Zen Shiatsu
Create space for body-focused healing and wellness
In a culture dominated by multi-tasking, material distractions and compulsive screen time, it is easy to feel disconnected and overwhelmed. Many of us have lost the ability to sit in peaceful stillness and feel centered within our body, mind, and breath.
Zen Shiatsu is a creative, compassionate, and embodied approach to healing and wellness. It takes the position that all people are inherently healthy, innately whole, and able to heal themselves from the inside-out.
Zen Shiatsu is a Japanese form of massage therapy that involves applying pressure to specific points on the body to promote relaxation and effect change on the physical, emotional, and metabolic level. Housed within these channels is Qi – the animating life force – that we experience as movement, communication, respiration, digestion, communication, thoughts, and spirituality.
Each session resources the body to return to a relative state of balance that best supports you in your daily life and improves overall well-being. It is rooted in the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine and can be likened to acupuncture without needles.
It supports the body by relieving tension, reducing stress, promoting better circulation, and restoring balance to the body’s energy flow (Qi). It can also alleviate various physical and emotional ailments, such as headaches, back pain, mystery pain, digestive issues, anxiety, and fatigue.
Messages from the Body
Tension, pain, and depression are messages from your body asking for attention, care, or healing. Feeling sick and tired gets overwhelming when your body doesn’t know how to reset or operate in a different way.
Physical dis-ease and emotional or mental pain often come from a sense of separation and/or unresolved issues held in the body. Reconnect and heal every aspect of yourself as you return home to a place of authentic peace, connection, and wholeness.
Utilizing the knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), western anatomy, and physiology, Zen Shiatsu offers a method of healing that sees each client as a whole and works to restore imbalances.
By viewing the body as one system it is easier to understand that when one part of the body is not energy-efficient other parts get pulled to carry the weight of what is not working. Bodies are vulnerable to over-functioning, adapting, and living in imbalance in an effort to continue to support us.
If left unaddressed, this imbalance will be expressed through physical, psychological, and emotional distress. The goal of Zen Shiatsu is to unify and optimize the system by amplifying the body’s innate wisdom. This is achieved by offering an increased range of motion, pain relief, and freedom within the musculoskeletal system.
As our body resets, comes back into homeostasis, and gets permission to live in the present, it can become more fully integrated with our emotional, mental, sexual, spiritual, and relational realms.
The work can be as deep or gentle as needed and is thus a safe and effective option for a broad range of conditions including osteoporosis and pregnancy.
Come Home to Your Self
Zen Shiatsu helps regulate the nervous system and promotes the optimal conditions for you to live in your fullest and most authentic version of yourself. While the goal may be to move through our lives living in the present moment, it is a challenging task.
Any amount of disconnection be it worry, shame, self-criticism, stress, moments of overwhelm, or not being able to react to life in a way that we need will disrupt our sense of safety and create blocks or defenses.
When we experience loss, fear, change, or trauma and aren’t able to resolve it as we go, these experiences can get held in the body. Unresolved ‘stuff’ can change the way we function on every level, bubbling up as symptoms such as anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and ill health.
Zen Shiatsu helps the body integrate what was and make space for the stories we have constructed about ourselves, others, and the world to shift, even if ever so slightly, so that you may embrace more possibility in your reality.
While therapy can support you with cleaning up your mental, emotional, and relational spaces, the body also needs help to exist in a more integrated and embodied way. The body is incredibly skilled at adapting to the challenges of life and can keep on going regardless.
Unfortunately, it is not as adept at resetting after times of stress, particularly if stress was experienced in our earlier years, or has become more of a chronic way of living.
Bodywork supports the body to return to a place of safety after a period of overwhelm, calm after a period of dysregulation, and balance after a period of high demand.
Process
During a Zen Shiatsu session, the practitioner uses their fingers, palms, and thumbs to apply gentle pressure to the body’s meridian lines and acupressure points. It includes gentle stretches to mobilize joints which helps to release blockages and restore the natural flow of energy, allowing the body to heal itself.
It is a non-invasive therapy suitable for people of all ages and health conditions. Multiple sessions may be recommended for optimal results, depending on individual needs.
Zen Shiatsu offers another port of entry for your nervous system to be held so it can release tension or any holding patterns. It is beneficial when you can’t seem to make a shift in the body, can’t change a reaction, or let go of an old belief.
Bodies get used to existing in familiar states and sometimes need support to catch up with work done in the mental and emotional realms so the whole system can respond to the world in new ways.
Zen Shiatsu can support and be the catalyst for the integration and embodiment of all the new possibilities you create during the psychotherapy process.
Sessions
Each session offers a comprehensive 45 to 55-minute full-body treatment, tailored to harness your body’s innate wisdom. The session commences with a brief consultation, where we discuss your specific concerns and preferences regarding physical discomfort, stress levels, energy levels, and sleep quality.
You will then recline comfortably, fully clothed, on the massage table as I gently assess and gain insight into how best to support your body. The treatment progresses methodically, starting with the lower body, then moving to the arms and torso, before transitioning to the back.
Zen Shiatsu utilizes various techniques including finger pads, palms, forearms, elbows, and knees to apply pressure along the body’s meridian channels, rooted in Chinese Medicine principles.
We conclude the session with a final abdominal palpation, allowing for a moment of integration while I step out briefly. Upon returning, I will discuss any observed changes and ensure your experience of the session. It is important to note that this modality is not about quantity but rather meeting you where you are. Adjustments can always be made to ensure sessions feel comfortable throughout.
For more information about Sophie Borchers, LMT and Zen Shiatsu Practitioner, click here