Shizuto Masunaga

Masunaga Shizuto (Japanese増 永 静 人, born 1925 in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, † 1981) was a Japanese psychologist, university teacher and shiatsu therapist. His concern was to combine Western and Eastern approaches to healing sense. Inspired by in-depth studies of Chinese medicine he developed his own style of shiatsu, called Zen Shiatsu. At the IOKAI Shiatsu Center ), founded by him in addition to Japanese learned many Western students Zen Shiatsu, which has found widespread use in this way not only in Europe and the U.S., but worldwide.

Family and Education

Shizuto Masunaga was born in 1925 in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan and was through the work of his mother from childhood familiar with the traditions of Oriental medicine. She had studied at Tamai Tempaku, a therapist and teacher who played for the Renaissance and the development of Anma, a company founded on the principles of Chinese Medicine form of Japanese massage or bodywork in the early 20th century an important role. It was Tamai Tempaku, who in his 1915 book " Shiatsu Ryoho " (shiatsu therapy) introduced the term Shiatsu and 1925 was instrumental " Society for shiatsu therapists ' role in the founding of the.

Continuing the family tradition Masunaga began his studies at Tokujiro Namikoshi, formerly a student of Tempaku Tamai, then founder of " Clinic for Pressure Therapy" (1925 ), and finally director of the only directly approved by the American occupation authorities in Japan after the war and later officially licensed teaching Institute for Shiatsu.

Masunaga acquired his qualification in 1959 Namikoshis Japanese Institute of Shiatsu (日本 指 圧 専 门 学校, Nihon shiatsu Senmon Gakko ). In the next 10 years he worked at this institute as a teacher. As Namikoshi Masunaga was also interested to find a scientifically justifiable, that is, in the context of Western parameter formulated access to the principles of Chinese medicine and, on this basis, to develop a theory for the empirical experiential clinical efficacy of Shiatsu. His research was based on the mediated in his training in body work knowledge, his practical clinical experience, but also on his own research in the field of traditional Chinese medicine as well as on his academic training as a psychologist.

Studied had Masunaga at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Kyoto, where he held a chair of psychology after graduating. He was a member of the Japanese Psychological Association and the Japan Society for Oriental Medicine. His later attempts to develop a theoretical approach that allows Shiatsu could be better integrated into the system of western medicine, must be understood against the background of his most psychologically informed access to medical history. It must be noted that the approach of Chinese medicine is holistic and therefore associated per se psychosomatics.

Masunaga, a passionate smoker, died in 1981 from lung cancer, diagnosed late and therefore unexpected, at the age of only 57 years.

Masunaga Innovation - Zen Shiatsu

In 1968, Masunaga Shiatsu his own institute, which IOKAI Shiatsu Centre (医 王 会), where he weiterentwicklete its approaches and gave to his students. During the late 1970s, he visited with Wataru Ōhashi, one of his students Iokai, USA. There he taught in New York and San Francisco. In 1977, his book Zen Shiatsu: How to Harmonize Yin and Yang for Better Health, launched in the U.S., Central America and Europe. The addition of "Zen", it is said, was missing in the title of the original and may owe its addition to the zeitgeist of the 1970s and perhaps even an intent on marketing publisher. The book itself provides only a brief introduction to philosophy, history and the therapeutic approach of shiatsu, but without dwelling on the philosophy of Zen. It is not an academic treatise, but rather an attempt tried a new theoretical approach with illustrated instructions for diagnosis and specific body work to join, to serve as his English-speaking circle of students as a study aid. Masunaga itself demonstrates here his therapeutic work, followed by, well illustrated, instructions for self-help. At the same time it is also a simple introduction to the theoretical foundations of core elements of Chinese medicine as well as a description of the developed by the author and his students method for diagnosis and treatment.

"Zen Shiatsu " is the only publication Masunaga, which was published during his lifetime in translation. From the number of its Japanese publications only his book "Imaginary Exercises " ( English translation of the original Japanese title ) is not yet available in English. This translation was by Stephen J. Brown, who intended to study with Masunaga, taken after his unexpected death in 1981, in attack and published under the title " Meridian Exercises. The Oriental Way to Health and Vitality" 1987. Brown writes in the preface that it had been his study of the Chinese classics, especially ancient treatises on physical exercises that Masunaga led to the realization that it was necessary for patients to learn the meridians and their effects not only during a shiatsu treatment, but even to work through certain physical exercises with her body and its sensations and energy flows. " Based in his knowledge and experience of thesis exercises as a Means of working with the meridian, hey Formulated a new system of meridian exercises to complement shiatsu as the ideal method for health and well-being. Imagery Exercises < ref < [ italics for emphasis introduced into quote ] < / ref > were the logical next step to Zen Shiatsu, shiatsu Which had elevated to a " way", or spiritual path. "

In Meridian Exercises we find the Masunaga in Zen Shiatsu only summarily treated approaches theoretically sound, detailed and convincing points out, both in terms of the importance of the Haras for diagnosis and body work, the meridians and their supplements, and the interplay of Kyo and Jitsu, as well as in terms of the complexity of the relation characteristics of soma and psyche. The book is also much more clearly based on the teachings of Taoism and Buddhism. From today's perspective, one can say that both Masunaga by the development of his approach, and his disciples and followers have been through practice and teaching the formerly perhaps fashionable chosen name "Zen Shiatsu " content and successfully made ​​it method a trademark for Masunaga and have also promoted Shiatsu in general.

Masunaga == The method and its special features ==

An essential achievement of his work was the extension of the classical meridian system. While in TCM and derived forms of the 12 main meridians divide in

• 6 meridians, which begin and end (lung, colon, heart, small intestine, pericardium, triple warmer ) in the fingers, or
• 6 meridians, which begin and end (kidney, bladder, stomach, spleen, gall bladder, liver) in the feet,

Masunaga, this system has expanded to all the meridians are found in the legs and hands.

While Namikoshi Tokujiro and Serizawa Katsusuke the acupuncture points (つぼ, tsubo ) treated in Shiatsu therapy and explored, Masunaga developed a kind of Shiatsu to treat the meridians. So there are not so much individual points as in TCM in the foreground, but the entire Meridian as such. Due to his work as a psychotherapist he saw the work of his Shiatsu also reinforced in the psychological field.

This treatment of the meridians was relayed by his students. Some of the students of Masunaga later went abroad and have developed quite well as various types of shiatsu, which significantly from the original Shiatsu, as practiced Masunaga, differ. The most famous in Europe are Ōhashi Wataru Sasaki Pauline, Saitō Tetsuro, Endō Ryokio and Akinobu Kishi.