Shiatsu meeting at Royal National Blind College, Hereford

Thank you to Jane Crabtree of the Royal National College for the blind (RNC) who arranged a small informal gathering for massage, shiatsu and other bodyworker practitioners to work with Sasada sensei. Mr Sasada comes from Japan every year to teach blind students at the college.

After some morning ki development run by Igg Welthy (Yo ki ho) we listened to Sasada sensei's method for assessing, treating and evaluating musculo-skeletal problems.

I put myself forward as the first demonstration client having discovered a little pain in hyper-extending my back. After checking my basic posture (and telling me that I had a little lordosis - the rounded shoulders of childhood!!) he suggested I stand in golfers stance with the toes and heels equidistant - even when doing the dishes!

On the table Sasada sensei showed us some basic assessment tests (knee to shoulder, knee out to side, as shown, and knee to other side) and based on the clients responses about pain he then chose the Bl (knee to shoulder), Sp (knee outward) or GB (knee across body) meridian to work on.

For me the work he did was the most educational. His approach is completely different to my own and even though I had met him 4 years ago I had no memory of how painful it could feel. In supine he bent my leg and tested Bl40, Kd10 and Bl57 in the crease of the knee. With my identifying Bl40 as the most painful he then proceeded to work it by leaning backward thereby getting a jitsu to release.

The GB treatment in side position was the most painful though with GB30 and the whole hip area being handled very deeply indeed without a supporting hand elsewhere to balance the work. Having said all that the treatment was effective with me being able to lean much further back than at the start. So thank you Mr Sasada.

And what have I taken away? Well quite a lot actually. All week I have been playing with how long I hold my position. I have always been drawn to stillness and so the fact that Mr Sasada held everything he did for 20 seconds intrigued me. I may, in the past, already have been holding shoulder stretches for that long but this week I expanded the possibility of holding for 20 into working Bl and Kd and into holding points. My idea of extending Ki seems to me less harsh than Sasada sensei's but that length of stillness draws me to extend further into the meridian and seems to have had benefits with clients deepening their own experience of the energy. Once again thank you Sasada sensei and thank you Jane.