Books in English
- Understand your symptoms—such as anxiety, migraines, insomnia and panic attacks—not as random problems, but as part of a deeper story.
- Learn how the Five Elements—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water—map onto your emotions, organs and life patterns.
- Discover how ancient Eastern wisdom offers sustainable solutions to modern-day burnout, stress and disconnection.
- Gain inspiration and guidance if you’re an aspiring coach, therapist, EFT or Shiatsu practitioner ready to enrich your practice or take your next steps into the healing arts.
- Reconnect with your innate sense of joy, purpose and wholeness.
- Shiatsu opens a space.
- Space to meet yourself.
- Space to meet other people.
- Space to meet a field beyond the personal.
- How do these encounters manifest?
A Healing Map: How the Five Elements Restored My Health and Purpose for Living
At the height of a promising international career, Irene was brought to her knees by anxiety, insomnia, and debilitating panic attacks. While conventional medicine offered symptom relief, it lacked the deeper understanding she longed for.
A chance encounter with the hands-on healing art of Shiatsu opened the door to a different way—one that ultimately led her to the ancient wisdom of the Five Elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In clear and compassionate language, Irene shows how symptoms serve as messengers urging us to make meaningful changes, and how true healing is possible when we address the root causes rather than merely the surface signs.
Through personal stories, client experiences, and practical tools, this book invites you to:
More than a memoir, A Healing Map is a journey in listening deeply to your body’s messages and unveiling the invisible connections between mind, body and spirit.
With over twenty years of experience, Irene reveals how to decode symptoms like anxiety, fatigue and migraines, align your emotions and organs to the Five Elements, and transform exhaustion into vibrant wellbeing.
Whether you’re a therapist, healer, or someone navigating chronic illness or emotional burnout, A Healing Map offers a powerful blend of personal truth and ancient healing knowledge. It is a guide for anyone ready to listen to the wisdom of their body and walk a path of deep, lasting transformation.
The Essence of Shiatsu
Shiatsu is relatively young compared to other traditional healing systems: less than 100 years old, Shiatsu has developed rapidly and spread just as quickly. From a conglomerate of different roots, a trunk with many branches and even more blossoms has emerged in a short period of time.
But what is the essence of Shiatsu? What principles is it based on? What is the role of Ki? What is the role of the meridians? How central is the hara? And what distinguishes a good practitioner?
This book project is dedicated to searching for answers: leading global Shiatsu experts with decades of experience have their say. Their perspectives on fundamental questions about Shiatsu will contribute to a deeper understanding of the essential aspects of our art. In it, you'll find Ivan Bel, Kazunori Sasaki, Alice Whieldon, Philippe Vandenabeele, Yuichi Kawada, Chris McAlister, Tomas Nelissen, Tzvika Calisar, Wilfried Rappenecker, Joyce Vlaarkamp, Mihael Mamychshvili, Michel odou, Mike Mandl and Viorel Mihai.
Acupressure: For Health, Vitality and First Aid (Health Essentials)
The origins of acupressure stretch back thousands of years to the mysterious beginnings of ancient Chinese medicine. Offering all the benefits of acupuncture - but without the need for needles - acupressure can be used to treat the symptoms of complaints as diverse as panic attacks, fatigue, toothache, childbirth, migraine, travel sickness and stress. Written by an accomplished teacher and practitioner, this highly readable guide covers acupressure's ancient origins, Chi and meridians and their place in acupressure, acupressure for first aid, a simple DIY routine, and examples of successful treatments. The author was a teacher at East-West Center of London.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
Die transkulturelle Integration außereuropäischer Konzepte in den 2. deutschen Gesundheitsmarkt am Beispiel Shiatsu
Shiatsu, eine japanische Lebensform und ein Behandlungsverfahren der Körperarbeit zugleich, hat auf dem sogenannten zweiten Gesundheitsmarkt in den letzten Jahrzehn-ten in Europa einen festen Platz eingenommen im Zuge einer Integration fremdkultureller Konzepte in die Eigenkultur. Dabei kann in dieser Arbeit belegt werden, dass das Ver-fahren selbst bereits kulturelle Verflechtungen in sich trägt und Anteile anderer Kulturen übernommen hat, so auch der deutschen Lebensform. Eine kontinuierliche Weiterent-wicklung einer Vielzahl medizinischer Erkenntnisse und Praktiken japanischer Mediziner ist verantwortlich für die Herausbildung des heutigen Shiatsu. Shiatsu wird als Teil der heterodoxen Medizin vergleichend zur komplementär-alternativen Ausrichtung bestimmt. Die heterodoxe Medizin liegt üblicherweise außer-halb der Schulmedizin. Es kann aber gezeigt werden, dass die Ausübung der Shiatsu-Methode nicht auf privat ausgebildete Praktiker und damit den zweiten Gesundheitsmarkt beschränkt sein muss. Vielmehr bietet sich den Akteuren des ersten Gesundheitsmarkts ein Spektrum an Einsatzmöglichkeiten, die zentrale Ziele des Gesundheitswesens unterstützen. Weiter kann aufgezeigt werden, wo sich in der Struktur des deutschen Gesundheitswesens Ansatzpunk-te zur verstärkten Integration von Shiatsu in den Gesundheitsmarkt finden lassen, wie eine unterstützende Argumentation aussieht und ob es evidenzbasierte Studien zu Shi-atsu gibt, die auswertbar sind. Die Arbeit bietet dazu einen umfassenden Überblick bis-heriger Forschungsergebnisse innerhalb eines Reviews, ergänzt durch eine Metaanaly-se klinischer Studien. Im Review können insgesamt 15 Studien verglichen werden, wo-bei Studienanalyse A die monokausale Wirkung bei spezifischen Krankheitsbildern an-hand kontrollierter Studien und Studienanalyse B die multifaktorielle Wirksamkeit des Shiatsu anhand von Querschnitts- und unkontrollierten Studien dokumentiert. Fünf kon-servative Studien fließen in die ergänzende Metaanalyse ein. Gegenüber Verfahren der Schulmedizin, die in kontrollierten Studien als Ver-gleichsmethode eingesetzt werden, kann im Durchschnitt eine leichte Überlegenheit von Shiatsu über die eingeschlossenen Studien belegt werden. Im Ergebnis der Arbeit wird das Verfahren als geeignet bewertet für multimodale Therapien bei Indikationen, die im Zusammenspiel von Körper, Seele und Umwelt entstehen. Am Ende steht ein perspekti-vischer Ausblick auf die wirtschaftliche und politische Entwicklung.
Laden Sie die Studie unter diesem Link herunter.
The Spirit of Shiatsu
Going beyond the practical technicalities, this in-depth manual delves into the founding principles and philosophy of Shiatsu on a technical, cultural, energetic, and conceptual level.
Split into three parts and based on two decades of international experience, Ivan Bel first returns to the basic technical principles of Shiatsu, then explores the complexities of the person-centred mind/body theory behind the practice, and gradually expands into the philosophical elements of natural health.
Concepts and questions that are often excluded from practical Shiatsu resources are carefully explained, including inner cleaning and purification, linking energy, and the impact an individual's environment can have on their health. Enriched with case studies and comprehensive yet accessible language, this is ideal for both Shiatsu students and practitioners.
In exploring the 'why' as well as the 'how', this must-have resource allows teachers and students to expand their knowledge and awareness for a more complete and flexible understanding of this ancient discipline.
Shiatsu: space for Encounter
Explore the art of creating profound relationships while practicing Shiatsu in **“Shiatsu – Space for Encounter.”**
What conditions are necessary for them to take place?
Nine authors approach these questions from culturally very different perspectives and with very different text forms.
The Uncharted body
The Uncharted Body is the follow up to The Spark in the Machine.
This textbook shows how there is a hidden and invisible world inside our bodies, which runs on energy. Within our every cell lives mitochondria, power generators with an electric current strong enough to create a spark of molecular energy. The mitochondria ‘donate’ these power molecules to each of our cells, which in turn use them to generate further electricity to drive their machinery.
The electricity doesn’t stop there. It organises and powers the brain and heart. It moves our muscles and bowels and pulses within each nerve. It lies delicately balanced across the membranes of the liver, spleen, and kidney, lubricating their functions and driving their mechanisms. It moves in channels in the body and concentrates in nodes. Electricity is the energy of our lives.
When it goes wrong it can cause chaos, catastrophe, and even death. It can rebel, or lie silent and stagnant. It can drive cells mad and turn them cancerous, make organs malfunction, or make us cry out in pain. Trying to make sense of the human body without understanding this primal energy, and the huge intelligence that drives it, would be like looking inside an unplugged computer and believing you can decipher it.
The Uncharted Body will open that Universe to you showing you how to read it, understand it, and correct it; bringing the world of Chinese medicine, blinking, into the 21st century. It is the body re-described and re-charted from the bottom up, through a world of energy rather than a mechanistic description of parts; and a window into the mysterious world of qi (pronounced ‘chi’) that has governed acupuncture practice for millenia.
This book will radically transform your view of the human body.
The Spark in the Machine: How the Science of Acupuncture Explains the Mysteries of Western Medicine
Why can salamanders grow new legs, and young children grow new finger tips, but adult humans can't regenerate? What is the electricity that flows through the human body? Is it the same thing that the Chinese call Qi? If so, what does Chinese medicine know, that western medicine ignores? Dan Keown's highly accessible, witty, and original book shows how western medicine validates the theories of Chinese medicine, and how Chinese medicine explains the mysteries of the body that western medicine largely ignores. He explains the generative force of embryology, how the hearts of two people in love and much more.
As a doctor, surgeon and acupuncturist, his knowledge of anatomy and meridians applied to anatomy is fantastic. A must read!
Physiology of Shiatsu: for beginners
“Physiology of Shiatsu for beginners” is a compilation of the seminars given by Dr. Federico Santamaría at the Japanese Shiatsu School of Master Shigeru Onoda in Madrid (Spain) in recent years.
The author explains in a simple -adapted to students without previous health training- languaje what are the mechanisms of action of Shiatsu from the point of view of Western science.
Shiatsu has physical effects on the organism of our patients, which can be explained from a neurological, hormonal and biochemical point of view.
With our pressures we induce cellular stress, a transitory ischemia, we act on proprioceptive receptors, we provoke the secretion of endorphins, and we modulate the activity of organs and viscera through the tsubos, which are access points to the central nervous system, capable of activating brain areas at a distance.
An essential text to understand Shiatsu from our western mentality.