<< go back

E.S.F. RESEARCH PROJECT

WHAT are the aims?
1. Find out who uses shiatsu and for what presenting reasons (we may say we know but it has never been documented. We are professional in doing this for individual clients but we do not do it as a profession.)
2. What are the benefits as recorded by the receivers and not according to some preconceived system.
3. Develop a framework to assist officials and regulators to recognise shiatsu according to valid and fair criteria.
4. Safety and effectiveness idependently established.
5. Study the wider quality of life benefits not just according to improvement of symptoms but whatever happens in the body-mind connection in the client.
6. Integrity of shiatsu, prevention, health promotion, benefit to health systems
7. How practise is affected by the legal frameworks ( Germany V UK ).

HOW to realize?
10 - 50 Practs in 10 countries over 6 months and 3 months after completion
Questionnaires - client and practitioner and some in depth case studies.
First session.
Subsequent sessions
3 months after last session.

AFTERWARDS.
All practitioners to get results
Reports in scientific and CAM Journals
International Workshops
Basis for further research.

SPECIAL
This study is uniquely special in several ways.

The cornerstone of the study will be to record both the user's and the practitioner's experience as they tell it. The question of safety and effectiveness will be studied and reported entirely in relation to the stated expectations and reports of the receivers and designed so as to record the benefits of their experience of treatment in whatever terms they describe and not just in relation to symptoms or medically notated conditions. In this way it will highlight the quality and range of life awareness, and mind-body relationship that is at the core of the shiatsu experience, and thereby reflect how well our work actually is effective and safe in those terms.
Questionnaires, recording methods and case studies are being designed to do this. We will not use the hypothesis method i.e. where you state a hypothesis and test it. Nor will we use comparative methods.
Quantitative/statistical research will be used show independently who uses shiatsu and for what. Our expectation is that this aspect of the research will verify public demand, public support, and public usefulness, and the general legitimacy of shiatsu.
As a profession we can use this to both promote and protect our art, especially against insubstantial but emotive and prejudiced attack.

Qualitative research is designed to explore and clarify the relationships between things and is open ended in its approach. Professor Long, who will direct the study, understands the concept of holism. He understands that shiatsu is a process of dynamic relationship that takes place on the energetic level. The study is being designed so that it will be a reflection of our actual experience, not a judge of it, but an evaluation in terms of our particular purposes, approach and methods. It is intended and designed to show how shiatsu moves in the realm of subtle as well as more concrete experience and results.

This will be a landmark study that will enhance the knowledge base and reputation of shiatsu for the benefit of both the shiatsu community and the public. It is a large scale study for several reasons. Firstly because results on this scale have greater validity and provide far more potent support in presenting the case for shiatsu than small scale studies. Secondly, the scale will enable statistically valid results to be established for each participating country. It has far greater potential to test the range of use of shiatsu, the diversity of approaches and the level of positive results. In terms of establishing safety our assertion of that in the future will, as as result of the study, be based on the results of around 20,000 treatments.
This scale also enables us to involve as many practitioners as possible and to provide them with an independently validated testimony of their work.

SEAMUS CONNOLLY, E.S.F.,
At the GSD-Congress in MUNICH (Germany) - JUNE 1 - 3, 2000