Shiatsu - my Lifesaver

It’s your road,
and yours alone,
others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.

​Rumi

What a dramatic title that is. But I deeply believe that Shiatsu saved my life – multiple times.

I never like to tell my story because it doesn’t feel ‘dramatic’ enough to be one worth telling.
BUT my story has made me into who I am now – and is why I am passionate about Shiatsu, meditation, yoga and the spiritual world. And it is my story to tell.

Very early on as a child, I already knew what a deep-rooted fear of death felt like. I was afraid that my friends and family or I would die of cancer, I was so afraid of a fire in the house that I got up in the middle of the night and walked around the house to make sure there was no fire. As I grew up, it turned into an irrational but very deep-seated fear of the oft-predicted apocalypse. This went so far that I was obsessively watching the news more than 4 times a day before the famous 21. December 2012 so I could see the signs of an actual apocalypse coming.

When my neighbour and childhood friend really did die of skin cancer at the age of 17 I was in a deep cycle of self-hate, self-harming, and I had a complete lack of self-confidence. In hours of deep despair I would cut myself with the sharp end of a ruler, scissors, a razor blade or a paper clip all the while crying and shouting on the inside. I sat in my room crying almost every day, I had temper tantrums full of anger because I just didn’t know what to do and I did not want to live anymore. I walked around with a massive deep hole of pain in my chest not knowing how to get rid of it and what to do with it. For a long time I thought it was just part of crowing up, then depression, even though I never received a clinical diagnosis, and now I want to believe it was my soul growing.

All of this did not come from my childhood friend dying. It came because I am a sensitive person and I was bullied from the age of 6 onwards in school. At about 10 years old one of my class mates cut holes in my socks and tights when we had physical education so I had to wear tights with holes for the rest of the day – this experience seems significant because I can still recall it. There were a lot of other incidences – class mates making fun of my new clothes, telling me I am fat multiple times, so-called friends not telling me about parties, and as the digital age arrived people literally leaving a conversation on my social media wall about how ugly, fat and what a whore and slut I was. They even threatened to kill me on that page. One girl sent me a text from a number I didn’t know telling me that ‘I am so fat and ugly I will not get a boyfriend.
Because of all of this bullying I was very self-conscious, I felt I didn’t have any real friends and it lead to my self-hatred, self-harm and my compulsive need for studying and getting good grades in school because that was the only thing I could shine at and be better at than my class mates.

As I am writing all of this my heart fills with pain and I am tearing up because I want to hug that young woman, tell her that she is loved and that she will turn out to be a great beautiful individual.

My parents and my sister were a great support through this very hard part of my growing. They sat with me when I was crying, equally knew when to just let me lie on the floor – my favourite thing to do – and cry until I stopped, provided me with herbal calming drops, helped me study by helping to revise everything that I had learned by heart. They were just always there for me and loved me unconditionally.

And the most important part – they accepted my wish not to go into therapy or swallow antidepressants. I have always had a very strong belief that antidepressants are not for me. I needed help though, so my mother was on the lookout for alternative medicine therapists and took me to several different ones.
It wasn’t until Shiatsu that we found a therapy that I loved and I enjoyed so much that I was happy to have a treatment every 2 weeks for about 3 years initially.

My neighbour – the mum of my dead childhood friend – got help from a Shiatsu practitioner to cope with her grief. She knew that I was suffering and recommended Shiatsu to my mum. They had a ‘secret’ meeting with the Shiatsu practitioner discussing Shiatsu and if it would be a therapy for me before my mother presented it to me. I was willing to give it a go.

I can’t remember exactly, but I must have liked my first Shiatsu session because I kept on having them. Over time I started to trust the Shiatsu Practitioner and I grew stronger, I was happier, my confidence grew. She and Shiatsu helped me to get out of my deepest hole of pain. Shiatsu helped me live more and see that there is a life.

This is my story and I am still living it and healing old wounds with Shiatsu, intuitive healing and my spiritual path. The main fact though, is that continuous Shiatsu saved me – or it helped my body and mind to heal itself. Without any antidepressants.

​And it is a continuous friend and healer in my life. More so now than it has ever been.