After Sei-ki

Scotland and the boy in London

I go down the track. There are some new houses built. It seems there is no way through. Then I notice something familiar; the shape of the garden on the edge of a non-descript bungalow. It is filled now with rubble, pieces of wood and the part-disassembled contents of the bungalow’s furnishings. It’s a clue. And I know to hook around this protrusion- then to follow the green fence up to the gate at the foot of the woods. The path seems endlessly long and I keep wondering if I am already there on each new refraction of light in a puddle or an un-drained swamp. But no. This is not what I am heading for. With no map there is nothing definite to aim for. Nevertheless I am there and my chest expands at this lake covered over with the fur of living grass. I am at the foot of the mountain and over at the far end is the broken tree. Then I know that the stream trickles on up to the double stone, parted to reveal a slit of light through which I always pass through. It is windy. I stay at the far side making it onto the thick moss that filters the water and is dry on top. I sit down facing the small green tree that is sprouting up from the middle of the lake where earth has accumulated and the water is stilled. I can hear the wind. It does not reach me in the valley but it rushes above.

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Later, I am back at the school. I am in London on the edge of Walthamstow marshes at this tiny make-shift Special Needs School in a room that would have been an outhouse tagged on the edge of the 70’s playground that was here before it.

The boy is on the red mat.  I have just lifted him onto the mat from the other room where I began working with him through the drowsiness of half-sleep.  He relaxed and breathed deeply- a breath that ripples out unwinding his limbs and softening his lips and throat. Now in his raised consciousness he taughtens. But not too much. I hold his body close to mine and bend down with him to the mat then come back up to sitting. He remains lying on the mat.

His stomach muscles flex and he tries to pass wind or pass a stool. It is hard and blocked and he writhes with the effort. His lower back flexes off the mat and he stuffs his right fist deep into his mouth stifling a gargle as if plugging himself. My hands land on his abdomen then separate out so that one is on his upper chest near to his left shoulder and neck. The treatment begins and I breathe into the contact expiring and then coming off as I breathe in through my nose. His breathing is erratic. Sometimes it correlates sometimes it falls out of sync. My eyes observe his face and I work with the pads of my finger tips on his neck. At first my hands feel separate from one another but soon they begin to work as one, made coherent by the pattern of this living boy at the centre and my own life in that same centre. Out of disturbance a great joy seems to well up. I notice it in the flicker-like shadows and light crossing the boys face rapid and unstoppable as his attention reflects the patterns of on-off pulsar contact over his body.

The texture of this enquiry comes through not in relative distance but in variable depths that are reconfiguring on and off of one another. There is always this time-frame that hold sameness and variation in a meaningful account.. Through this duration there is an understanding of presence- a presence that is not an image- a snap-shot- but a gradual development through complexity and sometimes through contradiction. So that the writhing and spasmic end ligaments of creased legs and fisted hands is altogether smooth and elongated as an idea of contact that is taking place at the same time.

Gradually this idea like a wave ripples deep below the surface eruption and, not through inhibition but through setting up a counter-flow, it begins to account for a different feeling. This is literally a felt sensation and it occurs through my body and his simultaneously at certain points where a ripple drifts out form centre to extremity, then back in again.

This completion of a circle is so swift encompassing not only two bodies but a wider sense of the room, the class-rooms adjoining and the park and marshes, streets and traffic beyond that- that it is not useful to give a location- a start and a finish. It is a distributed exchange back and forth in awareness that is not only in human life but courses through all life. This exchange is reflectively whole. The joy is in the double loop of movement and pause. It is an embrace come full circle. A simple smile that is there and then dissipated beyond the limits of any single face. Yet the situation of the boy- his historical bearing is always in view; the mother’s shame of his condition. The bereftment; a denial of contact as a physical merging that can then lead to full separation.
But there is the idea of that contact that can be emoted or welcomed and that wells up out of its physical equivalent in considered contact. The mother is always already there deep in the boy triggered through touch.

Just them the no-contact of this historical boy and the contact of a deeper recognition play out simultaneously.This creates great empathy not only between me and the boy but in relation to the boy and the situation of his life and of life on general. There is soft crying in the room next door, rhythmic and insistent, low and sorrowful. I look up while continuing with my hand contact and the boy pauses and makes space in his breathing to include that sound at just the same moment. As one we notice this together, embrace it and make a wider contact.

I see this freedom in generosity shining out behind the cracked and reddened eye-lids opf this child. His blue eyes become deep, calm and unending. They capture light and send it back through then radiate it out again. His fist slips out of his mouth and unfolds.

Everything is in dynamic relation to everything else questioning and adapting back and forth in relays that begin to quietly whisper to one another. The muscle groups, the breath, the sinews and even the spittle and bowel movements begin to correspond and play off one another. I see the blotchiness of the child’s face visibly clear. I feel my heart opening and as his mouth frees up and begins to burble and make sounds that rise up as deep guttural throat sounds I am magnetically transported into this realm of sound as well and I begin to hum and sing. His voice becomes stronger, louder, more insistent. His fingers play out entwined in my fingers. His grip grows confident and explorative. I stroke his forefinger and his abdomen settles like water disappearing down a plug-hole. His face follows this enquiry in the creases at the edge of his eyes and in his moving lips. Now the sounding comes loud and clear. There is anguish, outrage, discomfort, life-force, joy and engagement in his voice. It plays out in tandem with the rumbling of his belly.

Something shifts abruptly- very slight like a minute tilt- then repositions.  The alignment from head through to feet is activated and drawn through the sacrum and lower abdomen that are alive and engaged as one.

I remain with the boy even when my hands are no longer touching his body.  The engagement continues to create a very slight tension like a low level buzz. We breathe as one through an atmosphere which gradually melts back into the ground. We separate.

The session ends.

I address him by his name.

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* This was written after the last Seiki workshop in Scotland March 2012 with Kishi and Kyoko.
Since this time Kishi has become critically ill. He will never teach again though at the time of writing I didn't know this.

I continue to work with this child.

(Added Oct 2012)

Seiki is in the interstices.

 ........


Seiki is the particualar kind of body-work that Akinobu Kishi has develooped out of Shiatsu. It works with two way  heart to heart touch and is adaptive in the moment linking closely to the rhythm of breathing and attentive to right timing and right distance known in Japanese as Ma-ai.

It has greatly affected the way I treat people and my understanding of how to be with others in general. I think it applies to much more than just touch treatments. It is the basis of how I work to create living adaptive environments with children with complex needs. Without this approach, I would not have come to understand the non-verbal dialogue of such children as being so rich and vast.

This piece was written in 2010 after returning from a workshop in Scotland. It  is also an entry in the recent book Se-Ki, Life in Resonance, by Akinobu Kishi and Alice Whieldon, Singing Dragon where students give accounts of Seiki in their own words. I have been following Seiki since 2004.

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Seiki is in the Interstices:

It is in the gap between what we come up against and that which melts away on the touch.

It is cutting meat when the timing makes the flesh part on the slightest of touches. The knife does not come down hard. It does not push. It glides. 

It is the heat between the hands in Gyoki. The hands come together. Sweat forms in the fold. It expands and dissipates into the graininess of the atmosphere. This is environment. A canopy that holds together as one. A body connection that becomes a movement unfolding from a hidden point into a bearing. 

It is automatic like a catapult. A spontaneous evolution like a leaf unfurling. This time of when to go and the going with it in a total commitment brings responsibility. It brings two- directional response. It leads to change. Because a certain phase in the way things are- a situation that one is in- the ripple of the flesh; it bunching up and slipping away again, has been noticed.

The eyes follow through from the alignment of the body that moves as one like a single snake vertebrae- from sacrum to occiput- through the pores of the skin opening out-

The smell, the breath- the small muscular groupings- the clenching of the anus- the Hara, the throat, the valves of the heart, the lung, tendons in the knees, the muscle calves, the ankle and wrist tendons, the scapula jointing. All are orifices that open and close as a gage to a wider association.

They work in conjunction with one another. They are echoes of one another. A voicing. 

In that way we also course and filter though one another- through a reverberation of tendencies that work like a pump. The on-off of contact is this. It is Gyoko or breathing between the hands. Building up the heat of proximity in the out-breath then allowing it to unfurl in the off touch; the in-breath.

The intervals. Seiki lives in these intervals creating a space of possibility. The space between cells.

To feel a constraint, go with it into its wringing turn like a spring tightening. To go with the disease or aggravation until at its extremity the re-wind catches in.

This is automatic release when the body moves and the conscious human association follow. This is thought-tendencies through and through with feeling response at every minute level of interest.

There is an intermingling and a conjoint intelligence which comes through. A deep compassion lasting.

There is a gathering and spreading simultaneously. A filtering system that nourishes every cell as each turns and jostles around another. The body breaks and is re-made. Not only once in a single trauma and cure but endlessly.

Life and death meet in the moment. In this gap is every different human possibility. A story is told.