Shiatsudo Blog

The Shiatsu Society has its own publication called the Shiatsu Society News.  It is distributed to everyone who is a paid-up member of the society, and according to the publication itself, it has a circulation of about 2000.  I’m not sure if you can buy it anywhere - I doubt it, and I’ve never seen it on sale.  I don’t expect the Shiatsu Society News would be of any interest to anyone outside of the shiatsu world anyway.

It is a nice, glossy magazine that comes out quarterly and usually features some articles on shiatsu and related topics, a Letters section, a bit of advertising…..the usual sort of thing.  My wife had a book review published in it a while ago that I published ages ago on my old blog.  I’ll repost it here soon.

The most recent issue has an article called “Attracting Clients: What Really Works?”,  which obviously caught my eye.  Marketing is not really my strong point.  My wife is better in this department and a while ago, sent out a questionnaire to some of her clients to find out why some clients who really enjoyed their shiatsu never rebooked a shiatsu treatment.  She followed up and noted that one client “just put shiatsu on the backburner for a while”.  Finally, she noted the results from the feedback she got.

Back to the Shiatsu Society News article - which interviewed several shiatsu practitioners and asked them what marketing and promotion techniques worked best for them and what didn’t work.

The Best List includes general networking and word-of-mouth, taster sessions, having a good flier or postcard that describes what shiatsu is.  The Worst List includes paid adverts, listings in directories (because people don’t really look up “shiatsu” per se) and the piece de resistance: referrals from The Shiatsu Society - of the four practitioners interviewed, only one practitioner had had a referral from the Society…..in 10 years of membership!  That’s pretty sad.  I myself have never had a client referred to me from the Shiatsu Society; and I begin to wonder what the role of the Society is……

Any Shiatsu practitioners out there have a “best of” and “worst of” marketing list?  Any other practitioners have better results from referrals from the Shiatsu Society?  Any clients feel like commenting on what they found most effective and least effective?  I would love to hear about it; drop me a comment.

Tags:Marketing, Shiatsu, shiatsu society

My daughter is now 3 months old and my wife has found some time in her baby care schedule to write a little bit about her experience of labour.

Like most women during their first pregnancy I looked forward to the birth of my daughter with a mixture of happy anticipation mingled with fear. Labour is difficult to describe and no amount of reading can prepare you for your own experience. Coping with the pain is one of the things women worry about when they approach their due date; conventional pain relief options offered in most labour wards basically boil down to Entonox (gas and air), pethidene and an epidural, as needed. Some wards have a birth pool as well, and many women rent or buy a TENS machine to help them cope. Complementary therapies can also offer pain relief during labour, and obviously, with Bevan being a shiatsu therapist, I was in a perfect position to have him help out and test the effectiveness of shiatsu and acupressure for pain relief during labour.

I found regular shiatsu through early to mid-pregnancy was very helpful in reducing the constant nausea and weariness I felt. After that, once I became less mobile, shiatsu was great for stretching me out and reducing tension. I suffered a bit from pain in my symphysis pubis, and acupuncture was helpful in relieving that. But on the whole I had a problem-free pregnancy.

Finally my due date was approaching (we were also due to move house on the same day…which was also my birthday!)…so we used acupuncture points to prepare for labour every week from 36 weeks: Spleen 6 to ripen the cervix, Stomach 36 for stamina and Gall Bladder 34 to soften my ligaments. I was pretty annoyed to be overdue – I really wanted to give birth in a Birth Centre or even at home, rather than in hospital. But in fact on the eighth day after my due date, when I was given a ’stretch and sweep’ of the cervix, the midwife said my cervix was already soft and very slightly open. Of course there’s no way to tell whether it would’ve been ripe anyway, and it could well have been the sweep that got things moving!

Later the same day I had period-like cramps from about 3pm, which faded away in the evening. I assumed it was nothing and we had a normal evening of eating dinner and watching TV, and went to sleep at about 11:30pm (if we’d only known, we’d have turned in a lot earlier!) About 1:30am I started feeling mild contractions about 10 minutes apart, and after the sixth figured I should get up and see if the TENS machine worked. I can really vouch for it; I did not think it would work but it really helped a lot. My contractions then became 5 minutes apart, so we phoned the Birth Centre I was booked into. To our horror, the midwife on duty was off sick, so we were rerouted to a nearby Hospital, which luckily also has a Birth Centre. By the time we arrived there, at about 3:30 am, they were coming 3 minutes or so apart, and that’s more-or-less how they stayed for the next 15 hours (after about 10 hours the rate dropped gradually to every 5 mins as I started to tire, and Bevan used Stomach 36 which helped increase the rate to every 3 mins again).

During labour, I found that a combination of TENS machine, Entonox and strong accurate pressure on either Liver 3 (on the foot) or Bladder 32 (on the sacrum) was necessary to alleviate pain during each contraction. There was a very noticeable (50%) decrease in pain on application of the pressure, which Bevan tirelessly applied. (I think most dads probably get to take a break or two during their partner’s labour…but not Bevan! He also missed three meals, though he fed me mini chocolates and apple juice through a straw.) I used the birth pool for four hours while I dilated from 5 to 8 cm, which was great – I obviously could not use the TENS machine while in the water, but the effect of the water was equivalent to that of the TENS machine, and Bevan continued to apply various pain relief points while I was in the pool.

I didn’t notice the transition from first to second stage, possibly because I also had pethidine around then. It didn’t make me feel queasy luckily, just a bit spaced out, which did help. I think that’s also when my waters broke naturally, with a strange popping sound in the middle of a contraction. I had insisted they not be broken artificially.

By the time I was fully dilated I was too tired to push effectively, sadly. My baby daughter Samantha Ruth was finally born with the help of a kiwi (ventouse) suction cup as she was still positioned rather high after 2 hours of pushing - sadly with a small episiotomy. Incidentally I accidentally left the TENS machine on full blast all through the stitching, and I’m sure it helped a lot!

I used most of the pain relief options available to me, with the exception of having an epidural, and my impression and memory is that my pain was very well managed; all the methods we used were useful - and needed - and I never felt that I couldn’t cope with the pain. I must say, I was a little surprised at how effective the acupressure was for pain relief; the only downside is that the pressure needs to be applied fairly strongly and the analgesic effect is only effective while pressure is being applied (so birth partners need to have strong thumbs).

I think shiatsu and acupressure offer women a valuable additional source of pain relief that can be effectively applied in combination with conventional methods. Incidentally the points are relatively easy to learn and it is well worth considering learning a few of them with your birth partner. It can also help dads to feel more involved in the birth of their child, knowing that they are able to help their partners actively!

Tags:acupressure, labour, pain relief, Shiatsu

Mention something like aromatherapy or acupuncture or reflexology in conversation and most people will at least have heard of it, but mention shiatsu and more often than not you will be met with a puzzled expression…..leading me to try explaining it as “like acupuncture without needles” or “kind of like having someone do yoga to you” or “a mix of massage, stretching and acupressure” just to put the word “shiatsu” into some sort of context.

So I like it when shiatsu makes it into the national media. We need more coverage. It helps raise the level of awareness. With that in mind, I was pretty happy to see The Guardian’s article entitled “Hands on” in their “A working life” section last Saturday. The series of articles is, I think, meant to give an insight into different careers with a bit of a personal touch. A sort answer to the what do you do all day? kind of question that you might ask someone whose job you’ve never heard of.

If I put myself into the shoes of someone who doesn’t know anything about shiatsu though, I don’t think I would be left much the wiser about it after reading the article. I got the impression that Leo Benedictus (the writer) didn’t actually receive a shiatsu treatment before writing the piece, with the result that shiatsu was never really elegantly described in the article. So, although the article gives an idea of who Katherine Hall (the practitioner interviewed) is, it doesn’t really give an idea of what her job entails (that is what shiatsu actually is) and I think it could have benefited from a small description to help people who have never heard of shiatsu.

Shiatsu is often difficult to describe with words alone. Have a treatment, though, and you kind of “get it”. Get a professional writer who has had a treatment to describe it and we have a good chance of conveying in words what shiatsu is. After all, writers write for a living — they express ideas and experiences through words better than the rest of us can.

The closest we get to a concise description in the article in the Guardian is:

a massage discipline similar to the “tough tendon” technique she practised in Thailand

I suppose that’s a rough definition, but it doesn’t really define shiatsu uniquely enough for it to stick in someone’s mind. And many readers will also know nothing of this “tough tendon” massage either. Someone with no experience of shiatsu would not be able to go away and formulate a description of it in their own words. This isn’t the case for many other complementary therapies. For example, even though many people have never experienced acupuncture, they will often describe it as something like “it’s all about making your qi flow correctly by sticking needles in pressure points”.

Tony over on shiatsublogger.co.uk wrote about this last year. In his post on “Discovering shiatsu“, he makes the point:

what does the word shiatsu mean to most people? Very little and it needs some explaining. If I were to leave a business card lying around how would anyone know that shiatsu could do them some good?

Tiffany took a stab on her blog “Shiatsu….. dog or bodywork?“:

Shiatsu is based on principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Similar to Acupressure and using the same theories, Shiatsu can bring balance to the flow of Qi or energy.

This is pretty good, actually. It expresses nicely the aim of shiatsu and points out that it is similar to acupressure, so we immediately know that there will be some massage and that it has a component of TCM.

What else do we have?…..Maybe the shiatsu society can help? hmmm their home page is pretty nebulous:

A traditional hands-on Japanese healing art

and their “About shiatsu” section has the following as the opening sentence under the heading “What is Shiatsu?”:

Shiatsu is a therapeutic practice that can support individuals in moving towards greater health and well-being.

That’s great — I can move towards greater health and well-being, but what the heck is it?!! It is stressful enough if I have an ailment and I’m trying some complementary therapy in the hopes that it will help me. I don’t want to turn up for a treatment in an unfamiliar environment and have no idea what to expect…That definition could encompass pretty much anything in the realm of healthcare from nutrition to massage to exercise to a visit to your GP. Before I get too hung up though, they do have a better explanation further down the page:

a still, relaxed pressure at various points on the body with the hand or thumb, an easy leaning of the elbows or a simple rotation of a limb

Much better. It gives a nice impression of some of the key elements of shiatsu, so I think they should move that sentence up to the home page and really give people something tangible from the get go!

I also like Fiona’s description from her website:

Shiatsu is a dynamic hands-on healing system, originating in Japan, which uses the power of touch, pressure and gentle stretching techniques to balance the body’s energy system

Good stuff — it sums up where shiatsu was developed (Japan) and that it uses massage to balance the body!

All this has lead to me reconsidering how I describe shiatsu here at shiatsudo.co.uk. I think my basic description is a little vague:

a profound form of holistic massage that can greatly improve your quality of life

You have to read further to realise that it is clothed massage and encompasses stretching, joint rotations and acupressure points and so on. Definitely room for improvement there. I want to move towards a clearer description so people are left with an accurate impression of shiatsu. That way, even if they don’t ever book a treatment, at least they go away with some understanding. Far better in a hypothetical conversation that they will be able to say “shiatsu? oh I saw a website on that it’s acupressure massage to balance the Qi” rather than “shiatsu? oh I saw a website on that, but it made no sense”.

Getting a succinct description of shiatsu out into the public conciousness is vital for shiatsu to move forward. Without it we just wont experience the level of popularity that other therapies have. Anyone have any ideas? Drop me a comment. If you are a writer, even better!

Tags:Shiatsu