This is the story of how I discovered Shiatsu, what happened when I received my first treatments and how amazing I felt.
“Great things never came from comfort zones.” Neil Strauss
I had a little chest pain. I didn’t know what it was, I felt like I had something sharp stuck exactly in the middle of my chest.
I’ve been feeling the pain for almost two weeks when a friend of mine gave me the contact of a Shiatsu practitioner. Honestly, I have always wanted to try Shiatsu for a long time and that was the occasion.
I called Letizia and she gave me an appointment for the next day.
I was pretty excited, I’d just read a book about Shiatsu, and I was really curious and fascinated about it.
So, my chest, my little pain and I arrived at the appointment.
Letizia asked me something about myself and my ache. She then told me to lay down on the Japanese mattress on the floor, which she called a futon and the journey started.
She started to touch my abdomen with very light pressure and after that, she touched one of my legs. It seemed to me as though she was following something, a pathway maybe. At that time of course I still didn’t know what she was doing.
When she finished with my legs I felt them longer than ever and their presence was somehow more dominant. It was as if I was more aware of my limbs, which was both a lovely and kind of strange sensation: of course, I knew I had legs, but after the Shiatsu session I could feel them more properly.
After that my memories become hazy as a dream because the more she worked on me the more I relaxed. After all, it was a long time ago, but I remember very well that I felt for the first time in my life a deep state of harmony: my breathing, my thoughts, my muscles, my entire body seemed recharged and relaxed at the same time.
At the end of the session I also was really surprised because even though she never touched my chest, the pain was gone.
A couple of years later I had almost forgotten my first Shiatsu experience, until one day my neck, my shoulders and my upper back hurt so much that made me cry. I was so miserable that another friend gave me a gift voucher with three Shiatsu treatments attended because of.
It was a real blessing for me because that time not only did my pain was dissolved, but I understood that Shiatsu could help me to manage my anxiety, my sleep, my stress level and my emotions. That time I also started to think about becoming a Shiatsu therapist, which I eventually became.