Carlos Muptualis Gutterres  embroiders a Jin Shin Jyutsu tale of intuition, determination and creative light in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 44, Spring, 2004:

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Once in a time beyond time, the Tree of Life that grew in the garden of the Universe supported a small cocoon. This cocoon was the unlikely home of a young and beautiful princess who carried on her peaceful and laborious existence.

Every morning, when the Great Sun would rise in the cosmic horizon, a tiny hole on the cocoon’s wall allowed a delicate string of light to enter our princess’s home. Carefully, she passed the very expected ray of light through the hole of her bright crystal needle, and like a virtuoso she started to embroider her immaculate white silk screen.

As her hand moved lightly with precision, an enchanted human figure was gaining shape, lighting the silk’s support. As soon as the incredibly beautiful features were perceived, that small and magical little figure started telling stories, which pleased the girl’s innocent heart. They were stories about the fantastic things that happened all over the world and about the wonders of creation.

The tales lightened that young soul, encouraging her to work even more carefully. Inevitably, every day the sunset would cut the precious string of light, making the figure so carefully embroidered, disappear, leaving the silk screen lost in its untouched brightness.

Far from being disappointed, the princess was filled with a stronger motivation to start her work all over again, and with strong determination to make it even better. That motivation was related to the intuition she had deep in her heart that perfection would give the fruit of her work the strength it needed to support life by itself and, therefore, become eternal.

Besides, every passing day the girl felt herself totally rewarded with the countless wonders she had been told, and she realized that new apprenticeship and unknown feelings were constantly bringing wisdom to her life.

Day after day, in an unthinkable sequence, her intuition would assure her she was getting closer to her intent. Many times she saw her magnificent creation being apparently supported by eternal fractions of seconds after the Universal Sun had deepened itself in the western horizon.

Several times she had the feeling that the image, which fulfilled her days and lived perpetually in her dreams, was about to express itself fully and definitively on her magical silk screen. her intuition was telling her that to make it happen, to express herself completely through her art, she should embroider the silk using the string of light with the essence of her own thoughts and feelings. This insight gave a renewed force to her everyday life. She overcame herself in each movement of her hand on the screen, and even when that incredibly beautiful masterpiece started to disappear at the end of an intense working day, the princess felt deeply grateful, for the quality of the stories she heard was improving as much as her work.

One day, something unexpected happened: despite the care and quality of the girl’s work on the screen, the figure remained deeply silent. Embarrassed, the young lady started to evaluate the possibilities of having made some mistake, although she felt that everything had been made with extreme care and with inspired movements, as she had never done before. Here eyes were pleased with what she was seeing, and although the unexpected silence was disturbing her deeply, if it wasn’t for the fascination she felt for that little uncompleted figure on the screen, she surely would have stopped working for good.

Surprising herself, she answered her soul’s unrefusable call and dived into the deepest dimension of her heart. There she found her heart’s purest desire and let it guide the movements of her hands, printing a new and unexpected brightness in her embroidering. She completely forgot the silence that at first was making her feel so uncomfortable, and continued her work.

She didn’t notice the time passing by because she was too focused on her work. When finally the Sun had crossed the frontier of the cosmic dusk, her perfectly embroidered creation remained shining for a while. Then, it started disconnecting itself from the silk until it took off totally free…into the emptiness. With care and grace it broke the cocoon’s wall, and at the right moment when the last rays of the Sun were about to disappear in the Universal dusk, it took off in sublime flight toward the creative light source. The figure took into itself the radiant essence of the princess, while her shape disappeared in a fleeting mist, leaving the cocoon completely empty.

Thank you, Carlos.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, David.

Gassho, Namaste, Blessings

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.

Melinda Buckwalter  of Commington, Massachusetts, writes “Jin Shin Jyutsu in the Clinic: Larger than Life” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 44, Spring, 2004:

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continued:

There is great therapeutic benefit in that largeness despite our efforts to turn it into diagnostic protocols, expedient treatments, client intake sheets, pulse charts, databases of symptoms and flows, concise explanations for pamphlets, all of those understandable and very human attempts to make the infinite ours. The therapeutic benefit that losing ourselves in something greater affords us is to reorganize ourselves – our belief systems, our attitudes and in turn our health – as a sort of positive side effect of reorganization.

I think the big danger in putting Jin Shin Jyutsu into the clinical setting is our forgetting how big it is – forcing it to be something small and describable, human sized – and thus losing its therapeutic value. Of course, that is just why we should insist that Jin Shin Jyutsu in its indescribable wholeness be included in the clinical setting as a reminder that the quickest way to a healthy body isn’t always the shortest distance between two points. Our main therapeutic ability is not in a more complete definition of territory (or scope of practice) but in being able to create space for the demystified magic of the Main Central Vertical Universal Harmonizing Energy to do its work.

When we first begin Jumper Cabling we start with an intention to heal. How we language our Jumper Cabling experiences helps us transform those initial intentions into awareness. The value of specificity in language lies in language’s ability to push or cultivate our awareness, not in the details themselves.

Mary’s cryptic sentences leave a lot of space to coax the expansion of our awareness of Jin Shin Jyutsu. As our awareness grows we begin to take responsibility for how we use our Jumper Cables. How we all wish to improve our pulse reading and Jumper Cabling skills! However, it is awareness, not information and techniques, that will ultimately affect that change.

Mary warns us not to put technique ahead of the art. She tells us, “Wherever your awareness, utilize it!” With awareness we understand that our Jumper Cables never needed improvement. The currency of improvement has more to do with recognizing potential than in specifics of knowledge or skill. Indeed knowledge and skill are the result of awareness (at least in their origins), not the tools to attain it! We see the results of Jiro Murai’s, Mary’s and Kato’s shifting awareness in their use of language, e.g. in the naming of Jin Shin Jyutsu from the Art of Benevolence, the Art of Longevity and the Art of Happiness to the Creator’s Art for the Man of Compassion. We delight in their choices, but we only understand those choices as our awareness grows on its own terms.

So next time a client asks you what Jin Shin Jyutsu is and you pause to grope for words and search for the place to start, congratulate yourself! Don’t reach for your pat response; celebrate your shifting and growing awareness. Maybe you will convey just a little piece of the shock of the greater unknown and remind your client of something larger than us all that is the ultimate healer. If we keep in mind what is of real therapeutic value and use language to push awareness rather than delineate, then we as Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners will truly be of great service, not just to our clients but to our colleagues in the healing profession as well.

Thank you, Melinda.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, David.

Gassho, Namaste, Blessings

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.

Melinda Buckwalter  of Commington, Massachusetts, writes “Jin Shin Jyutsu in the Clinic: Larger than Life” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 44, Spring, 2004:

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I encountered Jin Shin Jyutsu and knew right away that I wanted to study and practice it. Later I went to massage school because my state had rules about touching professionally. Mainly massage school gave me a forum to discuss issues regarding bodywork, from how to make clients comfortable on a table to how to take care of myself. My first job was working in a physical therapy office. These were wonderful therapists who incorporated craniosacral therapy, process acupressure and applied kinesiology into their practice of physical therapy. They were jealous of my massage license!

They felt that their field had been taken over by protocols imposed by the insurance companies. Doctors were required to write specific prescriptions for the patients in order to be treated by the physical therapists. The physical therapists were not allowed to treat anything else even if it was clearly affecting the prescribed area. They were given strict time limits under which to treat: 15 to 20 minutes for 10 to 12 visits. The physical therapists longed for the freedom of the massage license. Massage therapists are expected to work the whole body even if just the back is sore, or even if there is nothing wrong – simply for relaxation and as often as the client wants.

Now, however, massage therapists are looking for acceptance by the medical profession, which includes being covered by insurance companies. Prescriptions by doctors of specific areas to be exclusively worked and all the accompanying encumbrances that limit the physical therapy professional come along with that recognition.

Massage therapy as a holistic practice is being reduced to a medical massage practice (maybe it should be called an insurance massage practice) that can be quantified, coded and fit into the clinical setting. In giving up the freedom of a more expansive definition of their profession for a more clinical one, massage therapists are voluntarily limiting what was of therapeutic value in massage in the first place – that agenda-less space for the body to acknowledge its condition. Massage therapists who hope to retain a holistic practice are raising awareness in the profession by speaking out about what we win and lose by fitting into the medical model as defined by the insurance companies. Is there a way to gain acceptance without throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners experience a similar situation when we work in clinical settings with therapists of other modalities or even when we are just setting ourselves up in a “practice”; an office with clients, a schedule and receipt of money for sessions. To distinguish themselves, many healing modalities are invested in defining their scope of practice, a term the state uses to license and regulate what hands-on professionals are allowed to do. What do we gain or lose when we as Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners fit into this dynamic?

One of the things that I love about Jin Shin Jyutsu is that shell shock that you experience after your first seminar or indeed any seminar. I knew I had run into something that was bigger than myself, so much bigger that I was in a state of awe and confusion. I couldn’t get Jin Shin Jyutsu to fit into any pattern that I had previously encountered in my schooling or living experience. I have since realized this sense of shock and surprise especially in people who were Mary’s students. They took the brunt of this shock for us and have in their own ways made the material easier to digest as they pass Jin Shin Jyutsu on to us, but there is a potency to their initial exposure to Jin Shin Jyutsu that is in some ways still very raw. I have the good fortune of being a friend of Margery Johnston who attended some of Mary’s early classes. That sense of shock and surprise is still very alive in her these many years later. Although I think she has been successful at taming her initial confusion, I am glad that that early shock of encounter still lives in her. It is a reminder that Jin Shin Jyutsu is something more wonderful, awesome and magical than we can imagine.

To be continued…

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.

Christopher Lowman  writes “Jin Shin Jyutsu: Getting to Know the Name” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 43, Winter 2004:

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continued…

What is Art? Art, too, has many definitions that are difficult to agree upon. I believe, though, its essence has to do with the creative power (endowed equally to all things) that flows naturally, simply from within and which purposes to create a sense of “beauty”.

So, the “Creator’s Art” when looked at this way is a limitless power that is found everywhere, endowed equally to all and which flows from within, creating beauty.

Looking at the last part of the name ~ “Knowing and Compassionate Man” ~ we see that it is for US!

This to me shows us just how special and unique Jin Shin Jyutsu is. It also indicates the profound level and power that we are working with. It is the beauty producing power of The Creator for you and me. What a gift!

From here I would like to re-emphasize a teaching that I feel is being lost as Jin Shin Jyutsu continues to expand. Jin Shin Jyutsu is not a “healing”, “fixing”, “alternative”, “curing”, “restoring”, “good for aches and pains”, “relaxing”, etc. art. Not because it’s not, but because it’s MORE than that, so much more that ~ it just IS. I find it fun to keep this in mind when practicing because many people come to me with, “My head hurts”, “I have this or that medical label”, “I’m so upset”, etc. I just say, “This could help that”, all the while thinking to myself that Jin Shin Jyutsu isn’t about any of those things in particular, but because of its all-inclusive nature, it actually is.

This satisfied me for a while but then the question arose, “WHY would the Creator give us this art/creative power?”

Mary gives us the answer in Self-Help Book 1 (and in many other places) where she writes, “Jin Shin Jyutsu IS” followed by “Getting to Know (Help) Myself”.

I view this statement as another aspect of the name (she almost always couples them) similar to the second part of a book title, e.g., The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. They are directly linked. Make no mistake about it.

My interpretation of this is that Mary is telling us that the primary, creative intention (the “why”) of Jin Shin Jyutsu is to help us get to know ourselves.

I said earlier that art has a notion of beauty built into it. What could possibly be more beautiful than knowing ourselves as we truly are? It is the place from where all true art, health, security, fulfillment, beauty, love, bliss, happiness, longevity, benevolence, etc. is born ~ is it not? It is also the place where all the trouble starts as well. Thus the insight, “All my miseries are caused by I am ignorant of myself”, makes all the more sense.

The following comes from Book 1 of Neal Donald Walsch’s, Conversations with God: “My purpose in creating you, My spiritual offspring, was for Me to know Myself as The Creator (God). I have no way to do that save through you. Thus it can be said (and has been many, many times) that My purpose for you is for you to know yourself as Me.” This startled me given all that I had gathered thus far about the meaning of Jin Shin Jyutsu. This offering explains that the primary purpose of our life on Earth is for us to know ourselves as who we really are, i.e. as the Creator.

To me there is no question that Jin Shin Jyutsu, Getting to Know (Help) Myself, is in perfect harmony with this intention, and I find it extraordinary that this has been derived from just getting to know the name. For me, Jin Shin Jyutsu is and always will be the infinite beauty producing power of the Creator given to us to fulfill His one goal ~ for us to know ourselves as Him.

Small wonder why I would hesitate in the past to tell people what I do or why some people can only say, “Jin Shin”. “Jin Shin Jyutsu” carries such a powerful force with it that it is practically unspeakable.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, David.

Gassho, Namaste, Blessings

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.

Christopher Lowman  writes “Jin Shin Jyutsu: Getting to Know the Name” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 43, Winter 2004:

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Recently I have been studying in preparation to teach my first self-help class. I decided to start my studies where most instructors start teaching in class ~ by looking at the name, Jin Shin Jyutsu. I’ve been looking at this name pretty closely now for a couple of months, and what I’ve found in its meaning, I think, is very powerful. To be honest, I never was a big fan of the name and always hesitated to mention it when people would ask, “Well, what do you do?” I thought it to be such a mouthful, and I feared the inevitable, “Jin Shin … what?” Now, however, after careful study I can say that I am beginning to understand the truly awesome power and meaning that the name conveys and am happy to be able to share what I have discovered with you.

We’ve all been told that Master Murai originally named Jin Shin Jyutsu the “Art of Happiness” observing that those who he worked with seemed to live more joyful and happy lives. Then, as his awareness deepened, he renamed it the “Art of Longevity” noticing that it promoted increased length and overall quality of life. As his awareness continued to grow, he renamed it the “Art of Benevolence” seeing that it inspired people to help and share with others what had been shared with them. Finally, he rested with “Jin Shin Jyutsu” or the “Art of the Creator for the Man of Knowing and Compassion”. That’s a big leap from the other names, but what pray does it mean?

When Master Murai arrived at Jin Shin Jyutsu, I believe he witnessed through all his years and years of study and practice that it helped people in every way imaginable: spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, etc. He realized that its power to help was limitless (found everywhere), and any name like the “Art of Happiness” or the “Art of Benevolence” wouldn’t do because those names (or any like them) set a limit on its nature by saying that it is THIS and not THAT. This is why we say that Jin Shin Jyutsu “IS”.

To me the genius of this name has to do with the fact that it names something which essentially cannot be named (given it limitless nature). Furthermore, I believe Jin Shin Jyutsu gives us insight into our reason for existence and tells us how it assists in that!

Let’s look at the phrase the “Art of the Creator for the Knowing and Compassionate Man” in stages.

“The Art of the Creator” or as Mary says in Text 1, “Creator’s Art”. Jin Shin Jyutsu is the “Creator’s Art”.

Who or What is the Creator? There are many definitions, but to me, simply speaking, the Creator (or God, if you will) is the Everything, that is, All Things Seen and Unseen, including you and me (though many of us do not think of ourselves as such). In the Bible it is said, “I Am the Alpha and the Omega.’ The Creator is This, That, and Everything In Between: the absolute purest definition of That Which Has No Limit ~ That Which IS.

To be continued…

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.