During a Watsu® session the warm water and low gravity combine with the security of being held. This allows deep relaxation and release to occur as the therapist performs Zen Shiatsu and Massage. Muscle guarding is decreased and a physically and psychologically calming atmosphere is created. This environment and the gentle nature of Watsu® are conducive to profound insights, understandings and positive change.
Harold Dull began developing WATSU® in 1980 floating his Zen Shiatsu students in the warm pool at Harbin Hot springs, California, applying Shiatsu’s stretches and moves. The holding that working in water necessitates brings receivers to new levels of connection and trust, beyond other modalities based on touch. This, combined with the therapeutic benefits of warm water and the greater freedom of movement it encourages, creates a modality that can effect every level of our being.
The Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association (WABA), an educational non-profit organization, is dedicated to making the benefits of both giving and receiving Aquatic Bodywork available to everybody. WABA records classes taken everywhere, making it possible for students to study wherever they want and fulfill the requirements to be listed on the WABA web-site as practitioners, etc.
Minakshi first studied WATSU® with Harold Dull in 1990 and became the first certified WATSU® teacher in 1991. Minakshi co-taught with Harold at every WATSU® class at the School of Shiatsu and Massage in California, until 1998. At that time she opened her own aquatic bodywork facility in the Florida Keys. She continues to teach with Harold and others at the WATSU® Center in California.
(16 Hour Weekend)
The introductory course includes four hours classroom time, covering the origins of WATSU, its therapeutic applications, and general benefits and contraindications. The remaining twelve hours are spent in the water studying the correct body mechanics which allow the practitioner to work effortlessly while always supporting the receiver, followed by basic positions, stretching and transitions which form the core of any WATSU session.
In this course you learn a progression of moves that you can share with your family and friends. Sharing it can become a practice in which you find yourself deepening your connection with others. Each time you repeat the progression you start with the Waterbreath Dance, in which you learn to stay in the emptiness at the bottom of the breath until the breathing of the one in your arms draws you up out of it. You then learn to move to the rhythm of that breath you now share, building up into a faster move that stopping, takes you beyond the breath into a stillness where you can connect to whatever movement within the one you float has been activated. In that same stillness, floating someone at your heart, you can access whatever rises up from your heart out your arms under them. Wherever it comes from the more you access together the movement from within the more it leads you into a continuum through the changes of the position of your arm in what is called Explore Flow. Then the return to the breath takes you back to the other side. Besides a deepening of connection, this practice can lead into more flow in your life outside the pool. Besides being complete in itself, this progression, which is done on both sides, is the first third of what is taught in the new Watsu 1.
Minakshi Watsu 