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Recognition and Legal Regulation.

Research has a role to play in all of these but it is critical for establishing some of them, namely: safety and effectiveness, public awareness and confidence, shiatsu's unique niche and its scope of application, and State and E.U. recognition. Our legal freedoms and rights to practice, and to teach depend upon these. The future of training and the future of practice, and, therefore, of Schools and private practice depends upon securing them.

It is also up to us to take the opportunity to carry out our own research before someone else does it like medical research and misses the point about shiatsu altogether and perhaps harms our right to practice.

Knowledge Base, Teaching, Public Record.

1. Shiatsu is an art which has at its core the promotion of aliveness, of a felt sense connection between mind and body, of living more consciously directed, healthy and healing lives. Our development is marked by milestones of conscious progress, the observed changes in manifestation of Ki. But we keep no record of this as a profession even though it is at the heart of what we do with every client. Research is the only way to do this.
   
   
2. Research is the way to translate what we trust from our experience into accessible and reliable terms for those who do not have such experience, and especially for those who have a legal role and responsibility to ensure that health-care practices are safe and effective.
   
   
3. Research offers us the opportunity to share and expand our skills by the publication of our results. It offers us the confidence such publication would create in the profession. It offers us the opportunity of publicising the attractiveness of our art.
   
   
4. It is one of the key ways to show with corroboration and not just hearsay to a sceptical world that what we do is valuable. Personally I see the role of research for the profession as equivalent to the 'mother hand' for the practitioner: the sensitive, assuring gathering of the vital information that is the enabling heart of our healing touch. Is it not, therefore, a key tool for Schools also.
   
   
5. It is one of the key ways to show with corroboration and not just hearsay to a sceptical world that what we do is valuable. Personally I see the role of research for the profession as equivalent to the 'mother hand' for the practitioner: the sensitive, assuring gathering of the vital information that is the enabling heart of our healing touch. Is it not, therefore, a key tool for Schools?

Research is to date the missing piece needed in negotiating our relationship with the world outside shiatsu, and also the missing piece internally as a profession in closing the circle of training, practice, and feedback from practice into training.