Monday was my first introduction to a Shiatsu massage.
What’s amazing is that Seymour Goblin, founder of the School of Healing Arts in Pacific Beach right here in San Diego, created his own form of 'Zen Touch' Shiatsu-- a type of energy massage that initially drew me to his school months ago.
Instead of going with the Zen Touch Shiatsu massage program, I landed in the Yoga Teacher Training with Shawna Schenk at the very last minute.
Since then, Shiatsu has stayed on my mind. All I knew was that it is a holistic form of massage therapy that dives deeper than most- it consists of applying pressure to specific acupoints throughout the entire body and connects with gentle shaking and pulling by the technician on the client’s body in order to release emotional distress that we hold within our body.
Today, I received Shiatsu from an amazing friend I made through Shawna-- a current Yoga trainee of hers named Andrea, who has been studying and practicing Shiatsu for over five years now.
"The issue is in the tissue” she told me-- our mind tends to forget/neglect/suppress many of our memories because we can not handle to think about all of the things that we fear or that sadden and hurt us all of the time. But our body?
Our body remembers everything.
Stored deep in our skin, in our fascia (connective tissue fibers that form bands beneath the skin to attach, stabilize, enclose, and separate muscles and other internal organs) are all of those memories that the mind hides. All of the issues we have never dealt with. Since this was my first time receiving Shiatsu, she warned me of this-- that many times, memories or substance of this nature surface throughout the hour. Andrea said to just accept them-- notice them-- be present, and allow them to pass by or release.
Just like in Yoga, she suggest I set an intention.
That intention for me was guilt.
Guilt that I have for abandoning a lover of five years to come to San Diego all the way from Michigan. The guilt that followed when I started dating someone else. The guilt that still sits deep inside of me and rots and that I cannot let go of because others have not forgiven me for my wrongs. Guilt that I constantly see in others and advise they just "let it go." Yet after all this time, I'm sitting here in a puddle of my own. It's like I was always afraid to let go because that meant moving on and that meant moving on without the ones still clinging to that blame.
That’s when Shiatsu happened.
I laid on my stomach and started to breathe, deeply. Just as one would in a yoga practice.
Inhaling and exhaling loud enough to be audible as she started applying pressure to certain spots around my spine, the vertebrae, what holds us up and connects everything-- the nervous system and the brain, the mind and body.
At first, I was too excited to start letting go. I was too deep in thought of what was to come. Yet the gentle shaking and applied pressure began to encourage release. I started to see a deep copper triangle behind my eyes, bringing my attention inward. Like a hot little pool of lava, I got lost in the waves of how orange and red they shone and surrendered to the sensation.
Like being on the edge of meditation and a deep REM sleep, dreams came to life. Visions began.
I heard my own voice turning to myself and saying “This life started 17 years ago.” Implicating this was not the first one? Or that my journey began 17 years ago from now, literally, which would have put me at age 7. Almost 8.
Another vision came to mind- a journal entry I wrote in one of my first journals, stating I could not yet die, even if I wanted to (living in a home where I felt broken)-- I remember writing “I can't go. I've got people I’ve got to be there for.” I remember being 14 and finding that journal entry all over again, in the midst of my poetic teenage angst, circling that little quote and writing over the top of it:
"ONLY AGE 8"
Is that really when it all began?
So many memories came up that I never seem to trace back to in my current life. Things that were important in earlier ages. Being at the cottage in the middle of Michigan when my Uncle taught me to swim and had been drinking and he dropped me long enough for my head to slip under on the shore of Lake Michigan. How he let me put makeup on him. How he looked and still looks just like my dad.
They say in energy work like Shiatsu that the emotions stirred and memories that rise don't necessarily have to come up because they were traumatic-- but they could be deeply woven in to our fibers because they effected us a great deal without our even being aware. Was this one of them? And why? I just let it pass.
The color yellow began to show brightly. Warm zones. There was no anxiety, just a pause.
Until she moved to the space right behind my heart.
What was the intention? It always comes back to the guilt.
I made a conscious effort to release it. Up until this point, she had been shaking and pulling and pressing on points to release. Working vigorously on the space behind my heart, I saw a vision of Wes. A face that left without much more than a few cold words, a face I never thought I would be far enough away from to miss. A face I have avoided recalling all the details of.
His teeth were there in his smile and he was so close I could see his pores and how olive his skin was and how happy he looked and how I wasn’t there with him and he was still as happy as he always was when he laughed. Trying to turn it off, trying to let it go, I didn’t. I held on to it until I couldn't anymore.
Like she was in my own head, Andrea's hands slowed and both moved to cover each other and rest at the back of my heart space for just long enough for me to know this was it- this was the release and she could feel it coming.
I didn't feel guilty once I let that image go.
I remembered the face and then it was gone. And I was still here and I didn’t want to cry but wanted to cry all at the same time.
A dark, ugly forest green shone like a screen in my head. A murky, diarreah green. Green: the color of your heart chakra. It was all here. It was cloudy and dingy and no good to look at-- it swallowed me.
A vision of Andrea popped in to my head and we were on the side of an empty highway when she pointed to the green exit sign before us and said “Look at all the exits. All of the ways out.”
It was so real. I felt right on the edge of drifting to sleep. And there was always another exit. Exit after exit after exit, swimming past them.
She knew right where to touch. Rubbing my belly brought me comfort. In the beginning she had mentioned why physical touch is so important in Shiatsu- touch is the first sensation we feel as a human. In the womb, there is liquid surrounding us-- pressing on our skin, creating pressure, that nest, that sense of comfort. It’s all we know until we catch our first breath. I embraced that comfort. Saw yellow again. Vibrating like mad. All that sat was silence.
At the end, all that left was guilt.
Five days later, I can still feel the vibrations. The spots that are more vulnerable. The blockades that found their way out.
What's truly beautiful about any form of holistic healing is our INTENTION- through yoga, the focus on getting better, inspiring, self-awareness. In Shiatsu- the release, the letting go of, the diving deeper.
I remember a time when I didn't believe the mind and body were so connected.
Yet here I stand, more in my shell than I have ever been. Smiling.
High off of only breath.
Of movement.
What’s amazing is that Seymour Goblin, founder of the School of Healing Arts in Pacific Beach right here in San Diego, created his own form of 'Zen Touch' Shiatsu-- a type of energy massage that initially drew me to his school months ago.
Instead of going with the Zen Touch Shiatsu massage program, I landed in the Yoga Teacher Training with Shawna Schenk at the very last minute.
Since then, Shiatsu has stayed on my mind. All I knew was that it is a holistic form of massage therapy that dives deeper than most- it consists of applying pressure to specific acupoints throughout the entire body and connects with gentle shaking and pulling by the technician on the client’s body in order to release emotional distress that we hold within our body.
Today, I received Shiatsu from an amazing friend I made through Shawna-- a current Yoga trainee of hers named Andrea, who has been studying and practicing Shiatsu for over five years now.
"The issue is in the tissue” she told me-- our mind tends to forget/neglect/suppress many of our memories because we can not handle to think about all of the things that we fear or that sadden and hurt us all of the time. But our body?
Our body remembers everything.
Stored deep in our skin, in our fascia (connective tissue fibers that form bands beneath the skin to attach, stabilize, enclose, and separate muscles and other internal organs) are all of those memories that the mind hides. All of the issues we have never dealt with. Since this was my first time receiving Shiatsu, she warned me of this-- that many times, memories or substance of this nature surface throughout the hour. Andrea said to just accept them-- notice them-- be present, and allow them to pass by or release.
Just like in Yoga, she suggest I set an intention.
That intention for me was guilt.
Guilt that I have for abandoning a lover of five years to come to San Diego all the way from Michigan. The guilt that followed when I started dating someone else. The guilt that still sits deep inside of me and rots and that I cannot let go of because others have not forgiven me for my wrongs. Guilt that I constantly see in others and advise they just "let it go." Yet after all this time, I'm sitting here in a puddle of my own. It's like I was always afraid to let go because that meant moving on and that meant moving on without the ones still clinging to that blame.
That’s when Shiatsu happened.
I laid on my stomach and started to breathe, deeply. Just as one would in a yoga practice.
Inhaling and exhaling loud enough to be audible as she started applying pressure to certain spots around my spine, the vertebrae, what holds us up and connects everything-- the nervous system and the brain, the mind and body.
At first, I was too excited to start letting go. I was too deep in thought of what was to come. Yet the gentle shaking and applied pressure began to encourage release. I started to see a deep copper triangle behind my eyes, bringing my attention inward. Like a hot little pool of lava, I got lost in the waves of how orange and red they shone and surrendered to the sensation.
Like being on the edge of meditation and a deep REM sleep, dreams came to life. Visions began.
I heard my own voice turning to myself and saying “This life started 17 years ago.” Implicating this was not the first one? Or that my journey began 17 years ago from now, literally, which would have put me at age 7. Almost 8.
Another vision came to mind- a journal entry I wrote in one of my first journals, stating I could not yet die, even if I wanted to (living in a home where I felt broken)-- I remember writing “I can't go. I've got people I’ve got to be there for.” I remember being 14 and finding that journal entry all over again, in the midst of my poetic teenage angst, circling that little quote and writing over the top of it:
"ONLY AGE 8"
Is that really when it all began?
So many memories came up that I never seem to trace back to in my current life. Things that were important in earlier ages. Being at the cottage in the middle of Michigan when my Uncle taught me to swim and had been drinking and he dropped me long enough for my head to slip under on the shore of Lake Michigan. How he let me put makeup on him. How he looked and still looks just like my dad.
They say in energy work like Shiatsu that the emotions stirred and memories that rise don't necessarily have to come up because they were traumatic-- but they could be deeply woven in to our fibers because they effected us a great deal without our even being aware. Was this one of them? And why? I just let it pass.
The color yellow began to show brightly. Warm zones. There was no anxiety, just a pause.
Until she moved to the space right behind my heart.
What was the intention? It always comes back to the guilt.
I made a conscious effort to release it. Up until this point, she had been shaking and pulling and pressing on points to release. Working vigorously on the space behind my heart, I saw a vision of Wes. A face that left without much more than a few cold words, a face I never thought I would be far enough away from to miss. A face I have avoided recalling all the details of.
His teeth were there in his smile and he was so close I could see his pores and how olive his skin was and how happy he looked and how I wasn’t there with him and he was still as happy as he always was when he laughed. Trying to turn it off, trying to let it go, I didn’t. I held on to it until I couldn't anymore.
Like she was in my own head, Andrea's hands slowed and both moved to cover each other and rest at the back of my heart space for just long enough for me to know this was it- this was the release and she could feel it coming.
I didn't feel guilty once I let that image go.
I remembered the face and then it was gone. And I was still here and I didn’t want to cry but wanted to cry all at the same time.
A dark, ugly forest green shone like a screen in my head. A murky, diarreah green. Green: the color of your heart chakra. It was all here. It was cloudy and dingy and no good to look at-- it swallowed me.
A vision of Andrea popped in to my head and we were on the side of an empty highway when she pointed to the green exit sign before us and said “Look at all the exits. All of the ways out.”
It was so real. I felt right on the edge of drifting to sleep. And there was always another exit. Exit after exit after exit, swimming past them.
She knew right where to touch. Rubbing my belly brought me comfort. In the beginning she had mentioned why physical touch is so important in Shiatsu- touch is the first sensation we feel as a human. In the womb, there is liquid surrounding us-- pressing on our skin, creating pressure, that nest, that sense of comfort. It’s all we know until we catch our first breath. I embraced that comfort. Saw yellow again. Vibrating like mad. All that sat was silence.
At the end, all that left was guilt.
Five days later, I can still feel the vibrations. The spots that are more vulnerable. The blockades that found their way out.
What's truly beautiful about any form of holistic healing is our INTENTION- through yoga, the focus on getting better, inspiring, self-awareness. In Shiatsu- the release, the letting go of, the diving deeper.
I remember a time when I didn't believe the mind and body were so connected.
Yet here I stand, more in my shell than I have ever been. Smiling.
High off of only breath.
Of movement.