May 31st, 2023

I have been a qualified Shiatsu practitioner for 30 years, and I find myself with a re-formed clarity and understanding of exactly what it is that I do. This has come about through my journey with horses, and my fascination at the places where the practices of Shiatsu, Equine Facilitated Therapy (EFT) and teaching Chi kung overlap, inform and flow into each other. This place is of course, the Tao, also known as the Field, the Quantum Field, or any other description of the interrelatedness of Chi (for the rest of this article I will refer to it as the Tao – but you can insert your favourite term!)
 
The incredible interconnectivity, pliability and reactivity that we find in the Tao 
 
Many years ago, when I used to teach Shiatsu to new students, I would explain that the concept of Chi is hard to describe – we translate it as ‘energy’, but our cultural understanding of energy doesn’t equate to the incredible interconnectivity, pliability and reactivity that we find in the Tao. The Tao, as we Shiatsu folk know, is both vast and robust, reliably encompassing all of time and space, and also delicate and sensitive to changes in attention, intention and experience. As a new Shiatsu student, I started in a place where the concept of noticing anything non-physical was just other people pretending, and my Chi kung practice was basically an arm waving and breathing practice. Over the years of practising Shiatsu there has been a steady, almost imperceptible, shifting from my reliance on my felt, physical sense to my openness and trust in the Tao. 
 
The form or shape of my Shiatsu practice has remained pretty much the same through this period. It changes only with specific reason, and I have few regular routes for different presentations. My path (geographically) around the physical body provides a reliable structure, leaving me free to individually vary or colour what I do, and directed by what I feel in terms of speed, pace and rhythm, pressure depth and quality, Meridian(s) worked, points and stretches used, and the quality of my interaction and intention.
This all contains the session, leaving space to consider the felt sense, the non-verbal and non-specific. 
 
My Chi kung teaching developed over a similar time frame, and my understanding and use of the Tao crept up on me until I realise that I now have a tangible understanding of how my energetic state shifts and flows. I teach by tuning into the field so that I understand where and how my students might be better affirmed, encouraged or offered feedback for exploration.
 
The sensation that ripples through the Tao,… can subtly shift any experience, symptom, or level of ease
 
Chi kung, as you will likely know, is a practice or set of practices of breathing, postures, moving and intention, where we notice, exercise, balance and develop our Chi. We experience this as sensation, impression, vibration, or quality of feeling, thinking, and being. Teaching Chi kung (for me) involves using language that encourages students to feel the non-verbal (funny, I know; language to encourage non-verbal understanding). This might include noticing any sense of stillness or movement, or imagining what texture or colour we can feel in the Dan Tien. I encourage students not just to map their body, but to be intrepid and travel through it. When we pay attention to, and harmonise, our Chi, the sensation that ripples through the Tao, through our own body, heart and mind, can subtly shift any experience, symptom, or level of ease.
 
How does this overlap with EFT? Having rekindled my childhood love of horses as a 40-something year old through a riding school, I felt a little like I was circling around something important, but slightly missing the point. I bought a horse who connected with my heart, who was both terrified and terrifying, and my journey with her took me through various forms of horsemanship, Equine Shiatsu, and eventually to EFT. In EFT, I was able to understand my relationship with horses in relation to myself and in the relationship with the Tao that I had gained through Shiatsu and Chi kung.
 
Studying Equine Shiatsu was an interesting moment on this journey. My experiences of offering Shiatsu to horses were not what I’d fantasised they might be. I would arrive at a yard to ‘treat’ a horse and would often find a horse who was less keen to have a Shiatsu than to get out of its stable for a while, or have some agency. The owner, on the other hand, might be keener to improve their dressage or jumping scores. On researching my dissertation, I wondered if there would be a consistent Five Element imbalance in horses with comparable behavioural problems. What I found, when I worked on five different horses, all with similar issues, was that they all had different element imbalances underlying their behaviours, but they all had the same Five Element imbalance that their owners had. This piqued my interest and curiosity and the relationship between humans and horses became my fascination, of course through the lens of Taoism, courtesy of years of Shiatsu and Chi kung.
 
This led me to study horse and human relationships, eventually training in EFT. It felt like the missing link between Chi kung, Shiatsu and horses. EFT relies on the non-verbal understanding, broadcasting and communication of horses, what I understand as their interaction through the Tao. Horses are social herd mammals, and prey animals. A herd is in constant communication which is (obviously) largely non-verbal. Communication is important for horses, socially, and also for survival. They need to know how others in their herd feel, and draw comfort from knowing and being known by their companions. When we are in proximity to a herd, however small, the horse or horses will be feeling into us via The Tao, exploring the quality and feel of our Chi, which of course encompasses our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. Horses know who and how we are, with no reference to whatever social structure we exist in or the story we tell ourselves. 
 
When working with clients in EFT, there is an emphasis on feeling the bodily and energetic sensations, on the felt sense of a situation or experience. We might guide a client through making a connection with themselves and a horse, and using the feedback from the horse to know when something true or useful is uncovered (horses enjoy congruence, when someone is knowing and understanding and feeling the same thing, or vibrating at a unified frequency with them). Through their presence, acceptance and general Taoist mastery, via the process of Limbic Resonance, they make it easier for people to feel connected with their true selves, their essence.
 
Often when facilitating with the horses, I have had to learn patience and trust – nothing happens on my schedule - however if my client and I are able to be present with ourselves, something will always happen. The horses don’t feel any pressure to create or manifest a learning from each session, and I’ve had to practise acceptance. The lack of forcing or manipulation is the only way towards a true vibrational alignment, an acceptance of what is, personally, relationally, environmentally, and universally.
 
To help clients explore and understand connection, we ask questions about the location of a feeling (where is the sadness in your body?) and questions to encourage curiosity (what colour, texture, shape, consistency, or pitch does the sensation have? Might it be moving or still? Might it have a message or a word associated with it?) This verbalising practice somehow by-passes our thinking- and understanding-brain, leaving the shouldand ought to's behind as a starting point, and then lets understanding and integration follow on later, helping us to connect our thinking- and feeling-brains in a curious, yet non-judgemental way. 
 
In EFT we use a body scan exercise to further support clients in being able to access the wisdom of their body with, of course, the assistance of the horses, who are experts in, and recognise, this wisdom. It is the Tao, or the Field, where the horses largely live (ha ha – horses live in fields), where clients are able to join them as their unique selves, experiencing a freedom and connection that has the potential to ripple throughout their lives in a gentle and powerful cascade.
 
So, this understanding of the Tao from Horses, Chi kung and Shiatsu, combines to become more than the sum of its parts. The reaction of the horse, when a truth (something that isn’t subjectively right, but is a true vibration) is stumbled upon, is often to become very still and somehow expand energetically. It becomes planted, grounded and spacious, and the truth is able to resound throughout the client and the Field (the actual field as well as the vibrational one). I have learnt this sensation from the horses, initially by noticing them change their state in the presence of clients, and then to recognise the sensation within myself. I have practised feeling this greater truth with them. My equine friends, having such expertise, show me when I start to favour control and thought over openness and listening; they become bored and ignore me, and only pay attention when I shift back into connection with the Tao.
 
The verbal, but non-cognitive, language that we use in EFT has been transformative for me in both Shiatsu and Chi kung. In addition to Shiatsu language (such as depleted Spleen, or sinking Lung Chi) I am able to grasp and explore more variety and subtlety of information from the Tao, in the way that the horses have shown me with their reactions when a client or I manage to name, or embody a sensation.
 
My aim is that a student or client becomes as harmonious an expression of themselves and their connection with the Tao as possible, that the truth vibrates harmoniously
 
I’m sure that the evolution of my practice hasn’t stopped, but putting a flag in the sand where I am now, I would say that I have clarity in my aim. I am not attached to a ‘small’ outcome (perhaps of making a client feel better from their grief / hip pain / fatigue) - that feels like micro-managing and possibly imagining that I have some kind of omnipotence. No, my aim is that a student or client becomes as harmonious an expression of themselves and their connection with the Tao as possible, that the truth vibrates harmoniously. Sometimes this, in itself, will result in resolving symptoms, but it might also mean letting go of resistance to a truth, or dropping defences, allowing a person to fully experience their uniqueness.
 
As I work in Shiatsu, I respond to what I feel in the client's body. For example, maybe I connect with a depth, quality and pace that seems to feel more consistent, more harmonious, but I make no interpretation, I just move on once I feel like the horses (if they were present) would have stilled. If I can’t find such a sensation then I change something I’m doing – move to a different Meridian, change my pace or focus. Perhaps at the end of the session, just like after practising a Chi kung form, I wait in stillness, sit with my client, hand on Hara, and wonder what the quality of their and my Chi is. I get a picture, a colour, or a sense of a density, perhaps a movement or texture. I keep it non-verbal, but as clear as possible, to both anchor it and to then be able to communicate with the client afterwards. 
 
We practise tuning into the Energetic Field, without having to name it
 
In my Chi kung practise, I have learnt from the horses how to be patient, not to actively search for a moment, a resolution or an aha moment. I know that if I continue to be present, using attention and intention as I move and breathe through a form, at some point something will shift and change, even if transiently. In my classes I play with words, analogies and feedback until a student hits a vibration in themselves and the room vibrates with a greater harmony. We pause after practising each form to notice the quality of our being – of our Chi. At that time, we practise tuning into the Energetic Field without having to name it (as the Tao Te Ching tells us – the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao), but by feeling it. In doing this we get to compare how we feel after practising different forms, both in ourselves and the wider group, and each person develops a kind of feeling-language that is only referenced to their own experience.
 
The Tao is the vehicle by which Chi travels and is the wider whole of all that is. It is, essentially, non-verbal vibration. The more ways in which I can access, understand and describe this wordless information, the more competent and fluent I feel in using it for information, treatment, and understanding, and the more I can attempt to apply language in translation. Through knowing Shiatsu, Chi kung and horses through EFT, I am learning more and more of the infinite language of Chi.