H.M (female in her fifties, lives in Komae, Tokyo)

It was sheer luck that guided me to Tao Shiatsu.

After injuring myself in a bicycle fall, I found myself tormented by pain for three days and nights. I had scars and bruises on the left side of my body and it felt like my whole left arm was twisted. After two months of Acupuncture and other treatments I began to feel much better, but my left arm still felt twisted. I also continued to have strange pains at the base of my thumbs, wrists and the palms and backs of my hands. It felt like there was something seriously wrong with my body, but I had no idea how to heal myself.

Then one day, when I was at the bookstore, I felt drawn by a strange looking title on a book, my hands reached out and picked it up, all by themselves. The title read “Energy Flow and Channels, Healing Shiatsu-No Fixed Tsubo. (Tsubo are the treatment points in Shiatsu and other similar Eastern body therapies)”. It was the “No Fixed Tsubo” part that surprised and intrigued me. Up until then I had maintained my body health with Judo-style reduction, acupuncture, chiropractic and other similar methods. All of the offices I visited had charts of the human body filled with fixed points to treat. What did it mean by no fixed tsubo?

I will never forget the day I received Tao Shiatsu for the first time.
It was exactly like it said in the book, “An expert sends Ki (energy) in to discharge Jaki (stress/negative energy) as he empathizes with the patient’s heart.”
During the treatment I felt just that. It felt like noxious gas moving through my body and exiting through the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. They began to vibrate, and I said nothing about it, but the therapist seemed to understand what I was feeling and continued treating me as though it were natural. It felt quite strange to me.

As the treatment progressed, I felt as if all of my senses had come alive. When it was over; the persistent twisted feeling in my left arm had disappeared, and I was finally able to reach my hands to the floor without feeling severe pain. (Something I haven’t been able to do since the accident). Not only that, the gloominess that had clung to my body like a shadow, disappeared, and I went home feeling light and free. I continued to feel the jaki releasing from and exiting my body for a week or so after the treatment. Then I began to feel warmth spreading, slowly but surely throughout my entire body.

After that first visit, I returned to the center several more times for treatment. I finally found relief from the pain and eventually my painful symptoms disappeared. I now receive Tao Shiatsu once per week in order to maintain my health.

Regular treatment has helped me realize how much my lifestyle choices have affected my body over the years. I have led a busy life in service of others, and I think these symptoms were really those old sores that have been ignored and buried finally crying out to be healed. I smile to think that, with each treatment, another old deep wound or small hurt is healed and my Aura (energy field around my body, referred to as the Ki body in Tao Shiatsu) gets clearer and shines more beautifully.

In addition to healing physically, I’ve also noticed a shift in my mental habits. Where I used to get all twisted up around an idea before I even knew it, I am now open to follow the Ki of a situation. Strangely enough I find synchronicity present everywhere around me. I am always in the right place at the right time and I can’t help thinking that my luck has turned for the better.