“I don’t know how things will change from here, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”

A client who used to come to me when I practised CS60 returned after about five years.

He told me that even getting out of a chair took a great deal of resolve.With the help of a cane, he made his way to Meguro.

His physical condition seems to have changed considerably over those five years.

Swelling in his legs, skin problems, and persistent dermatitis.He had also lost strength. To climb the stairs, he had to use his arms to support his body. Even walking was a struggle.

In the email he sent before his visit, he wrote:

“All I want now is an ordinary body that lets me stand, walk, and climb stairs normally. I’m not asking for anything beyond that.”

To stand, walk, and climb stairs.

To lose the ability to do things we usually do without a thought.There are aspects of that struggle that perhaps only the person living through it can understand.

⸻

What prompted him to contact me again was a video of Naoya Fujiwara receiving a session.

My approach has changed considerably over these five years.I now work in a way that involves very little pain.

He said that if my approach was completely different from before, he would like to try it.

From his email, though, it was clear that he was dealing with a great many physical difficulties.

I could not know what I might be able to do without seeing him in person.

I replied, asking him to come in so I could see how his body was doing.

And last Saturday, we met again after all that time.

He told me he had also spent about two weeks attending a university hospital, undergoing various tests and thorough examinations.He had clearly been trying different things himself, looking for some way to improve his situation.

After the session, he seemed to notice a change, and he went home.

⸻

This morning, an email arrived thanking me.

“I’m happy that getting out of a chair is still just as easy two days later.”

At the bodywork practice he had previously attended, he would feel better immediately afterward,

only to find himself back where he had started the next morning.Thinking of that, he wrote, made this particularly meaningful.

Of course, he still cannot simply stand up with ease.He made that clear in his email too.

Even so, compared with having to summon all his resolve and heave himself out of a chair, it apparently felt quite different.

He had also brought out a full-length mirror that had been stored away, using it at home to check what we had discussed during the session.

And at the end, he wrote:

“I don’t know how things will change from here, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”

⸻

My approach has changed considerably over these five years, but the process of trial and error continues.

The more experience I gain, the more I come to understand.More often than before, I feel that I am finding something that helps.

Still, that does not mean I understand everything about the body.

There is something I always tell people in my training sessions.

The practitioner and the client should always meet as equals.

I do not see it as a relationship in which I do something and the other person simply receives it.

There are sensations only the client can know.There are also things I may notice from my perspective.

We share those observations and explore how things change.

We have met again after five years, and we begin again from there.