Exploring the Heart of Seiki Shiatsu

“The bottom of the Tsubo is the bottom of your heart.”

Written by: Peter ( Canada )

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Thanksgiving weekend was the occasion of a special shiatsu event: the first official Seiki Shiatsu seminar, featuring Tzvika Calisar. Tzvika is an Israeli who has been living and studying shiatsu in Japan since the mid-80 . He studied at the Namikoshi School, Zen Shiatsu school of Masunaga in Tokyo and Tao Shiatsu in Kyoto. After more then 25 years he developed the method of Seiki Shiatsu.

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How much deeper does it go? All I really knew before starting was that Seiki Shiatsu includes an expanded network of meridians, and that much attention is paid to the mindset of the practitioner. I expected to learn techniques for working with this expanded meridian system, and perhaps to practice some meditation and Chi-Gong.

On the surface, this is sort of what happened, Yet only on the surface.

The workshop was nothing like what I expected. It challenged me in ways I wasn't prepared for, while inspiring me very deeply. Even if I left feeling in one sense like an absolute shiatsu beginner, I still felt that a path I'd been seeking had been briefly—and brightly–illuminated.

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As a therapist, perhaps you've experienced moments in your treatments when the division between client and therapist blurs. Difficult to describe, these moments bring with them the sense that one is part of some larger, profound process.

It follows that if you've experienced moments such as these, then you've probably also experienced other moments–perhaps long stretches of time—when you were not connected to your client in this way. What's the difference? What happens to make those former moments possible? In other words, what is the secret to what Masunaga sensei termed “Zen” shiatsu?

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In Seiki shiatsu, what makes the difference is the connection to the Seiki. Much of the seminar was spent exploring this, through Tsubo location, Meridians & treatment exercises.  In Seiki Shiatsu, maintaining this receptive state is paramount—without it, Tzvika suggested, one cannot really contact meridians at all.

I can say that the exercises were very powerful in revealing how one's attention so easily slips back to the self, and how this very definitely affects the Ki of both giver and receiver. I'll share a personal example.

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In one exercise, I was the receiver. I was to lie still, while my partner was connecting to the Internal Seiki. I felt a very subtle but definite lightness in my whole body after a few moments, and I indicated so with a gesture. In the next step, my partner was to look at an area on the dorsal aspect of my forearm.

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After a few more moments, I felt something very curious in my arm. I felt a line of sensation—seemingly a length of a meridian–rising towards the surface of my skin. Along that length there was a particular point which drew extra attention, which felt like it reached deep inside of me. After a few more moments, my partner leaned forward and applied pressure to precisely that point. I could feel his pressure penetrate in a deeply satisfying way.

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That was enough for me. I was convinced that in Tzvika sensei I had met someone who understood Ki in an experiential, not merely academic way—and someone who could teach this art to others. One of the participants in the seminar, for example, was not a shiatsu therapist at all, and had only ever received treatments. Before the end of the weekend, she could find and work with the meridians as well as any of the other newcomers, some of whom were long-time practitioners.