There are two aspects to therapy.

The first is being able to open up, to relax your defenses and to allow the therapist to support and help you. This is the YIN side of therapy and most of Shiatsu focuses on it: the client lies down, relaxes, opens to your touch and allows their energy to transform and heal in this friendly, supportive environment.

The second aspect, the YANG aspect, is learning how to maintain this openness and flexibility outside the therapy, in the difficulties and conflicts of normal life.

This is the theme of this workshop and we will be exploring it by showing how to maintain Meridian balance not only while lying down and relaxed but also while getting up and while standing your ground against the pull of gravity.

Lying down and being touched is powerful because it takes you back to infancy and gives the basic message that things are alright, that you can relax. However, when you stand up, you are an adult again, and the adult finds it difficult to let go of their habits of tension and protection. This workshop will help to make a connection between the healing of the infant and the life of the adult.

We will show techniques for doing Shiatsu while a person is standing and moving. Also we will show how to help the client to integrate their body while moving using the meridians as pathways of connection. This will demonstrate how Shiatsu can be used as a system of somatic education.

Bill says about his work: "My central belief is that we, as individuals, are not wise enough to know what is best for another person. Therefore, I don't try to understand what to do by diagnosis and theory. Instead, I focus on helping people to feel into themselves through their body sensations, and trust their natural life process to do the therapeutic work. My work is now more like education than therapy. Since I believe the meridians to be the pathways along which the mind learns to inhabit the body in childhood, they provide one of the best ways of helping a person's awareness to reach hidden and blockaded parts of the self. The meridians are the guides, teaching us about ourselves through the body."

He has written over forty articles exploring this approach, some of which are available online."

For a Bill's biography click here

To see a photo-text gallery giving a flavour of the courses and their content click here

To Book Contact: ESI Heidelberg: Tel: +49 (0) 6221 80 45 36. Email:esi-heidelberg@shiatsu.de