Guest Practitioner: From Fixer to Facilitator
Key Takeaways
From "Fixer" to "Facilitator": The practitioner's role shifts from trying to fix symptoms to holding a space for the client's innate healing intelligence to emerge.
Trust the Process: The therapist must trust the client's unique journey and allow the body's energy pathways (Qi) to guide the session, rather than imposing a logical plan.
How Our Role as Shiatsu Practitioners Has Shifted
When I first started my practice 20 years ago, I felt the burden of responsibility to fix people. I wasn't comfortable with the role of health clinician that my role required. I felt my lack of knowledge and experience. It didn't stop me however and, as I humbly continued to implement the knowledge I had, many gained positive health benefits that seemed as magical to me as it did to them: Addicts used my treatments as part of their recovery, a man regained use of his arm, a woman with MS looked forward to the sessions with relief, people made momentous life decisions and we all grew together.
My life took a new path and, following a move, I continued my journey as a parent and teacher rather than a Shiatsu practitioner. My learning continued nevertheless. As a mother of two young people with additional needs, I was forced to look to myself in order to support them. They were challenged by a world that, on the whole, wouldn't adapt to their needs. I had to adapt in order to identify and meet their needs and my own. Through my own self care I learned to take more responsibility for my own emotional life in order that I could give them my full attention and better support.
As I return to my practice now, after many years of parenting and working with young people, I realise that all my experience has taught me invaluable lessons to take to my clients: the more I put myself aside the more I am able to hold a space full of potential for the other to fill with their own presence. A space in which they can grow. I have learned to trust in their healing journey as separate from myself. To trust in them.
I am a fellow traveller on this journey they take back to themselves. Their body is a map to guide us as we adventure together. I allow my energy to respond to the pathways of their body; to guide and point me in the directions they have decided to take. This happens at times without clear logical understanding and does not always need words. The ancient principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine can obviously help illuminate a required response to their physical and emotional manifestations but it is the shifting, sifting, sometimes silted up energy of the body, which more clearly shows which direction to take at any given time. Some paths are easier to travel. Some paths aren't ready yet to open within the body. They need other areas to flow or fill to allow them the ease to open and merge. Small surges of movement can bring about a sudden wave of healing or they can merely allow a trickle of health which will gradually increase to a fuller flow over time. I am required to trust the process.
About the Author
Laura Bell – Shiatsu Practitioner/Artist/Teacher
Laura Bell is a Shiatsu Practitioner with a Diploma in Oriental Medicine from the Ki Kai school of Shiatsu in London (2006). After establishing her practice in North London and working in various settings, including drug and alcohol recovery, Laura paused her professional Shiatsu career to focus on parenting and teaching.
Now based in Wimborne, Dorset, Laura is back in professional practice, offering a deeply supportive quality of touch honed by two decades of professional experience and personal growth. She specialises in holding space for clients' self-healing, addressing issues from joint pain and stress to anxiety and fertility problems.
Connect with Laura:
Website: laurazenshiatsu.co.uk
Shiatsu Society Profile: shiatsusociety.org/practitioners/laura-bell
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laura-b-35b43822a/
