Working with Death and Loss in Shiatsu Practice

Tamsin Grainger has been a Zen Shiatsu practitioner since 1991 and is the co-founder of The Shiatsu School in Edinburgh. She has written articles for the Shiatsu Society Journal, and regularly presents workshops, including on loss, death and dying, internationally. She lives in Edinburgh, UK.

1. Introduction

PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF DEATH AND LOSS

2. Saying Death Out Loud
3. Fear of Death
4. What is Death?
5. Cycle of Life
6. Language and terminology
7. Touch, a Universal Language
8. What we Believe about death

PART TWO - THEORY AND PRACTICAL SHIATSU

9. Ki (The One)
10. Yin Yang (The Two)
11. TCM (The 10,000 Things)
12. The Five Elements
13. Zen Shiatsu
14. Techniques Inspired by Movement Shiatsu
15. Other Shiatsu Styles (Integrating Non-Shiatsu Modalities, Sotai, Seiki, Working with the Light Bodies and Light Body Activation)
16. Chakras
17. Pain
18. Other (Temporal Scanning, Treating One Body Part Through Another, What You Can Do If You Do Not Know What To Do)
19. Working on a Table or Hospital Bed
20. Contraindications

PART THREE

21. Terminal diagnosis
22. Grief
23. Loss
24. Shock
25. Trauma

PART FOUR: THE CLIENT
26. Causes of Death
27. Where we Meet Clients Who are Facing Death or Grieving
28. End-of-life, Palliative Care and Attending a Death
29. The People We Work With
30. Mental Health, Medication and State of Mind
31. Suicide and Assisted Suicide
32. Clients with Different Faiths and Cultural Traditions

PART FIVE: THE PRACTITIONER

33. Facing death
34. Support
35. Referrals and Team Work
36. Practicalities
37. Clients
38. Humanitarian and Voluntary Work
39. Practicing Shiatsu while Facing Death

PART SIX: THE CLIENT-PRACTITIONER RELATIONSHIP

40. Expectations
41. What Obstructs Effective Understanding?
42. Does the Client Know?
43. Giving My Opinion 1 and 2
44. How Useful is it to be Given Advice?
45. Better, not right (text, video link with permission)
46. Reflecting on What we need in Times of Sorrow
47. Developing Inner Strength
48. Listening
49. Love
50. Forgiveness, thanks, apologies, goodbye

PART SEVEN: FOR TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND POST GRADUATE PRACTITIONERS

51. For Teachers

52. For Students and Post Graduate Practitioners

PART EIGHT: PRACTICAL EXERCISES

53. Exercises
a. Qi gong
i. Standing Like A Tree
ii. Wu Chi
iii. Qi gong for the Lungs
iv. The Gathering of Essence and Shen
b. Meditation
i. Separating and refining Meditations A and B
ii. The Lotus Blossom Opens
iii. Loving Kindness meditation
iv. When You Cannot Tell Someone Something Because They Have Died
v. Walking Meditation 1-3
54. Some General Reflection Questions for Practitioners

55. Conclusion

Glossary
Further Reading
References
Appendix A Shiatsu is...
Appendix B
Appendix C Research