To control uncontrollable things – Autonomic nervous system and shiatsu

The Shiatsu Therapy Research Lab is located in Japan Shiatsu College where I learned shiatsu, and students and instructors have been studying about effects of shiatsu. I think it’s been about 20 years since the lab established. I also used to frequent the lab when I was a student and I can say that my view of shiatsu therapy was largely influenced by the reports of the lab.

The lab has been studying how shiatsu works on autonomic nerve system in various non-invasive ways. The autonomic nervous system is controlling body’s functions such as the heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, pupillary response, digestion, urination etc. The autonomic nervous system has two branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is a crucial system for us to survive, and it is dominant when you are in an emergency. Let’s assume you step on a yakuza’s foot by mistake, your autonomic nervous system instantly reacts and the sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant. Your heart beats fast and pumps up your muscles with blood. You breathe rapidly to supply more oxygen to exercise your locomotary system. Pupils (= iris diaphgram) get dilated so that you can get wider sight to see better if anyone who can help you is passing by or if more yakuza are coming to beat you up. That’s why it is called the "fight or flight" system.

The parasympathetic nervous system is often considered the "rest and digest" or "feed and breed" system, and it is dominant when you are relaxed. Your parasympathetic nervous system makes your digestive organs active and let your body have a rest so as to get you ready for the next fight or flight situation.

Such amazing systems are always working so that we can be staying alive. These nervous systems are autonomic, in other words, we cannot control them as we like. We cannot stop our heartbeats or juggle about our intestines in our bellies. If our any parts of our bodies could be controlled at will, it would be very dangerous, right?

The autonomic nervous system is not perfect and it sometimes goes wrong. If you have a digestion problem, and there is something wrong with your organ like an ulcer, in a sense, it is under control of your doctor. But if there is nothing wrong with your organ per se? If each organ can work perfectly, but they don’t function well as a system of digestion?

Some people meanly say that a dysautonomia is like a trash can - when a patient is complaining about a functional problem especially related to autonomic nervous system and a doctor cannot find any organic problem, the doctor put it into a huge trash can named dysautonomia.

I'm not a specialist of this field, but I think that modern medical science has been developed by breaking down a human body into smaller parts as much as possible, and see if each part is OK. If each part works properly, the whole human body should work properly. It's so logical thinking.

Asian medicine, however, see the human body as a whole. It is focusing not “what” but “how”. In modern medical science, they look for a wrong part and remove it or fix it. In oriental medicine, on the other hand, they look for a different part (or system) and try to balance it with other parts (or systems). Maybe because our ancestors didn’t have technologies to check each part one by one and find out organic problems of a living body, they had no way but to see a human body as a whole living system. Maybe because that is the way oriental philosophy tends to work.

To say honestly, I used to downgrade the oriental medicine. I thought “the flow of qi” or “ying and yang” or such things were unscientific and occult things, and everything about our human body must be able to be explained scientifically. 

I’m changing my mind, though. Personally, I feel the way of thinking in Asian medicine is helpful when I have to deal with certain kind of health problem like dysautonomia. I think the reports released by the Shiatsu Therapy Research Lab might help me to figure out the puzzle I’m struggling with every day.

Anyway, we are living in the modern society, and we should take advantage of both ways of medical thinking, should’t we?

The next time, I would like to share some of the reports mentioned here.

Don’t underestimate the training of shiatsu!

From time to time, people from other countries visit me and ask me to teach shiatsu. Most of them are travelers with some experiences of manual therapies and want to learn quickly during a few days’ stay. I always explain them that it takes three years to learn shiatsu at least, and they’d better go to a shiatsu college or a private school where great masters are teaching authentic shiatsu.

At the shiatsu college where I learned, we practice standard procedures again, again, and again for three years. If you just want to know how to do the procedures, maybe about a week is good enough. It’s not so complicating thing. To know the procedures is not to master shiatsu, though.

We practice the same standard procedures each other in the same class for three years. Everyone does shiatsu treatment for exactly the same points in the same way, but each classmate does his or her own characteristic shiatsu. Shape and size of the hand are different. Some have warm hands and others don’t.  Powerful, mild, sharp, soft, fast, slow… really, all shiatsu are different. Over three years, we realize each other that we are getting better and better with strictly following the prescribed procedures but at the same time keeping his or her own characteristics.

Bruce Lee said, “The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.” After finishing three years training at the college (it takes four or five years for some students), the student becomes a full-fledged shiatsu therapist and embarks on an endless journey to discover his or her own shiatsu. Some continue to follow the standard procedures, and other try out other styles of shiatsu, or totally different manual therapies. Even though the details of the procedures are forgotten, a firm foundation of shiatsu, however, has already seeped into all of us.

Sometimes I have shiatsu treatment of my classmates, and I feel that they are moving ahead on their ways. It really inspires me.

Oh, I just love the expression “float comfortably in emptiness”! I wish I could do shiatsu like this someday…