Principles and Categories of Amatsu Therapy

Go Dai

One of the key principles of Amatsu is that of the Go Dai. Go Dai means “Big Five”. It involves the interaction of the five major components of the body. These are:

• Physical - the body’s structure; organs, bones, muscles, ligaments.
• Mental - thought processes, emotions, beliefs and values.
• Electrical - nervous systems, energy system and energy levels.
• Chemical - hormones, digestive system and nutrition.
• Environmental - external stimuli: where, when and how the body reacts to it.

These five elements are interrelated; when they are in balance the body is healthy. By treating the body as a whole, all the elements will be able to work together to regain health, function and balance.

Gairon

The overview of everything, the big picture, the interconnectedness of everything in the universe.

In clinical practice this equates to the practitioner looking for and understanding how the body responds, adapts and reacts to injury or other misalignment. Pain in the shoulder for example, may relate to an old injury in the thumb, anxiety, posture or an impingement of a cervical nerve. The practitioner will collate all the information gathered from the Go Dai in the assessment and then evaluate to decide which selection of techniques are required.

Categories / Techniques

There are four categories of Amatsu these can be separated into many different techniques but which merge into each other during a balance.

• Anma - Traditional Japanese massage (soft tissues)
• Seitai - Alignment of the ligamentous system (bones and joints)
• Shinden Jutsu - Visceral balancing (organs and suspensory connections)
• Kenku Jutsu - Cranial and facial balancing (head and central nervous system)

Amatsu therapy is a hands-on therapy that can be administered to most musculo-skeletal problems for correction, pain management and rehabilitation, by utilising differential diagnosis, muscle checks, motion testing, postural analysis, observation and palpation.

A lesion is area or joint that that has restricted tissue or movement resulting in loss of function and accompanied by inflammation that can lead to trophic changes.

The principle of Biotensegrity is that movement and form are balanced in the body by the forces of tension and compression.

The therapeutic changes are made by the unique inhibitory action of the tri-axial squeeze to alter the torsion in the tissues; guiding the limbs with gentle support and a reciprocal tension coupling of the ligaments and bones at the lesion site. The bones and ligaments can then be guided to precision alignment.

The final phase of the treatment protocol is to restore integrated proprioceptive behaviours by pressure inhibition to the limb whilst guiding it through normal reflex behaviours to re establish the neuro biotaxis of gait facilitation and proprioception.