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Excerpt from:
SHIATSU-DOH, Improved Health and Enhanced Living Through the Japanese Healing Art
Pgs. 137 - 138

“HEALTH CARE” VERSUS “SICK CARE”
What you Learn as a Shiatsu Practitioner
We need to start distinguishing between “health care,” that is, how to keep people healthy, and “caring for the sick,” or how to treat people when they are ill. Today’s medicine is focused on caring for the sick, and medical technology is developed for this approach: CT scans, laser operations and artificial joints for example. Health care is a more educational field and has two main components: building up the body through good nutrition; and stress management, including exercise. These two elements go hand in hand in health care education.

What makes people ill? Viruses and bacteria are, of course, factors but they are over-emphasized. Preventable factors are not given enough attention. The more chemicals we put into our body, the more complex the new diseases will be. The chemical war against disease is over and we have lost! New approaches to health are needed. We must find out how to keep people in a healthy balance, a state of homeostasis. Exercise, yoga and tai chi all contribute to maintaining hormonal and immune system balance.

The nervous system, endocrine system and immune system are based in the centre of the brain Achieving a peaceful state in the part of the brain is the key to balancing the body. If that part of the brain is happy, the rest of the body is healthy. The effects even reach the subconscious level. Sometimes we think that the subconscious level is out of our reach, an uncontrolled place. Through shiatsu, we can send messages straight to the subconscious. The skin, which is the body’s largest sense organ, and the brain cells were originally the same part of the embryo; one part developed into the skin and the other part became the brain. So skin- to-skin contact is like brain-to-brain contact or even spirit-to-spirit contact. A healing spirit is critically important in a practitioner, and the patient needs to be open to healing. In part, the healing can come about through a spiritual exchange. To send a message to the subconscious level, shiatsu uses thumb pressure, which travels through the sensory nervous system to the spine. The messages ascend the spine through neurons to the thalamus. From there, the message goes to the cerebral cortex and the conscious level.

The thalamus, hypothalamus and pituitary are all very close to each other in a lined system, so shiatsu’s message-sending influences them all. The hypothalamus starts to produce hormones, which stimulate the pituitary gland, which in turn produces other hormones that are sent through the body to other glands. Quite often there can be a time lag between the shiatsu treatment and the pain relief. The messages set off chemical changes, but the hormone glands have no ducts; they are isolated in many parts of the body, so the hormones must travel through the bloodstream. Some hormones go into the bloodstream and take longer than the nerve reaction to reach the target areas. Sometimes a patient may feel a reaction the day after the treatment, then be highly energized the following day. That is nature taking a little time about these things. If a patient has suffered with a physical problem for a long period of time, then the link between the nervous system and endocrine system will have been inactive for along time. One or two treatments cannot turn that around, but there is always a possibility, if the right messages are being sent to the right places, that change may happen over time. Sometimes the cerebral cortex is completely occupied by the awareness of pain; it takes a while for messages of healing to come in from the subconscious. It is rather like the development of any ability in a person.

Shiatsu respects the rule of the body’s own healing mechanism If there is a healing system there, shiatsu will use it. Using the body’s own healing mechanism is natural, causes no harm and doesn’t burden the health care system with huge costs. As I said earlier, governments spend a lot of money on health care, but what they are really spending it on is care for the sick. If they could just turn that around and spend it on true health care, they would save money, improve people’s health and nurture a more productive society. With the massive use of medications, more and more people end up depressed. With shiatsu, more and more people would feel uplifted and be healthier. That is because shiatsu brings to life the systems that make people feel happier. Mood change is one of the roles of hormones, and their production is stimulated by shiatsu.