Personal Statement from Daniela Coronelli
The Seiki way of life and approach to healing has deeply influenced my work with people in the last decade. I dedicated to continue to develop and share its transformative effects with interested clients and students. Since 2004 I have been giving Seiki alongside Shiatsu treatments, in Totnes, and facilitating periodic Seiki courses in Devon and Bristol from 2007. When I was first introduced to Seiki by Akinobu Kishi in 2003, during a residential he taught in Herefordshire, I had already been practising Shiatsu, for 15 years.
I heard his approach was similar to that of Healing-Shiatsu, the form of shiatsu I originally trained in, which views sickness as an opportunity to consider how we are dealing with life; to be aware of and gradually release those reactive and avoiding tendencies that, once set deeply in one’s way of being, develop into cycles of sickness. Very quickly, I had to drop any idea of what Seiki was and enter the experience that was unfolding there and then.
As I observed Kishi giving Seiki to several students, I felt more relaxed, my mental activity became quiet and my breath deepened. With a feather-like touch and clarity of attention, he would make contact with a few points or areas on the receiver’s body, which looked like the ones I would choose in shiatsu, yet they triggered a different effect. The receivers would enter some form of involuntary physical movement, at the end of which their posture, way of breathing and facial expression had changed.
When participants were asked about their experience, they mentioned that during the Seiki session they at first become conscious of tense or stiff areas in their body, sometimes of held emotions and breathing. However they felt safe and supported to release them through movements that happened spontaneously. After their movement had stopped many reported feeling at ease inwardly, their senses more alert, their mind calmer and clearer. How could such light contact produce this considerable change in the space of one session? I was left both deeply moved and curious about Seiki, which led me to continue its practice and enquiry into it.
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