Is Shiatsu effective in case of disability?

When I was commissioned this article, the enthusiasm was the first basic reaction, because we enter a particular area, made of attention to detail, of difficult feedback, of deep respect.

I immediately thought that I would have asked for the help of a long-course shiatsu operator to navigate this vast topic that makes this discipline interact with disability.

I then turned to Franco Montanari, a shiatsu operator and Ayurvedic massage therapist from Lodi, who for years has also advised in Ischia and Rome.

With some reluctance to talk about what he himself called " a delicate subject ", he however lent himself to making his experience available to children with disabilities.

Why does a disabled person approach shiatsu? What are you looking for?

It doesn't happen in such a schematic way. It is not a direct request of the person with difficulties, who due to his disability complains about a problem and as a last resort he turns to me to try to solve it. No, it has never happened to me in these terms, also because it is not my job and the area is very delicate.

In my experience it has always been a path matured step by step, and then developed in such a way that even I had not foreseen it. Maybe I treated a parent, a relative who then proposed to me "take a look" at the son or the special friend, to give them the same well-being he had experienced.

Often certain experiences, profound and formative for me, happened by chance. These special people, and they really are, they never asked me for anything, they didn't look for anything to me, but they accepted what I could put at their disposal in my small way and at the same time I put myself in a condition of listening to their whole person.

Who is sick, but really bad, seeks refreshment, peace, tranquility and enters a dimension of profound sensitivity . Shiatsu can represent a communication channel in this dimension, because we enter the energy sphere that no handicap can limit. Pay attention to what I am telling you, because it is my discovery of hot water, but if I had not experienced it I would never have thought about it too much: the energy of our being does not suffer accident injuries, it is not "brain-damaged" ", Does not die with the death of the body !!!!

Can you provide some practical examples from your experience? What feedback did you get?

Every situation is entirely by itself, in terms of modes, emotions, difficulties, times, as always when it comes to holistic disciplines. We are not faced with rigid signed protocols. That said, I can bring you a couple of emblematic and profoundly different experiences.

Marco, a 20 year old quadriplegic boy after a trivial accident at sea; Anna is a young woman victim of a medical malpractice in an irreversible vegetative state after a prolonged period of postoperative cerebral anoxia.

My approach was to put myself at their service and listen, not with ears, what their being screamed.

Marco was angry with the world, with life. He hoped he would die and perhaps he continues to do so even fifteen years later. With him I worked on energy perception, on difficult breathing for him, on listening and controlling the diaphragm. Many do not know it but people with tetraplegia are plagued by uncontrolled muscle spasms that can cause them to fall off the wheelchair or bed.

This is a serious problem that indicates how muscle tension can go beyond paralysis and how contractures must be dissolved even from within. It has been a long, difficult journey, made up of refusals and initial closures, trial and error.

Marco was missing his yang part, which had been trapped in depth. It was all yin, heavy, stiff, closed, cold, lunar, dark, and to me, like everyone, could only provide this part of it that had become everything. I could not work on the abdomen, I could not treat Hara (abdominal area just below the navel, place of energy, but also of emotions, ed ), I could not start from where he could not hear me.

These are evaluations that I did experimenting and making mistakes, but with the openness and willingness to listen to his inner voice that guided me to unlock and disperse these yin forces in order to approach the 3 levels of yang. The bladder meridian was for some time the priority channel of communication from which I began to feel that contact had been established.

I certainly couldn't solve Marco's situation, but I was able to help him get in touch with himself, breathe more deeply, energetically stimulate his internal organs and dissolve certain psychosomatic contractions . Now a colleague is continuing this journey with him with perseverance and dedication.

Anna was a profound human emotional test for me. I don't consider it a professional experience, because it goes further. A beautiful girl, reinserted in her family context, in a vegetative state and suffering from a degenerative tumor : life has not been spared with her.

When I meet her I understand that I can't talk to her, or rather we don't have a conventional conversation, she doesn't see me, but she hears me with both hearing and smell. My first concern is to be accepted by you. The mother confirms to me that both my voice and my smell are welcome, because otherwise she would have closed her eyes and would have started crying. Whoever is in this condition undergoes a physiological stiffening of the tendons which leads to a contracture of the wrists, hands and feet.

It must be touched gently because it is like a porcelain doll that can break . What I do? Where do I start? What I am looking for? My only instinct, because in this case I was wandering in the thickest fog, leads me to touch her feet, to massage them while I talk to her telling her my name, who I am, what I do. I realize that he gives me confidence, he emits a loud sigh, like a moan, and little by little he abandons his leg as far as his possibilities are, because even the hamstrings do not allow the total extension anymore.

I stretch both feet and hands and initially nothing else. I must be respectful of him. He didn't choose me, he didn't choose to be touched, he didn't know me and couldn't express himself. His cognitive functions are completely compromised, but his instinct is there and he watches. I decide to dedicate them a couple of days a week and to approach it slowly, also because I don't know where to start, I will let you know later.

The foot is the entrance door, it likes a lot until I decide to insist on the reflex point of the stomach, I feel I can work on the Earth movement, on its centrality as a presence within his family, which revolves around her, to his needs and his times. The first reaction is strong, it emits a deep sound, an apparently moan, retracts the leg, but then spreads it towards me and lets me do it. I feel his stomach respond, his breath reaching out. He closes his eyes and relaxes.

Now I cannot reproduce all the experiences with Anna because they were so many and in spite of the fact that there is no more I still talk about them at the present; I learned a lot from her and I was able to touch the vital force that each of us possesses and that must be moved, solicited, and released. When Anna left I suffered a lot on the one hand because the bond that had been established between us was magical. On the other hand, her soul was finally free to run and range beyond the physical limits that had imprisoned her for years.

Can I conclude by saying that Shiatsu is effective therefore also in the case of disability?

Mah I can't answer you in these terms. It depends on what you are looking for, if you set yourself ambitious goals in an absolutist way or if you are looking for small answers that for you can represent great successes . It's always a question of Yin and Yang!

These are certainly strong experiences and opportunities for personal growth that no academic training can give, which is why they are even more valuable. Shiatsu, the energetic reactivation, the restoration of delicate and imperceptible balances have an important value of their own that must be related to individual situations and their contexts.

Thank you for this testimony that has also enriched me simply by listening to these passages of life lived.