Jeannette Northern writes: “Sharing Jin Shin Jyutsu” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 74, Fall 2011:

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I walked up three flights of stairs on a cool gray Sunday morning in Oakland to work my shift at Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic. Three ladies to share my understanding of this Art arrive one after the other. Bless them all for the pleasure they bring my way…a reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving. And I am continually amazed at the lack of resistance I experience to sharing myself in is way.

It is touching to read through their charts before I meet them…no one I remember from my past visits. In this moment, I can hardly recall their names, but each face, each interaction is still here with me. One had breast cancer in her right breast, another metastatic melanoma, the last with breast cancer in her left breast…all in different phases of their cancer projects…the last one more serious. Chemo has taken all her hair. Before she lies down, she asks me sweetly if it’s okay to remove her wig. “Of course,” I say. She takes off her wig, laying it in the chair where her jacket and bag already sit and climbs carefully onto the table, resting the back of her bare head on the pillow.

It touches me to see these three ladies lie down to receive. This hour of time we each share is a rest for them…for me too, as I touch their bodies with my hands…an eternal, timeless space… My hands, an extension of Self, become alive in a new way, a way that words fail to describe. So, I sit in silence, and share this Self with them.

As my hands touch this body, there is a remembrance of harmony…harmony born out of the transformation of space and time…harmony that’s eternally present where thoughts stop and rest is received…spiraling, spinning, transforming  like the giggling laughter of a child at play…pure FUN – Fulfillment, Understanding, No-thingness.

In the lobby, I see an old friend. She’s lived with cancer for the past eight years, and she’s an inspiration to me. Tipping and bowing her head to one side she says, “I don’t get to see you, today.” I say with a smile and a nod, “I know,” and then we hug. Her hair, white as silvery moonlight, unlike her usual highlights of purple, turquoise or red…her eyes bright and full of mercurial life…the kind that knows play and joy from the gift of experiencing ourselves… somehow, she and I, WE, know we’ll see each other again.

Leaving, I walk out the door and down the same three flights of stairs…a lightness in my being as I step outside onto the sidewalk. Bright sunshine greets me on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. I wonder for a moment where my feet will take me and say “thank you”. How lucky I AM to know and share the Art of Jin Shin Jyutsu.

Thank you, Jeannette.

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.