A leading Shiatsu teacher, Terésa Hadland has been criss-crossing Europe and even the world for over forty years, sometimes in the company of her partner Bill Palmer and sometimes on her own, to pass on their vision of ‘Movement Shiatsu’. Sparkling, full of humour and with a great sense of observation, she is an expert at sharing the Movement Shiatsu approach with others. But apart from the many courses she gives, little is known about her. For the first time, she tells us about her journey from Scotland to England, Japan and Australia. Portrait of one of the leading figures in European Shiatsu.
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Ivan: So Terésa, 1st question: are you really a Spanish woman?
Terésa: (laughing). Unfortunately not, but I speak the language. So I could pass for Spanish. (laughing)
I’d like you to tell me about your odyssey into Shiatsu, your encounter with this art and your journey of at least 30 years.
Well, I guess I’ve always been interested in Eastern philosophy and that particular way of looking at the world. At school and university, I studied foreign languages and I loved that because it opened me up to the world and its diversity. In fact, I was studying in Edinburgh in Scotland and at that time there was an East-West Centre in the city. I went there one evening to listen to a lecture about Yin-Yang and very quickly I wanted to know more. This was in 1980. The East-West Centre offered lots of activities, including macrobiotic cooking and dō-in(Japanese self-massage), and introductory courses in Shiatsu. It was good because, as a university student, it gave me a balance between mind and body. I’ve always enjoyed sport and movement (I even went to my mother’s yoga class when I was young). I was soon captivated by the philosophy and practice of Shiatsu. The teacher who introduced me to this was Mike Burns, an Irishman who definitely had “the gift of the gab”. He was a wonderful natural storyteller with a lot of charm, and we were all totally entranced. You could say he was a very charismatic person.
When I was 20, I went to live in the Middle East as part of my degree. Towards the end of my stay, when I was living in Egypt, I contracted hepatitis which came as a huge shock. I had to return to Edinburgh and complete my degree in a very low state of health.
I understand you perfectly, I also had very severe hepatitis a few years ago and every Shiatsu session I had in hospital enabled me to do something extra: eat without nausea, stand on my legs, walk, etc. Until you’ve experienced that, it’s hard to realise how powerful Shiatsu is in terms of recovery.
For me, this experience of illness was also a moment of reappraisal. My dream had been to travel the world, using my languages, but that dream suddenly had no possibility of happening if I was not well enough to do so. My focus very quickly shifted to the body and to understanding how it functions, in order to still be able to do all the things that were important to me.
In 1983, after completing my degree, I was offered a job using my languages and I chose to go to London, mainly because there was an East-West Centre there. I was lucky to be working using my languages, but I soon realised that working in an office was not what I wanted to spend my life doing. At that time, I discovered Oki –Do yoga classes taking place at the London East-West Centre. Oki-Do Yoga is an approach to movement which is a dynamic combination of Aikido and Yoga, created in Japan by Masuhiro Oki sensei. He has written a number of books on his approach* (see photo). My teacher, Chizuko Kobayashi, had been sent from Japan to come and teach in the UK and we became good friends. I found Oki-Do yoga a brilliant way of getting strong again after the hepatitis, and also exploring and challenging my limits and my fears. I loved it and went regularly to classes. One day Chizuko told me: “Ah, Teresa, the main dojo in Japan is going to hold a course for foreigners for the first time and it’s going to be called ‘Life Encounter’. I think you should go!”
That was all the encouragement I needed. I gave in my notice at the office, enrolled on the course and bought an airplane ticket to Japan! The two-month course in the Oki-Do Dojo was very intense and challenging. Every morning we had to get up at 5.30am, run uphill and back (it was in Mishima on the foothills of Mount Fuji), sit in zazen, chanting the Heart Sutra for an hour before a very meagre breakfast of miso soup and rice. There was a lot of exercise all day and very little food. Nonetheless, it was an incredible, life-changing experience. What’s more, it was the first time foreigners were invited en masse to do the dojo training. Large groups came from all over the world; from Italy, Australia, Belgium, (interestingly not from France!) and even from Brazil and the United States. I was the only UK representative!! The Dojo experience of Life Encounter in the Oki-Do dojo in Japan in 1984 was life-changing for me and 40 years later I’m still in contact with some of the people who were there with me, sharing the highs and lows of dojo life. It created some very strong and lasting friendships.
Living in the dojo for two months involved experiencing many traditional Japanese healing practices including fasting, Shiatsu, yoga and the use of medicinal herbs. However, when the course came to an end, I realised that I had only seen the inside of the dojo and very little of the Japan outside. So, I decided to stay in Japan, go to Tokyo and spend longer exploring this very unique culture. I stayed with a host family for a few months before I found a place of my own. Things soon started to fall into place. When I went to register at the British Consul in Tokyo, the registrar asked me, as she was stamping my passport, if I was looking for a job. My money was almost running out and Japan was a very expensive place to live at that time, so I said Yes. She gave me the number of an English Language School as she said that they were often looking for English teachers. By some stroke of good fortune, when I rang up the Language school, it turned out that they had put an advert in the Japan Times that very morning. I was taken on straight away and was even trained in TEFL.
Once I had secured a means of income, I took up my Shiatsu studies again wanting to get to the origins of Shiatsu. My first port of call was the Iokai centre, where Shizuto Masunaga, the creator of Zen Shiatsu, had taught. The Iokai centre was offering simple courses (mainly for foreigners!) in the Zen meridians and how to work them. When I had completed one of these courses I discovered that there were other students of Masunaga’s who were offering classes outside the Iokai centre. This led me to Suzuki sensei who taught from his house on the outskirts of Tokyo. As well as teaching the Zen meridians of Masunaga, he created what are now called ‘the Suzuki zones’, a system of horizontal lines across the body which can be used for diagnosis and treatment. It was another means of receiving information from the body and I found it useful at the time. However, now that I work with the emergent diagnosis of Movement Shiatsu I don’t tend to use them any more.
It was this big step, this choice to be where Shiatsu began, that made it clear to me that this was going to be my path in life.
We’ll soon be talking about Suzuki sensei on this blog, so we’re not going to say too much about him. Kimura sensei, on the other hand, is a Shiatsu legend. He trained many people, yet we don’t know a great deal about him. What memories do you have of him? What was his teaching like?
I am not sure I would call him a legend!! I originally met Kimura sensei when he taught the Zen shiatsu courses at the Iokai centre in Tokyo. I don’t know much about him – he seemed quite a private person and his English was not very good.
However, by chance, I met him again two years ago when I was last on a visit to Japan. I felt it would be nice to receive a Shiatsu while I was there (since Shiatsu had been my reason for going to Japan in 1984). I was given Kimura’s number and booked a session with him. To be honest, the session, although pleasant, was almost the same as that of the 1980’s, and it made me aware of how much easier it is for Shiatsu to evolve outside the country of its origin. For example, through the work of masters like Bill Palmer!!
I understand that you also went to Australia, didn’t you?
In the Oki dojo I had made good friends with some Australians who said “Why don’t you go to Australia? Go and see the beaches”. So, when my Japanese visa ran out, I decided to head for Sydney, a trip that turned out to be not only a beach trip, but also a continuation of my Shiatsu journey. Australia at that time offered Working Holiday visas for Brits, and so I applied and headed off to the Antipodes. I arrived in Sydney, with the address of a dojo friend in my pocket, thinking that I’d only stay a short while before heading back to Japan. However, a turn of events meant that I stayed for a whole year.
So, what did you do there? You didn’t stay on the beach for a year did you?!
No, through my dojo friend, Debbie, I met her Shiatsu teacher in Sydney, a man of Polish origin called Andrejz Gospodarczyk who ran the Zen Shiatsu Centre in Sydney at that time. When he heard that I had been studying Shiatsu both in the UK and in Japan, he said “why don’t you come and help me in my clinic”. I had no hesitation and replied, “yes, why not?” and immediately started working in the clinic alongside Debbie. Once again, everything fell into place for me to do Shiatsu. I shared a beautiful old house in a suburb just across the harbour from the city and caught a ferry into the clinic every day. And I did Shiatsu almost every day. It was a great experience to be part of clinic life and I learnt a lot during that time. I have heard from Movement Shiatsu students in Australia that Andrejz is still in Sydney. He was a very charismatic teacher and we had a lot of fun.
However, when my visa ran out I said to myself, “It’s time to go back to Japan” and that’s what I did.
This time I got in touch with some Aussie friends from the Oki dojo who had stayed in Tokyo. One of these, was Peter Yates, originally from Lancashire and still with a broad Lancashire accent even after many years of living in Australia. I continued my studies with Suzuki sensei and I met Nigel Reid, an Australian who had a good command of Japanese and had started teaching Suzuki sensei’s work to foreigners. He taught from his beautiful traditional Japanese house, where I also lived with a few Australians for a while.
Towards the end of 1986 I learned that my younger brother was very ill. I’d been away from England for almost three years and I knew it was time to come home.
What did you do once you got there? Did you start working with Shiatsu there, or did you seek to deepen your understanding of the technique?
While I was in Japan and Australia I had continued to explore different approaches to meditation and a University friend of mine in the UK introduced me to John Garrie Roshi, a teacher of Satipatthana meditationi. Satipatthana is known nowadays as Mindfulness and was less well-known in the 1980’s. As soon as I met John Garrie, I knew instinctively that I had a lot to learn from him. I loved his approach which was both very accessible and fun. A lot of what he taught was ways of bringing awareness to the body, in preparation for more formal sitting. The exercises that we did brought consciousness of tensions in the body and introduced ways of helping these to release through breathing and movement. We also worked a lot with the elements in fun and explorative ways.
One day, knowing that I’d been living in Japan, he asked me what my plans were for the future. I remember that moment well, because, with all the confidence of youth, I told him that I thought I felt I knew all about Shiatsu now and was considering enrolling on an acupuncture course!! He looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Mmm, I think you need to meet Sonia”. And so off I went to Hereford to meet this Sonia, and after meeting her and receiving Shiatsu from her, I realised how much more there was to learn about Shiatsu and healing through touch, that I never again considered doing an acupuncture course.
Sonia Moriceau [1], who was French, was one of Wataru Ohashi’s early students in New York. Considering that she is such a well-known teacher in the UK and elsewhere, it is surprising that she is so little known in her native France. Ohashi knew that she had been practising meditation with John Garrie for a long time and encouraged her to create her own style of Shiatsu with meditation practice at its core. She called her approach ‘Healing-Shiatsu’ because it included a lot of personal practice and self-reflection at its heart, as well as very creative work with the five elements of Oriental Medicine. Although I’d spent years studying in Japan and Australia, Sonia’s way of working was very innovative and new to me. She was one of the first teachers to set up a 2 and a half year Shiatsu training in the UK. As I had already been studying and working with Shiatsu for five years, she suggested I enter her second year, but I decided to do the first year at the same time, because I didn’t want to miss out on the basics of her method. At that time in the mid-1980s the teaching of Shiatsu tended to be very intellectual and theoretical, but not with Sonia. For example, if we were studying the element of water, we had to look for it within ourselves, immerse ourselves in it, dive deeply into what it represented in us and in the world around us as well as know how to contact it in another person through the meridians. This experiential approach really appealed to me, it was adding another dimension to what I had learnt so far.
So, I completed her training, received my Healing-Shiatsu diploma, and set myself up in practice as a Shiatsu practitioner. This was in the Spring of 1988. It was at that point, after eight years of study, that I really felt confident that I could work with Shiatsu as a legitimate profession. I continued to attend Sonia’s post-graduate courses and meditation retreats for many years. Sadly, she is no longer with us.
So, tell me about those early days as a practitioner.
Well, I set up my little Shiatsu clinic in the Midlands town of Northampton. I converted a room in the Japanese style that I loved so much. A marriage then took me to the North West of England. There I built up a thriving Shiatsu practice, in a town called Todmorden. I felt like a Shiatsu pioneer in that area. I was well-received because in the 1940’s a local man had gone to study acupuncture in China and then come back home to Todmorden and set up practice there. He had laid the way for an openness and trust in the benefits of Oriental medicine. I practised Shiatsu where this gentleman had done his acupuncture. As a result, it worked very well, and people were quick to see similarities between the two approaches. By that time, I had started a family and so was sharing my time and energy between being a Shiatsu therapist and being a mum!
I fully understand the challenge that having children can represent, because it takes up a lot of time and energy, but despite that you decide to carry on.
Yes, it’s interesting that you say that, because after 4 years in the North West, we decided to move back to the Midlands, to be closer to the grandparents. Fortunately, some of my former clients were happy to come back to me and my Shiatsu business was soon thriving again. Then, when my son was about a year old, I received a letter out of the blue from a Shiatsu school based in Birmingham. They had a group of students in Birmingham and another parallel group in London, who had both finished their first two years. However, as both groups had dwindled in numbers, the school opted to merge them so that the students could complete their final year as one group. By chance, Northampton was halfway between London and Birmingham and they invited me to be the assistant for the group. It felt very timely as my son was getting more independent and this allowed me more space to do this. I was excited to be involved with the teaching side of Shiatsu – I had loved teaching English to Japanese businessmen. As assistant for this group and subsequent ones, I soon realised that I had been practising Shiatsu longer than many of the Shiatsu teachers that came to teach the group. It was at that time that Sonia’s Healing-Shiatsu graduates were encouraged to join the UK Shiatsu Society. In joining I became part of the wider Shiatsu network in the UK. I volunteered to be a member of the committee dealing with assessments of graduates for the Shiatsu Society. And at the same time, I was invited by a Shiatsu teacher in Oxford to run a full Shiatsu training with her there. This gave me a lot of experience in planning, teaching and assessing students at every level and I took to it very quickly and easily. I was also invited to teach for Shiatsu schools in Sheffield and Stratford on Avon. I loved the combination of the teaching at weekends with the support of the practical experience with working one to one with clients during the week.
Although my life was busy on every front, it was a very happy time and I felt extremely lucky to be able to do both clinical practice and teaching.
Here you are at a new stage of your journey in Shiatsu, but I know that this is not the end, because you’ve never stopped training and you’re going to meet Movement Shiatsu.
Yes, there was this guy, Mike Craske, whom I met on one of Sonia’s workshops. He said he was setting up a BA course in Complementary Therapies at Derby University with a Shiatsu pathway, and would I like to teach the Zen Shiatsu and Practice of Shiatsu modules? It seemed too good an offer to turn down, so I agreed and the first year of the BA course started that September. At Derby University I was now teaching in a small team and I enjoyed seeing the differences and similarities of teaching at this level. On one occasion I was watching Mike teach the class and I noticed him using a particular technique. It looked amazingly effective, and yet very different from how I was used to working. I asked Mike where he had learnt it and Mike told me “Bill Palmer taught me this!” I remember that it was proximal joint work on the hip that he was demonstrating – it is a remarkably effective technique that we teach in Movement Shiatsu. I knew immediately that I wanted to understand this approach and to work in this way. However, at that time, Bill had taken a break from Shiatsu and was not offering any training so I had to be patient and wait a few years.
In 2007, Bill started offering courses again and I signed up immediately and, quite frankly, have never looked back. Bill’s Movement Shiatsu approach added another dimension to how I already worked. It is more interactive than a standard Shiatsu session, and I love the greater involvement of the client in the session. The client is put centre stage, encouraged to listen and notice their body and its needs, and to ask for what they need. Sometimes, this means that the client guides the session. It’s a reversal of the relationship between an all-powerful therapist who knows all, and a patient who is silent because he knows nothing. But, much more than that, it explores the therapeutic relationship we have with our clients and brings in a very different approach to how we do Shiatsu.
What does that lead to?
I believe, and have experienced this many times with clients, that the simple fact of expressing a need in the body, starts to open up possibilities for healing. It requires the client to be in touch with themselves. The simple act of expressing something the client feels in his/her own body, immediately softens the tissues. If we keep everything silent, we deprive ourselves of this possibility. And what I like is to keep all the possibilities open to me.
Tell me about the founding principle of Movement Shiatsu. Do you do Shiatsu to restore the body’s movement or do you do Shiatsu while letting the body move at the same time?
The title Movement Shiatsu can sometimes be misleading, but I don’t think Bill has been able to find a better name for his approach. The word “movement” is used to express the fact that the client is active and powerful within the therapy. When we move we have agency and so movement gives us the opportunity to explore ourselves and to work on ourselves rather than be passively treated. Also, the body’s natural language is movement and through that language it can express its needs in a way the client can sense directly. It does not mean that the client is moving all the time, but rather that an issue is explored together through movement.
Tell me what this style adds to the others?
I’d been a Zen Shiatsu practitioner and teacher for many years, and was becoming more and more aware that there was something missing from this approach, and that it was something to do with the relationship between therapist and client. In my studies in Japan, this was never brought into the equation – it was more about the practitioner being the expert and the client remaining passive. Healing-shiatsu, involved more listening to oneself and to the client, but the basic relationship between client and therapist remained unequal. Bill observed that the process of diagnosis created this inequality because it was mysterious to the client. So in Movement Shiatsu there is no prior diagnosis. Instead, the therapist encourages the client to explore themselves through sensation and movement and use that awareness to choose a focus to start the session.
So from the beginning the client feels empowered. This does not mean that the therapist is passive, they make observations and help the client to be aware of their body but they are careful not to take the lead and to focus on assisting the client’s exploration. I find that most people really enjoy becoming more active in the therapy. Also, for the me as a therapist, this approach is more real. I don’t know what is best for another person. I prefer the relationship to be more equal and to be a guide rather than a doctor.
Having followed some of your training courses, I find it very liberating, because at the same time you’re not doing just anything. But I’ve got one last question for you: what would you say to people who want to study Shiatsu, especially students and future students?
Personally, I hope that each student of Shiatsu will be curious not just about Oriental Medicine theory but also about the body in terms of Western anatomy and, perhaps most importantly, about the therapeutic relationship. When I first started out, I just loved working with people in this way, and had no idea that it would end up being my career! In the 80’s we were exploring ourselves for our own self-development and as a way of better understanding the world. I have a dream for children to learn these skills at school and then have this self-knowledge as a resource for the rest of their lives.
Until that dream becomes a reality, every student of Shiatsu is bringing greater self-awareness and hope to each person that they touch. These days, when we are getting more isolated from human contact and suffering the consequences of mental illness, it is all the more vital that we connect people through our touch with the huge resource and support of their bodies.
Brilliant, thank you very much for that wonderful conclusion.
(Laughing) “Fini. Voilà. Merci.” (in French)
(laughing), thank you for your time and for the joy you give in your classes. Keep it up for as long as possible. See you soon.
“Au revoir”.
Notes
- [1] Sonia Moriceau (1954-2013) was a french teacher who taught in England, training many of today’s leading figures in English Shiatsu, such as Terésa Hadland and Suzanne Yates.
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