A life Changing Challenge - How our Shiatsu Centre adapted to the Pandemic

​By Cliff Andrews FwSS, Edited by Dinah John FwSS

The Shiatsu Centre Norwich has been a dedicated Shiatsu clinic since 1983, now located right in the historic ‘Lanes’ at the heart of this  Cathedral city in the east of England. Its small office and 2 treatment  rooms support 5 practitioners and provide the working base for New  Energy Work - an international online training project for Shiatsu - and  for the Shiatsu College Norwich - our regional school branch of the  Shiatsu College UK.  

It was one day before the first national lockdown in March 2020. I  looked at the dry, chapped skin of my hands as I washed them, yet  again, between clients - following government advice. Blood actually  started to leak from the lesions - just the tiniest glimpse of the pain and  suffering we would witness in the coming months. What we could never  have dreamed of though, was how much kindness, support, dedication,  love and gratitude we would experience alongside that pain!  ​

​The next day we were closed - no clients, no school - nothing… Our Centre team convened an emergency meeting. We looked at the  Centre’s finances and we cancelled every possible expenditure, from  cleaning to dustbin collection… We resolved to form a collective - to  work together - for each other, for our clients and for our students. We  decided to work on an equal footing, putting our trust in our community  to support us and our work. 

We looked at our strengths: we had 20 years of experience of  delivering online learning to the worldwide Shiatsu community and  we had personal connections throughout that community; we had a  large, long-term and loyal client base; we had all our local students and  graduates and a network of connections to the other Shiatsu College  branches and teachers.  
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And we had each other! We are a group of 5 - with the kind of bond  and implicit trust that can only be formed by sharing the very special  qualities of Shiatsu with each other. We had been working, practising,  teaching and creating online training together over many years. It was  time to bring all that we could offer for the benefit of our community  in this extraordinary worldwide crisis. We set up twice weekly group  meetings on Zoom to plan ahead and organise our work. ​

To our group I brought my  many connections, from decades  of international teaching, and  my extensive experience and  expertise in delivering online  training. Added to this I brought  a certain drive (some might say  overdrive!) and vision. Then there  was Dinah, who has worked  alongside me for 30 years and  runs the Shiatsu College Norwich.  Although Dinah is something of  a technophobe, she is also an  experienced international teacher  and great at communicating  and organising. She contributed  her calm energy, her clarity,  attention to detail and her superb  editing skills - a perfect balance to my tendency to push ahead  regardless!

Shakura, our Centre  manager, efficient administrator  and experienced project manager,  also brought her unruffled calm  and kindness. One of her first  tasks was to call all our clients  personally - to connect and to  reassure them - and to manage  our online diary expertly as she  scheduled our move over to  working 100% online. Basti, living  out in rural north Norfolk with a  somewhat unreliable internet,  contributed generously wherever  he could. His thoughtful and  considered approach was always  welcome at our meetings - and  he proved to be as popular at  teaching online as he was in  hands-on classes. Cat - our newest  team member - is also a pleasure  to work with. As well as her care  and great organisational skills,  she brought her irrepressible  drive, wicked sense of humour  and fearless approach to any  task, irrespective of her previous  experience. These qualities were  just what we needed to help keep  us going as the inevitable fatigue  and burnout loomed. 
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We knew we could deliver  online training effectively - so the  next step was to develop ways  to support our clients online. We  immediately launched a weekly  online ‘Client Support’ class,  using all our webinar expertise  and equipment. The class  was open to all our clients - to  support them until they could get  back in for hands-on sessions.  We showed them how to tune  into their own energy - using  the Three Burners of Chinese  medicine - and then lots of  simple ways to benefit their  own health, strengthen their  immunity and manage stress ‘the  Shiatsu way’. We showed them  breathing exercises, meridian  stretches, Qigong forms,  acupressure points they could  use on themselves and lots of  easy ‘tapping’ Do-in to activate the channels. The classes have  been wonderfully popular and  word of them soon spread -  bringing friends and family and  other practitioners and students  from around the world to join  us. We have had lots of great  feedback over the months, e.g. 'these classes are an absolute  life-saver’!  

We also developed ways to deliver online the Shiatsu  treatment experience, as far as  that is ever possible… As well  as the weekly class, we offered  our clients individual online  Shiatsu Self-Support sessions.  We devised ways of diagnosing  via video link and working with  our clients using Self-Shiatsu,  exercise balls and a range of  energy-work exercises to help  them cope without their regular hands-on treatments. These  sessions could be exhausting.  It’s very hard to have a client crying in pain on a video link,  and it takes every ounce of  personal practice to keep centred and positive when you yearn  magically to pass through the  screen and use your Shiatsu  touch in a way that you know  will ease their suffering. We also  offered ‘Distant healing with  Shiatsu’ sessions which really  suited some of our clients and  proved amazingly powerful and  effective. 

In one radical, sweeping  gesture we decided to give up  charging fees for any of our work  for the foreseeable future. We  would put all the paid content  of the newenergywork.com project (all our online courses  and webinars) out free to the  worldwide Shiatsu community  - asking for donations only. All  previous financial hierarchies  in the team (such as different  treatment rates) were put aside -  all the online client sessions were  also ‘payment by donation only’.  As a collective then, we would  record our hours worked each  month and divide the ‘donations  pot’ out between us at the same  hourly rate - after paying for all  of the essential overheads to  keep the Centre and the online  platforms going. We simply had to  trust that it would work out! 

The month that followed was  one of the most extraordinary  experiences of my life. We  logged over 500 working hours  as a team, with no real thought  as to whether any of it might  be paid. We created 26 live  webinars in 6 different languages  in an incredible whirlwind of  activity - and we were able  to help hundreds of teachers  and thousands of practitioners  worldwide to take their Shiatsu  teaching and treatments online.  Through the spring months we  worked in partnership with the  Shiatsu College UK to deliver  online the whole of the third  academic term - 4 weekends  plus the 3 day Residential - to  all branches of the school. This  had surprise extra benefits, like  creating nationwide connections  between the students of each  branch - all in one vibrant Ki  field together! It also enabled  us to invite 2 of my original  co-founders of the College,  Nicola Ley and Carola Beresford Cooke, to contribute to the  undergraduate programme for  the first time in decades.  

As the lockdown eased over  the summer, we were able to see  clients in the Centre clinic again. For many of them this was the  first time they had been touched  by anyone for months. Our  session capacity was inevitably  reduced, to give time for cleaning  between clients and to prevent  the crossover of people in the  waiting area or coming in and out  of the treatment rooms. Every  session became a challenge. For  some of our more acute clients  - either physically or emotionally  challenged - their symptoms  were now off the scale. Having a  whole day of treatments, working  behind a face mask and visor  and with the constant awareness  of the background risk of  transmission of the virus, is quite  exhausting. Many of us started to experience creeping emotional  and physical fatigue. The general  levels of stress, fatigue, pain  and loss amongst our clients  was rising too. Clients we would  normally see for basic monthly  ‘health maintenance’ sessions  before the pandemic were  now presenting with symptoms  equivalent to those of our most  acute clients.  

And then came the second  lockdown. This time we had  been reclassified by government guidelines, from ‘close contact  services’ - in the same category  as beauty salons and nail bars - to  ‘…other medical and health care  services, including mental health’  

Working closely within the  guidelines, and with invaluable  support from the Shiatsu Society  UK, we were able to continue  seeing clients. This was a  lockdown in name only. With  the schools still open and the  Centre taking clients we did not  see much change. Meanwhile  however, UK infection rates and  hospital admissions climbed  inexorably…  

And now we are in the third  lockdown. With over 100,000  dead and our front line health  workers in the NHS completely  overrun and facing burnout  every day, we are living with  the most shameful record of  pandemic mismanagement  of any European country. The  increased transmissibility of the  new variants makes hands-on  treatments even more stressful,  and we are required to carefully  ‘risk assess’ every client before  booking. This means that in  effect every treatment is acute.  The risk of transmission has to  be carefully balanced against its  benefit to the suffering client. For  some of us in the team who are  shielding vulnerable partners,  the risk of face-to-face sessions  is just too high to justify.  

But we are still here. We are  still working. The donations  have come in and continue to  do so - with people showing  extraordinary generosity and  huge appreciation for all our  work. The many messages we  have received along with those  donations are heart-warming  in their gratitude - we’ve been  moved to tears by some - and  we are equally grateful to them!  

​​We have been able to keep  paying the rent, covering all our  overheads and have just about managed to keep supporting  ourselves (with some welcome  help from the government  grants). Of course we have had  our ups and downs as a team -  inevitably fatigue, frustrations,  stresses and insecurity can’t  help but creep into our lives  from time to time. But we’ve  continued to encourage and  support each other, to share  our feelings and to really enjoy  working and even sharing  laughs together! 

For me personally it’s been  a time to reset. I have taken  up a daily practice of yoga  and meditation again. This has  been an essential resource to  help me face the challenges of  each day. I have rediscovered  dreams and values long  forgotten, about how it might  be possible to work more co operatively. Being able to share  the risks and management of projects - rather than working  so much on my own - has  brought me a level of solace  of which I had never dreamed.  To be able to deliver free  treatments and training to  clients and colleagues in  extreme financial , physical and  emotional distress - funded  solely by the donations of  all those who can afford to  help - has truly inspired me  and reinforced my faith in the  essential kindness of people.  

We in the Shiatsu community  have such very special and  particular qualities, as well as  skills and abilities, allowing  us to provide a unique level  of support - for each other,  for our colleagues and for our  community - in this life-defining  moment of history. I see  evidence every day that we are  stepping up to this challenge. It is our time.