Monday, July 04, 2005

Helping others: Shiatsu Healing Massage

Shiatsu practitioners, shiatsu teachers, students and graduates of shiatsu schools are ordinary people who choose to make helping others their living or hobby.

Do you remember that lovely warm feeling you got last time you helped someone? The look of appreciation on their face, their expressions of gratitude? Didn’t that just add a whole new dimension to your life, giving you something to look back on and say to yourself, “just in that moment I felt truly wonderful“?

Helping others is a way of enriching life, of satisfying our own energy-needs. You don’t have to be a saint: for example Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and many others who wrote of the satisfaction of giving service were simply helping themselves to fulfilment in their own way.

No need to go off to work in a street-clinic in Calcutta; you can get that lovely warm feeling of satisfaction back again whenever you like and help yourself to stress relief, meet new people, learn a caring skill, put your compassion to work, possibly change your life... or simply help family and friends learn to relax, as you relieve symptoms of common ailments, induce a most wonderful sense of well-being... and perhaps find balance in your own life.

If this is what you are looking for, there is a flexible study programme to suit your own requirements. As an absolute beginner you have the choice of low-cost afternoon, evening, weekend or intensive (full-time) training. You also have the option to combine courses, saving yourself time and money.

What are your individual needs and circumstances? Do you have time on your hands - or are you in a demanding job? Do you have a natural gift, or do you need to learn the skills? You may be a bodywork professional seeking an add-on to enhance your basic therapy - or are you an absolute beginner? Is your aim to become a qualified Practitioner? or simply to learn enough to treat family and friends? Or to meet like-minded people and enjoy learning together?

Just one thing makes you the same as any other student: the knowledge that you are unique. You choose the course to suit your particular needs.

You can complete shiatsu training in under two years, or spread over three or four. Shiatsu courses - except the intensive ones - are cyclical and modular, so you can start any time and, if you miss a session, easily catch up later.

You learn by discovery, finding the answers for yourself, owning your knowledge rather than being handed the tutor’s to memorise and recite. By professional assessment time you absorb the learning into the cells of your bodymind and perhaps begun to develop true understanding.

Our Society is a member of the General Shiatsu Council. We welcome members from all nations, races and beliefs. The Zen approach to Shiatsu has no religious affiliation.

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