Movement Shiatsu
Postgraduate Programme

Postgraduate Certificate Course

What is the Postgraduate Programme about?  

This course is a masterclass with Bill Palmer, the originator of Movement Shiatsu, a style of work in which the client is more active within the therapy, in which the therapist assists the client's process rather than performing 'diagnosis' and 'treatment'.

The skills Bill will teach include (click each to see more detail):

The course is structured with a large amount of individually tutored practical work to make sure that you can really integrate this approach with your normal Shiatsu style. The insights and techniques are meant to ENHANCE rather than replace your normal work

What do you get from the course?  

Successful Completion of the course obtains a Postgraduate Certificate from the School for Experiential Education. In addition, at the discretion of the course leaders, participants may be given authority to advertise themselves as practising Movement Shiatsu. This authority may not be given immediately the course finishes, but when we judge you have integrated the work into your practice.

Since all teachers on the course are MRSS(T), the hours count towards post-graduate training required for MRSS certification and Continuous Professional Development.

Finally, and most importantly, we expect the course to re-vitalise your Shiatsu, to make your relationships with clients more contactful and spontaneous and, hopefully, make your work and life more fun.

What is the structure of the course?  

Residential 1:
The course will start with an intensive residential course covering:

  • The Three Basic Principles of Movement Shiatsu and how to apply these within any form of work.
  • Three archetypes which support all forms of therapeutic communication.
  • How to do Shiatsu in positions which stimulate and challenge the Six Divisions in the client
  • Learning a sequence of exercises which strengthen the Six Divisions.

Throughout this residential we will be forming the group, setting up individual support for each participant during the year and doing lots of practice.

Mentors:
Each participant can choose a personal mentor to help them integrate these skills into their own style of practice during the Postgraduate Year.

Three weekends once every two months:
After the residential there will be three non-residential weekend courses in Bath. Each weekend will consist of two days, one day learning new material about the Six Forms of Touch and Developmental Movement, one day concentrated on each participant learning to integrate the new material into their Shiatsu Practice.

Residential 2:
The course will finish with another Residential in which the focus will be on personal development and in using the information taught during the year to explore yourself and change your own life. We believe that clients only respond to work which the therapist has digested in themselves, so we try to make sure that each person has experienced the function of the techniques taught instead of just understanding the ideas.

This residential will end with a graduation party.

What is the cost of the course?  

The total cost of the course is £975 per person. If you pay the total fee in advance then you will receive a £75 discount. There are a limited number of reductions for people on low income. In addition we ask each person to pay their own accommodation costs for the residentials, which comes to £175 per per residential, including full board.

If you choose to be supported by a mentor during the year, then you should also budget for a monthly meeting or telephone call with them (about £20 per session). you should also arrange for your own accommodation in Bath on Friday and Saturday nights for the weekend courses.

You may, by arrangement, pay the fees by regular instalments

You are responsible for finding accommodation for the weekends in Bath but we will supply you with a list of good B & B's or Hotels and a few families which will take you in for the weekend.

What are the dates?

Residential 1: September 18th-21st 2008 in Gaunts House, Wimborne, Dorset

Weekend 1: 15/16 November 2008 in Combe Grove Manor, Bath

Weekend 2: 17/18 January 2009 in Combe Grove Manor, Bath

Weekend 3: 14/15 March 2009 in Combe Grove Manor, Bath

Residential 2: May 14th-17th 2009 in Gaunts House, Wimborne, Dorset

Gaunts House is a rambling mansion set in vast estates in Dorset. Richard Glyn, the lord of the manor, has turned it into a charitable foundation for alternative education. It is a wonderful location to do an intensive residential, especially in September and May, when we are there.

Combe Grove Manor is a hotel on the outskirts of Bath, overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys in England. It has extensive leisure facilities, including a swimming pool, tennis courts, a gym, golf, saunas and steam room. Any participant of the course who wants to stay in luxury at the hotel can do so at a significantly reduced rate.

To apply, or for more information, please fill out the following details, and we will send you an information pack and an application form.

  
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Integrating Talking with Bodywork

Most often, the period of talking before starting bodywork is used for two purposes: to initiate contact and to make a start on diagnosis. In most cases, the transition from talking to bodywork is slightly artificial and it is not obvious to the client how the subject matter of the talking is related to the bodywork.

We see this transition to be of primary importance. Talking can have two modes : "descriptive talking" and "expressive talking". In descriptive talking, the client is not really in touch with themselves, but only with the stories they have built about themselves. In general, during descriptive talking, the client is not embodied. They are talking about themselves, not from themselves. It is hard to go from descriptive talk to bodywork because the energy is not focused in the body. This is as much the responsibility of the therapist as the client. If you ask questions like, "What did you feel after the last session?" , "What did you eat in the last week?" , "Why are you feeling angry?" then the client is forced into descriptive mode. When it comes to the bodywork, the therapist is forced to do a separate diagnosis such as a Hara Diagnosis to get in touch with the client's body. there is often an intellectual struggle to integrate that diagnosis with the subject matter of the talk.

Expressive talking, on the other hand, expresses a present feeling or sensation, so naturally involves the body. You can notice when someone starts to talk in this mode because their breathing changes (they may hold their breath or take a deep breath) and their muscles change tone. It is easy to make the transition from expressive talking to bodywork because the therapist can bring the client's awareness to something that is happening in the present within the client's body. For instance: "Do you notice how your shoulders have tensed up while you were saying that? Stay with that feeling of tension and feel how it effects your breathing. Now if I stretch your arm, notice how the tension is fighting the stretch. See if you can breath into the shoulder joint. Does that change the way in which the stretch feels? Now if I touch here and here, can you feel how your tension changes?" etc.

As this sketch shows, there can be a smooth transition into bodywork and the 'diagnosis' of what to do in the Shiatsu becomes part of the dialogue between client and therapist, and makes sense to the client, so that they can remain aware and active within the therapy.

In this course, we show how to facilitate clients into expressive talking, to maintain that embodied contact during the transition to bodywork and how to integrate that dialogue into the bodywork phase.

Making Shiatsu Interactive

Shiatsu is often done in silence, with the client passively lying in a position and the therapist working on them. There is nothing wrong with this, and, in certain situations, such as a client who is hyper-active and focused in the mind, may be the most appropriate form.

Movement Shiatsu, however, specialises in working with chronic conditions, and in these cases it is usually necessary for the client to become more active in the therapy, so that they can become aware of their engrained postural and behavioural patterns and to start to experiment with them.

In the course, we show how to make Shiatsu more interactive by involving the client more in the energetic work. Helping them to move into positions in which they can feel the weaknesses and the compensatory tensions for themselves and helping them to feel the effect of the bodywork.

We also show you how to design customised exercises and experiments for the client to practice outside the Shiatsu so that they can feel how to soften their habitual patterns and make the connections felt in the sessions for themselves.

Using Movement to develop awareness

Bill practised Zen Shiatsu for ten years before he started to develop Movement Shiatsu. The development was inspired by the fact that for many clients, although they felt relaxed and better after the Zen Shiatsu treatments, the chronic issues in their life and health were hard to change.

Movement Shiatsu was developed to deal with hard to change patterns in chronic conditions. The client needs to be more aware of their body and the detailed patterns of their energy so that they can challenge them and make fresh choices in their normal lives.

Movement brings awareness because it involves change. So Movement Shiatsu alternates periods of Shiatsu with periods of movement or postures like yoga, in which the client can feel their own weaknesses and strengths, and can feel the effect of the bodywork. This allows them to take this awareness into the rest of their life and starts a process of organic and developmental change.

Processing emotional issues through the body

When dealing with chronic issues, it is almost inevitable that they will have some strong emotional content, if only the sense of shame, failure and frustration that goes along with having to deal with a difficult, long term problem. Sometimes, the stuckness in the chronic state is actually a protective shield against strong feelings from the client's past. In any case, when the client starts to loosen the condition, emotions will come up.

Instead of trying to calm the energy down when emotion arises, in Movement Shiatsu we teach the client to process the emotion through the body. This is a very specific skill which is enormously useful in normal life. Instead of being swept away be the emotion or entering an emotional drama, the client learns to contain the emotion without blocking it; to be energised by the emotion rather than be a victim to it and to use the energy of the emotion to free themselves of its cause.

This is a therapeutic echo of the process learnt in Tantric Buddhism, where strong emotions are not avoided but, instead, are transformed into their pure energetic driving force, which can liberate the practitioner from their original karma.

Introducing experiments to change stuck patterns

Movements, exercises and postures are all forms of experiment, with which the client can learn to get a handle on their dysfunctional patterns. The aim is to make them active rather than passive victims to the condition.

As well as these purely physical experiments, there comes a time in most therapy when the client needs to take the insights learnt in the Shiatsu sessions into their normal lives. Their normal web of relationships and friendships expect them to be their old self and their friends and lovers can actively resist change in the client.

In the course we will show how to deal with this issue and how to help the client to experiment with their 'expected' behaviour and how to gently confront the pressures from their extended circle. In most cases, we find that this increases the depth of the relationships the client has and frees both them and their friends.

Using Developmental Movement and the Six Divisions in Shiatsu

The physical experiments and movements used in Movement Shiatsu are derived from the Developmental Movements through which babies learn to grow into their bodies. In doing these archetypal movements, babies are also learning the physical bases of important life skills such as "Knowing and Getting what you need", "Rejecting what is harmful", "Turning desire into action", "Choosing to put up with discomfort for a greater future reward".

Both the physical movements and the life skills can be related directly to the Six Divisions and Bill has shown how the movements develop in babies along the precise lines of the meridians that make up the Six Divisions. He believes they form the archetypal pathways along which the mind learns to inhabit the body and so can also be the road to re-discovery in adults who have, for some reason, lost contact with their body.