Floor Shiatsu

Tashina K. Yoshii, OT, CMT, CMTI
Core Program, Floor Shiatsu, Table Shiatsu, Spa & Medical Shiatsu, and Chair Shiatsu Massage Instructor

Tashina is an instructor of Shiatsu massage with over 25 years experience practicing and teaching Shiatsu in Texas and California. She received her Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy as an honor graduate of Texas Woman’s University in 1975 after studying music at North Texas University . Her minor is in psychology. She also has a keen interest in Asian healing modalities and nutrition. In 1979, while practicing Occupational Therapy in pediatrics in Seattle , Washington, Tashina began her studies in Asian Bodywork Shiatsu with Yasuo Mori, a gifted Shiatsu instructor from Japan who had moved to Seattle. She apprenticed with Mr. Mori for 4 years. During that time, she also graduated from the Heide Brenneke School of Massage. Upon completion of her apprenticeship, Mr. Mori encouraged Tashina to practice and teach Shiatsu Massage. She has been teaching her state approved program in traditional Japanese Shiatsu since 1985, in Texas and now in Northern California’s Sacramento area. She is a graduate of the Healing Arts Institute’s Acupressure Practitioner program and continues her studies in Asian Bodywork. Tashina’s life work has been to merge art and science to help unite and balance the human spirit: body, mind and emotion.

Prerequisite: CMT or RN
24 Continuing Education hours

Shiatsu is a contemporary therapy with its roots in Oriental traditional medicine, a 5000 year old tradition of healing arts. It is sometimes described as a Japanese physiotherapy. The actual treatment approach and philosophy is based in its usage of the meridians (energy channels) and tusdo (pressure points). Shiatsu is based on an energy flow that circulates through our bodies in specific energy channels or meridians. The "life force" or "life energy" assists our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual ability. The life force is call Qi or Qui in Chinese and Ki in Japanese.

Ashi means foot in Japanese. Shiatsu translates as finger pressure. So this is a course of study offering a healing arts technique that uses your feet as well as hands for applying acupressure to a client resting on the floor. Shiatsu will be applied on the entire back of the body as well as the front. This technique can also be adapted for work in health spas where you stand on the massage table and use your feet to apply pressure.