Shiatsu
Shiatsu is a Japanese word that literally means "pressure with the fingers". The basic principle of shiatsu is pressure applied to the surface of the body.
Shiatsu is expressed through a complex massage in which the fingers and even the elbows are pressed onto certain points of the body. This digitopressure technique originated around 2000 years ago and up to a few years ago was practised exclusively in Japan. Today it is being spread throughout the world.
Shiatsu is mainly a preventive therapy; it is used to maintain good health and for solving health problems and translates into a deep-seated feeling of well-being.
It is not a medicine; it merely aims to create a condition of greater well-being, vitality, equilibrium and harmony providing the person treated with optimum conditions for living. It is effective in all those cases where discomfort, alteration, imbalance and disharmony appear as symptoms and ailments in the person treated.
Shiatsu helps to:
- reduce stress and tension;
- calm the nervous system;
- level out an emotional and psychological situation;
- improve digestion;
- soothe sport related injuries;
- strengthen the body and mind;
- improve vitality and health;
- increase awareness and control of the body.
The aim of Shiatsu is to restore the "circulation of energy", which when unbalanced either qualitatively or quantitatively, causes physical symptoms such as contractures, tension, acute or chronic pain, sensations of heat or cold.
The Shiatsu therapist has a holistic conception and works not so much on the localised problem but in a way that activates the "flow of energy" all over the body. The treatment takes place on special mats called "tatami" on the floor, so that the therapist uses not only muscular strength but also the force of gravity to carry out stretching manoeuvres that on a raised surface would be limited.
The person being massaged wears cotton overalls, lies down and relaxes to appropriate music, letting their body give in to the hands of the therapist.