According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, physical manifestations (signs and symptoms) of a pathological condition are usually related with respective emotional and mental conditions.

For example, the tendency of a person to get angry easily, may suggest lack of harmony in the liver. Inversely, prolonged anger may lead to some pathological condition in the liver; actual symptoms will depend on the condition of other vital organs and functions of the body. Such symptoms may include itching, eye redness, headache, premenstrual syndrome, indigestion, stomach burning sensation and acid reflux, etc.

Shiatsu treats each human being as a unique case. This means that the same symptom in, say, ten different people can have ten different causes.

A common case, such as the one referred to as "cervical syndrome", is a characteristic example of how varied the causes of an unpleasant physical condition can be. It can be that, in order to heal a neck pain, one may first have to restore the mobility of the colon and the function of the gallbladder (whose meridians both pass through the neck). In another case, as soon as the energy of the recipient of shiatsu is enhanced and he/she finds the courage to set his/her intimate affairs in order, the symptoms of the "cervical syndrome" may decline, often permanently.

The body possesses considerable intelligence and memory; it remembers and reminds us, even through pain, to refrain from inappropriate paths that we took in the past. Among other things, our body is a wise advisor: its conditions and diseases are indicators of how suitable are ―or are not― our living conditions and habits for our body.

Shiatsu is an excellent route to connecting with our body, which often results to people describing their sensation after one or two sessions in such terms as «I can at last feel my body», «I am feeling my entire body», «I feel well-centered again».

Nicholas has been wetting his bed regularly, almost each night over the last 3 years. He is a lively, playful, openly emotional child. When obtaining his health history in the presence of his mother, Nicholas expresses, with reluctance as well as obvious emotion, his discomfort for his mother's long absence from home due to her work. It is worth mentioning that bedwetting first happened almost at the same time his mother started working. When asked how he feels about his mother, Nicholas replies spontaneously and colorfully: «I miss her very, very, very much!».

Nicholas often has nightmares which share a common theme: stormy seas, night, pirates, and a big full moon. The assessment of the tongue and the sensing of the abdomen, reveal, according to the theory of 5 elements, some imbalance in the elements of Water (kidneys, bladder) and of Fire (heart). Therefore, session 1 focuses on meridians related with these organs.

During session 2 after one week, Nicholas is more comfortable and the session is often "interrupted" by his laughs and playfulness. Already since that night following session 1, Nicholas hasn't wet his bed again. Another three sessions were deemed necessary to stabilize his good condition.

Demetra, a high-ranking executive with a big multinational corporation, is a woman with intense sense of responsibility. She suffers from acute stress and concerns regarding her professional and family obligations: "must" is the key word in the way she handles her life.

Her sleep is disturbed: she always wakes up in the morning with a stressful, unpleasant disposition. Two years ago she underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her right breast, followed by chemotherapy and hormonal treatment for menstrual suppression. Also, she has psoriasis spread all over her extremities.

Demetra's attitude regarding her health issues is revealing: she is almost always smiling and appears remote, as if she were talking about someone else. She seems to have almost accepted her condition as non-reversible.

Health history and total diagnostic assessment suggest what session 1 needs to focus on: to enhance her body's ability to discriminate between useful and useless, suitable and unsuitable, and, at the emotional level, the ability to make choices without guilt. These are all properties of a physically, emotionally, mentally, and energy-wise healthy small intestine. Therefore, we worked to enhance the Small Intestine and Spleen meridian (logical thinking and concentration, sense of security and grounding, without upset or stress).

After session 1 Demetra stated that she had woken up in the morning feeling happy and optimistic for the first time in a long time, but it didn't last. Instead, the dominant feelings of the first weeks following session 2 were anger and a tendency to "set things straight with the past". She expressed this attitude towards her environment over the next days, sometimes discreetely and sometimes clumsily and intensely...

During the same period, her sleep was agitated, with nightmares revolving around work-related anxieties and feeling of heavy responsibility. In the following sessions we worked along the road suggested by Demetra's own body.

After session 3 Demetra talked very positively about the visible reversal of her skin condition, which continued steadily through our 3-month collaboration. Her attitude towards herself was gradually changing also: on top of her other responsibilities, she was becoming eager to be responsible for her own emotional and physical health as well. Stressful feelings and thoughts were replaced by a feeling of confidence and trust that everything will be all right.