Shiatsudo Blog

The Gall Bladder (GB) channel or meridian zigzags down the side of the body from the outside of the eye to the fourth toe, affecting our ability to consider and take different directions both literally and psychologically. A tense client may sometimes feel too stiff to turn his head to look both ways before crossing the road, for example. But in our information-rich lifestyles, it is often decision-making that is affected. After a busy day of meetings and report-reading, a client may find herself unable to make even the simplest daily decisions, such as what to eat in the evening. This feeling of ’stuckness’ can be quite emotional too, and apply to big life decisions, such as where to live, what job to take, who to spend one’s life with, whether to have children now etc.

Feelings of unwarranted irritability or fretfulness can often indicate that this meridian needs a good stretch and release. Stretching the side of the body in a shiatsu treatment can very effectively be done using the ‘broken lance’ stretch that brings the arm above the client’s head and over the therapist’s knee in side position. This pulls all the scrunched-up ‘zigzags’ further apart from each other, and afterwards that grumpiness can vanish like magic, leaving ‘a path lying clear ahead’, as another client told me!