Seiki is in the interstices.

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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.