shiatsu is given without judgement but the practitioner is human and prone to the usual human frailties. How can one be in the moment if you have opinions about the receiver or expectations of the treatment?

Expectations are born of the thinking mind, we judge based on facts processed by the concious. When that car does cut in front of us at speed we react appropriately but can only do so because we do it unconsciously. Tai Chi when practised as a martial art teaches relaxation under pressure and requires the player not to preempt the oponent but to feel their energy and simply redirect it.

Like the martial artist a Shiatsu practitioner must feel the energy of another person. Like the Tai Chi player they must relax in order to feel. Both the Tai Chi player and Shiatsu giver must be in Hara. Bringing the mind into the Hara is at first a hard concept to grasp and when I first heard it said I could not comprehend what it meant.

The Hara is the centre of our being and located in the abdomen. In TCM and Shiatsu theory the Stomach houses Reflective Thought and is associated with the Earth and stillness. So by learning to centre ourselves on the Hara and these qualities that allows the practioner to truely experience the energy of the receiver. It takes patience and time to discover the Hara and how to bring one’s mind into it. I still find it difficult and the full experience is often fleeting but truely powerful.

When in Hara a feeling of connection develops with the receiver. There is no longer a physical body under my hands and I feel a merging taking place. It is only from really experiencing the Ki of another person that allows us to really know who they are and can get away from the judegments and expectations of our overactive consciousness.

Tony Brown @ October 5, 2006