Hello and good evening!
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All day at school I’ve been thinking about things to write about and I have a small list on a Post-It. But now that I’m sitting in front of my computer I can’t focus on just one idea and go with it. So I’ve decided to talk a bit about school and my challenges today.
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We started our Shiatsu class today. Shiatsu is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. For the past 11 months my education has been very Western-medicine-centered. Today I was told to forget everything I had learned that could be proven scientifically and go into this class with a very open mind. What they should have told us to do is to come into this class having stretched.
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Contrary to popular belief, I am not flexible what so ever. (And for the record, nobody believes I am flexible. I just wanted to start this sentence with something nifty.) Prior to getting our partners down on their mats, we did some warm-up exercises called Makka-Ho exercises. These basically opened up the meridians, or pathways, for my chi, or energy, to flow through. Since I’m very anatomy/physiology minded, I compared chi and meridians to blood and blood vessels. It made it easier to get through class this way.
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Anyway, there is one such pose where we stand with our feet shoulder-width apart and clasp our hands behind our backs with our index fingers pointed out. We then bend from the waist allowing our heads to fall to the floor and our pointed fingers fly up in the air. This is supposed to open up our Lung and Large Intestine Meridian. Oi. My hamstrings were not happy with that. I tried every so hard to get my knees to remain straight while trying to bring my arms as high as I could. An instructor walked by and recommended I do more stretching.
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I was one of the most non-flexible people in my class. I watched all the yoga-goers bring their head in between their legs with envy. This made me think that I should really try out that Bikram Yoga The Missus loves so much. One day! Back to the story.
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During Shiatsu, our client is on the floor and we spend all of our time on our knees or seated on our heels. During our work my knees were popping like a can of Pringles. At that moment, I did not feel 23. I had the joints of a 60-year-old. After working for about 30 minutes, I tried standing and holy hell folks! My quads and hamstrings are like “eff off!”
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Shiatsu, while a very interesting modality and something I can see myself enjoying, is definitely much more physically demanding than any type of massage I’ve learned so far. I know see why they’ve waited until the last 5 weeks of school to teach us this. I have every intention of finding some continuing education classes though. I think this type of work can truly be beneficial. I need more than 4 classes worth of training to really grasp it though.