Lorenzo Bonaiuti
THE WORKSHOP OF THOUGHT
t.me/lorenzo_bonaiuti_shiatsu
SHIATSU: perspective, detail, the big picture, vitality, and the reflections that shape an approach.
I’m reworking an old reflection shared on Facebook years ago, almost a research note…
Most people who come to us for treatment present a painful condition, an imbalance, a symptom that completely absorbs their attention at that moment. This is so true that the person often identifies themselves entirely with that condition: the detail of the picture has become the whole picture; there’s no perspective because the person’s attention is so focused on the “problem” that there isn’t enough depth of field to see anything else.
So this sympathetic detachment (the secret to any sincere definition of work is that it is always an oxymoron), this distant compassion, this absent presence necessary for depth of field, is the responsibility of the practitioner. It is the practitioner who must be aware that they are always dealing with a person, unique and unrepeatable, in their entirety, with their own emotions, a neck, two arms, two legs, a stomach, with their own experiences, etc.
To do this, they may or may not embrace their painful manifestations: if they do, they approach them, take them by the hand, recognize their starting point. Even just by listening, welcoming. That’s where the journey begins.
From the symptom, the practitioner traces the signs (the symptom is what the person describes or highlights; the signs are what the practitioner picks up by listening, between the lines, or feeling with their own hands), and the journey unfolds toward (if possible) understanding the origin of the manifestation. The process then continues by tracing and connecting resonant areas and points, functional and energetic connections.
The practitioner can return to the initial manifestation several times, even with just a light touch or intention: it’s an exercise in perspective.
Try closing one eye: now bring a finger very close to the other open eye, until it’s so close that it completely fills your vision, even closer, so that it’s impossible to see the entire finger and you can see a joint, the skin.
Now quickly move it away, still holding it in front of you. Right now, you can see the finger, but you can actually see the room you’re in and various things beyond and around it. Now quickly move it closer, and now slowly move it away. Repeat this test several times: each time you move it away, you’ll notice different details in the room that you hadn’t seen before, further away, further to the side.
This is precisely an approach that I find particularly useful and meaningful: designing treatment so as to constantly bring the symptom back into the bigger picture, tracking the signs, connecting and listening to the resonances.
Creating this connection profoundly stimulates the recipient’s vital resources, their entire energetic and physiological system, and enables them to increasingly re-understand that manifestation (which previously absorbed all their attention) within the bigger picture, promoting its rebalancing. We have stimulated movement and communication in the recipient’s energetic system. We have rediscovered the depth of field, the perspective necessary for them to frame and manage the situation differently.
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