We ended last time with a small promise: “Next time, we’ll look a little more closely at the single word ‘pressure’ — from where the word comes from, to what happens within the hand.” Here, we begin to keep that promise.
When we write “pressure,” what are we pointing to? A dictionary will tell you it means to push, or a force being applied.
But in shiatsu, “pressure” is not simply the force of pushing. The weight of the one giving it travels from the soles of the feet, up through the hips, along the arm, and out to the fingertips — and that whole path becomes a single act of pressure.
Let us return for a moment to where shiatsu began. When Tokujiro Namikoshi was six years old, he laid his hands on his mother as she lay ill. More than stroking, more than rubbing, she told him that pressing the hardened places straight down, on a single point, felt best of all. Her words still run at the very heart of the word “shiatsu.”
The palm holds many small sensors for receiving whatever it touches. So the hand listens to the firmness and the breathing of the body that day, and quietly shifts its strength and its angle. This, we believe, is where it differs at the root from a fixed, predetermined force.
What we hold dear is a simple wish: that pressing someone’s body might, at the same time, gently press against the back of each person’s heart. When a tightened shoulder softens, the spirit somehow loosens a little too. And so we hope to support both body and spirit alike, quietly, with the palms of our hands.
Within the single word “pressure,” the memory of a hand that thought of its mother still flows today. Next time, we’ll move on to where that hand presses — the story of the point. We hope you’ll stay with us, unhurried, a while longer.