How I got here

People often ask me how I got involved with shiatsu. When I was an undergraduate, way back in 2000, Shiatsu was offered as an intramural activity in the gym. Our teacher, Michelle Grant, designed a fantastic gym-appropriate term-long program that gave just a touch of shiatsu and absolutely lit my flame. Like my first taste of yoga, I experienced heightened body awareness and a sense of deep calm surrounded by an increased energy -- as both a giver and a receiver.

After I graduated, I signed up for the intro course with Waturo Ohashi at the Ohashiatsu Institute in New York. I took further classes in Ohashi’s method with Frances Farmer in Ann Arbor over the next year and a half, then decided to sideline shiatsu and seek new adventures. After 7 years of “new adventures” I did some soul-searching and felt that, of all things I had ever tasted as possible professional ventures, shiatsu is where I belong.

The Ohashi program had an outpost in Chicago (rather, Evanston), which had gone independent a few years earlier and now operates as Zen Shiatsu Chicago and presents a more rigorous program. I contacted them and found that if I started immediately I could pace my program in a most harmonious way, and just a few days later I took my first Chinese Medicine class, and a few weeks later started the shiatsu coursework. 20 months later, I’ve finished at Zen Shiatsu, but as they say, I’m just beginning to learn -- it's always "Beginner's Mind."