Shiatsudo Blog

Hope everyone has had a peaceful festive season and a happy new year.

Around the beginning of the year, there is always so much focus on exercise and health. You can’t open a newspaper or magazine without and article on “ten steps to detox” or “get fit with the 16 week army fitness plan”. It’s enough to make you feel inadequate if you haven’t made a new year’s resolution to completely overhaul your life while taking down the Christmas decorations.

In a way, the middle of winter is a strange time for new beginnings. Winter conjures up images of rest, storage, hibernation; The focus tends more inwards than outwards. It isn’t really a time for starting something new. Spring is a more logical season for initiating activity. Psychologically though, the start of a new calendar year has a very strong hold on us, even if it is just because we have the media saturating us with headlines.

So what should we do? Give up on the resolutions? Abandon all hope until the days get longer? Of course not! From a Shiatsu perspective, we could take a leaf from the theory of the Five Elements. In this model, Winter is associated with the Element of Water. Water is also the Element that relates to the Kidney and Bladder meridians…and to our Willpower. So, giving extra support and tonification to the Kidney and Bladder meridians can really help fortify us in our resolutions. Getting some good Shiatsu on those meridians is an excellent idea to help keep to your resolutions, but here are three things you can try yourself:

• Rub your hands together fairly vigorously until they are warm and then place them on your kidneys for a minute or two. Follow up by massaging your lower back and tail bone.
• Wrap a thin scarf around our waist on very cold days to keep the kidneys warm.
• Pay a little extra attention to any yoga, stretching or chi kung that aims at strengthening the lower back.

Enjoy the new year!

Tags:five elements, kidneys, willpower