Hydrotherapy - Aquatic Body Worker - Watsu - Warm Water Application
What is Watsu?
Watsu (Water Shiatsu) began when Harold Dull started floating people in the warm pool at Harbin Hot Springs, applying the stretches and moves of the Zen Shiatsu he studied in Japan.
To know what Watsu is, it must be experienced, if not in real water, at least in the imagination. This can be done because elements of Watsu have counterparts in everybody's experience.
Begin with the way you relax when you lie back in warm water. Add how it feels to be slowly stretched. Imagine how, in an element that removes pressure from joints and radiates warmth into muscle, you feel each stretch all the way through your body.
Add to that pleasure of being floated and stretched what you feel in the best bodywork when the tension in your neck is sensitively released, when your shoulder is rotated and freed, when just the right point is held. Imagine how that is amplified when, instead of weighing heavily on a table or floor, your body is free to move.
Add your most nurturing memory of someone holding, supporting you, just being with you, not trying to do anything to you, holding you so lightly you feel your own lightness as you sink and rise to the rhythm of your breath.
Combine all the above and there is still something to add- Watsu's flow. Watsu interweaves movement and stillness. It has a beginning and an end. And it is endless. Its lesson in letting go into the flow whatever comes up (and a lot does come up) can be carried into your everyday life. Watsu's feeling of still being connected at the end when you're no longer being held can rebond you to that part of your being that is one with everything.
Since 1980, Watsu has circled the world- Europe, Israel, India, Australia, Japan, Brazil and developed into a form as unlimited as the water it is done in.
There is no limit to the number of people who can benefit from sharing its simplest moves. This is seen in our drop-in classes, and in the wide range of workshops which incorporate Watsu's Water Breath Dance to bring participants closer together. It is seen in aquatic exercise classes which use it as a 'warm down', and in the ease with which groups of children, of pregnant women, of octogenerians learn to Watsu each other. This breadth of Watsu, its reach outward, is matched by its depth, its reach inward. There is no level of our being it can not touch. There is no limit to the ways it can be tailored to individual needs. Physical therapists find it alleviates countless physical and psychological conditions. It has helped the handicapped, the disabled, the depressed, the addicted, the abused, those with aids, hyperactive children, and couples in troubled relationships.
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