History
The Zen School of Shiatsu® of Milan was founded in 1988 by Master Tetsugen Serra, a graduate of the Shiatsu Center of S. Masunaga in Tokyo.
The Zen School of Shiatsu® is today one of the most complete and sensitive realities for those who see Shiatsu not only as a technique, but also as a valid tool for growth and change towards a world of harmony and well-being. For years he has been carrying out a simple and effective program which, combined with the Zen spirit, makes it a complete path both in technical learning and in inner growth, respecting personal needs. A way to help others and improve the quality of your life.
Features
Shiatsu (from the Japanese Shi = finger and atsu = pressure) is a body-mediated technique that originates from the Chinese medical-philosophical tradition and which was subsequently developed in Japan.
It is based on the perpendicular, maintained and constant pressure of the thumb, fingers, palm, fist and elbow, exerted along the path of the energy meridians or on specific areas of the body.
Shiatsu considers the human being as a multifunctional system, composed of energetic, psychic and physical elements in a condition of constant interdependence, where the absence of health, and therefore of well-being, is the concrete and perceptible expression of the loss of energetic balance or “disharmony”. Shiatsu does not replace any medical, paramedical, psychological and psychiatric therapies, but is a method aimed at restoring the user's energetic balance.
Zen Shiatsu was born from the style of Shizuto Masunaga (1925-1981) and combines Zen concepts and practice with Shiatsu, to the point of making it the backbone of teaching.
The Masunaga style is based on traditional Japanese medicine and on energy meridians revisited and updated according to modern energetic, physical and psychological knowledge.
Based on his in-depth studies in the field of traditional Chinese and Japanese culture and medicine, S. Masunaga combines the modern psychological vision and the profound one of Zen philosophy, creating an activity for Westerners equal to no other Shiatsu style and bringing the Zen Shiatsu on a global level of consideration of the treatment for the person in his totality of "mindbodyspirit".
Zen Shiatsu is based on the Four Pillars and Four Spirits and on a technical level is characterized by:
– for the use of two hands simultaneously, called mother hand and daughter hand;
– for the pressure that is carried only by the modulated weight of the practitioner's body;
– for the use of the Hara, the vital center of man in the abdomen, where the correct pressure for Zen Shiatsu arises;
– for the use of Kata, i.e. particular energetic sequences;
– for the extension of the traditional meridians in all limbs.
When you start a course in this ancient discipline, you don't imagine starting a journey with yourself that will probably take you far, a journey to discover new territories of your body, your emotions, your vital energy and your Being. A discovery of the other no longer as other but as a union with all beings, a discovery of a single energy that circulates in everyone and which it is possible to know, experience, direct, increase, decrease: Living.
After a few Shiatsu lessons you realize that learning this discipline is not just learning a technique of how and where to give the massage, in fact you immediately understand that it is not a massage, but something else. It involves the body, but also the energy that circulates in the body. It also involves our mind in the attitude of how it is practiced: we realize that our whole being is involved in the shiatsu practice. Then we discover that we are not taking a course but a "path". When we realize that we are on a path, we begin to become more aware of ourselves, of our body, of our attitudes, of our feelings, we also become aware that we must work intensely with ourselves to improve our energetic quality, which if we want to propose ourselves to others as shiatsu operators, even amateur ones, we must follow a path of personal growth, at least physical and energetic.
In this "body-mind-spirit" path, each Zen Shiatsu lesson is a three hundred and sixty degree work with ourselves. During each Zen Shiatsu lesson we discover how all our actions and thoughts are connected energetically and indivisibly, we have confirmation that thoughts, emotions and body must be in harmony with each other in order to bring a practice like Shiatsu to others.
Origins
Shizuto Masunaga (Kure, 1925 – 1981) was a Japanese psychologist, graduated in psychology and philosophy from Kyōto University, and was a scholar of traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine.
A student of Namikoshi Sensei, he taught clinical psychology for about ten years at the Nippon Shiatsu School in Tokyo, subsequently separating from Namikoshi to found the Iokai Shiatsu Center. This school had, in the 70s and 80s, greater diffusion in Europe rather than in Japan.
Masunaga has developed, integrating it with the knowledge of Western physiology, his own personal Shiatsu system called Zen Shiatsu whose contents are today considered of fundamental importance in the economy of this discipline; the main innovations introduced by Masunaga, compared to shiatsu still linked to TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), concern:
• the focusing of energy: each observer influences the phenomenon he is observing with his energy: that is, by bringing energy to the interested area the energy is activated: the image creates the movement, the movement creates the energy;
• the first duality, i.e. mother hand and daughter hand which respectively stimulate the protopathic (first feeling) and epicritic functions (ability to select, i.e. when I stimulate a part of the body the whole body responds);
• the centrality of Hara: the meridians all start from Hara which is the center of energy and distributes it throughout the body (this point does not deny the concepts of Yin and Yang as the direction of the meridians continues to be there but simply not if takes it into account);
• extension of the meridians: the meridians are no longer localized in a single limb, but run through the entire body;
• the meridian has its own real path, not fictitious as it is linked to the position of the Tsubo;
• a new vision of Kyo and Jitsu which are considered complementary (in TCM they were treated independently);
• pressure characteristics (constant, progressive, sustained, focused and perpendicular);
• cycle of the amoeba and movement of KI
• Diagnostic zones on the back.
