The 3rd Shiatsu class last night was both unsuccessful and profoundly beneficial at the same time. To back up a bit first- it was last week, at the 2nd class, that we started learning the first part of a basic treatment routine and practicing on each other. I traded with 3 different partners throughout the class, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I found it interesting at the time that a common piece of feedback that I got was that I was applying more pressure than needed. So this time around, I was specifically careful of that, and tried to be much gentler.

So I was very surprised when my partner offered the same complaint after I treated him this week! In addition, I felt more physically uncomfortable this time- I had a hard time getting into the “shiatsu mode” and my legs hurt a lot as I kneeled during the treatment. But I was still really surprised to hear that my partner was experiencing pressure from me, when I was specifically trying to do the opposite.

I mentioned this to one of the teaching assistants, and he told me, “it’s because you aren’t working enough with your breath. You have to breath fully and deeply as you work, and then it will feel more gentle to him”. The problem was, that I am aware of this and was really trying to relax as much as possible as I worked, and it apparently wasn’t working.

What I found was that as much as I intended to be present in what I was doing with the shiatsu, I wasn’t able to fully let go of the mindset and stress I still had from work. When I tried to deliberately take deep, relaxed and full breaths, I was physically unable. It was as though something in me were clenched and wouldn’t let go. Because I brought this internal pressure into the treatment, unintentionally, it was inevitable that my partner experienced excess pressure from my touch. It was direct feedback on my inner state, which was coming through the treatment, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

Somewhat frustrated, I asked the same assistant, “I am aware that this is an important issue in general, but how can I practically make that separation when I come to class? I really tried to do it this time!”

He replied that I unique times in my day, on a break at work for example, or even in the bathroom, to make a conscious separation from anything else that there is going and  just create empty space for myself. In the case of the class, I could try to arrive a few minutes earlier just to do this. I needed to make a boundary for myself to breathe in.

I have really found this very striking, as this whole issue is a tactile reminder of a pattern that has actually affected my whole life for many years.

While we haven’t gotten to them in class yet, and I’m pretty confident that if I asked I would be discouraged from exploring it yet, I have already read quite a bit about the different meridians in shiatsu and chinese medicine, and their psychological and physical significance within those systems. It was really only because I found the system of Zen Shiatsu so compelling intellectually and intuitively that I signed up for a class in it in the first place. Anyway, one of the meridians is associated with the Large Intestine. In Zen shiatsu this meridian is associated both with the physical Large Intestine, as well as with the psychological and emotional processes that parallel it’s function in the body- namely, the processes of letting go and elimination, which create space for movement and new intake.

It appears that I have a chronic weakness in this meridian. Why do I think so? The truth is, it isn’t a coincidence that this issue specifically- the inability to let go of the rest of my day when I was treating in class- came up now. In fact, I have experienced this as a larger pattern in my life for years.

For years I have felt emotionally like I’m perpetually in motion, “schlepping”. This came across I’m sure 2 posts ago as well. I go, and go, and go. And I find it really hard to relax. Usually when I do something to relax, it doesn’t relax me. Often on Shabbos, I will feel anxious, or even get into an argument with my wife, and I won’t even understand what is bothering me- but I’ll just feel restless and uncomfortable. I frequently feel mild pain in my digestive system or constipation from stress. Most of this stuff has been going on for years.

Now what this all really points to is a general pattern of imbalance in my life. It is also self-perpetuating. For example, I started becoming more Jewishly observant 4-5 years ago. Generally, I have learned a great deal and perform mitzvos happily and conscientiously. But for some reason the act of getting up in the morning to go to shul(synagogue) in particular has always, always been seemingly unattainable with any consistency for me. I go sometimes, but more often I don’t. Now, I always daven(pray)- I don’t skip davening. But I frequently don’t make it to shul. Instead, I will daven on the bus, or at home.

There are 2 reasons that this is clearly connected in my mind. One, is that I have a hard time getting up in the morning. I tend to feel heavy and exhausted, and don’t want to face my day. Once I get going I feel fine, and when I do just get up and go I generally feel great. But I always struggle with the feeling of heaviness or dread in the morning. Now really, that is exactly what it is, heaviness. By experiencing life as consisting of burden after burden, pain after pain- and not easily feeling nourished or peaceful, and almost never experiencing personal space- מנוח – it IS exhausting!

The other reason- which also shows that this is self-perpetuating as well- is that shul is a special place in my day, where the time is there just for me and G-d. It is empty of anything else. I always feel space in shul (assuming it’s a good minyan). When I daven on the bus, it’s not terrible, but it’s more schlepping! It’s doing it in motion, I lack the space and the peace that comes with being in shul- there’s no space to breathe with what I am doing. It is the difference, to compare, between scarfing down a sandwich and coffee and work while you’re at your desk and in the middle of other things, and sitting in a calm, peaceful place, and deliberately and consciously eating your lunch, slowly and with relaxed joy and satisfaction. It is known that the first scenario is bad for one’s health in general. The second scenario describes the way I often do almost everything.

And really, all of this is all about breath. I realized it this evening. Near where I work there is a wonderful, small Sephardi shul where most of the men in my office attend Mincha and Maariv back to back (the afternoon and evening prayers, respectively). It is mostly a “working class” shul- with the beautiful, tremendous sincerity and respect that the Sephardi tradition has for tefillah (prayer) in general. I find the ancient, rising and falling chanting of the blessings and biblical verses between the prayers hypnotic and captivating. When I am there, I always feel,  but especially noticed today- that while at first when I arrive, I am usually very wound up and in “work” mode from my job, I gradually relax as the davening progresses. It’s like the beautiful, strong voice of the shliach tzibur (prayer leader) melts through my tension, and I experience this physically- I not start feeling emotional space and relief, but as I relax my stomach usually starts gurgling as things start moving in my digestive system again, freed by the evaporation of tension.

It was this familiar experience tonight that made me realize what I am missing with my current morning habits and how much that contributes to my general state of being.

In order to share some sense of how this may have developed- I basically spent many years of my life, in a lot of different ways, taking one emotional blow after the other. My parents divorced when I was 5 with recurring hostility between them. I always had to deal with the social consequences of having Tourette’s syndrome (various primarily physical involuntary tics)- often when people were nice to me, it was only for the purpose of mocking me, and in middle school, it wasn’t uncommon that I’d be physically attacked. There was the stress of having each divorced parent move repeatedly, and almost never feeling settled or stable. In high school (I went to a very small boarding school- only slightly more than 200 students), I remember when a very popular 16 year old girl was killed in a car crash; I already felt so backed up emotionally at the time that I couldn’t deal with going to the memorial ceremony- I just didn’t know how to cope, I thought I would go to pieces.

Then, after a summer of backpacking in Europe post high-school I came back to my grandmother, whom I loved dearly, sick with Leukemia. The day after I arrived, I was the one alone with her when she passed away, as I held her hand. And only 2 weeks after that, I was in Wisconsin, yet another totally new place, to start college. It was really only then that I started acknowledging the numbness and disconnect I was experiencing and started looking for healing for myself.

I experienced so many different things in such a relatively short amount of time, that I wasn’t able to emotionally process everything. Over time, it started to back up. In addition, my instinct at times of crisis was always to try to protect and take care of the other people around me- and I often did so at the cost of acknowledging or even fully experiencing my own grief and pain. Grief for a lost home and family, grief for people I’d loved and lost, for all the different things I’d been attached to and lost in my life.

Not surprisingly, the Large Intestine meridian is associated with the Metal element in 5 element theory. The emotion associated with that element is grief.

I see the cumulative effect of all this as having impacted me physically over time. And NOW, when there are so many tremendous and wonderful things in my life that I love-  a truly interesting and exciting job, an incredible and loving wife, amazing, loving friends, the incredible gift of living in the land of Israel, the land of my soul- the priceless gift of having spent more than 3 years in yeshiva learning Torah- and there is so much more- far too often I am unable to experience these blessings for what they really are. For I am still living this pattern of being blocked up and not letting go, and it interferes with my ability to open up, experience new things, be fully present and to BREATH. I have spent the last 4 years on a giant leap of faith, and have “made it” in so many ways- I now have the life I always wanted. But I need to be able to let go, in order to feel it- to feel the love that is there, the good that is there.

There is such profundity in the patterns in a person’s life if we look at it right, and it is part of the Jewish tradition that there is no divine providence anywhere in the world like there is here in Israel. When it is time for a new direction, the messages come from everywhere.

I now have, in a most tangible way, this barrier to my progression in learning Shiatsu. If I want to move forward and succeed in being a healer, the only way is to finally become fully conscious of this pattern of inbalance I have had for so long- and let it go. Thank G-d for the opportunity.