Watsu is a new discipline of massage in the water. It constitutes a hydrotherapy technique that combines physical and psychic aspects to provide an integral well-being to the body. It is a type of Japanese massage, shiatsu, that is applied in aquatic environment and that is able to give back the energy to the exhausted ones, while it provides calm and relaxation.

Who has not gone sometimes to the swimming pool with the mood to relax tensions or has taken a good shower with the purpose of being sprightly and find the necessary energy to face a new day? The water is optimal means to relax to us, to hydrate, to clean us and make us feel better. The aquatic therapy of Watsu reunites all multiple techniques to obtain this aim.

The Eastern massage of Shiatsu consists of an old preventive medicinal discipline. This same principle of preventive and healing therapy is applied in a swimming pool. The system was originated by Harold Dull, a pioneer in the field of the massages, which found 20 years ago that aquatic massage gives excellent healing benefits. He also noticed that the Watsu allows great healing possibilities to people with mobility problems being in addition a psychological and spiritual therapy.

His kindness and great ability in the aquatic massage was combined to create this discipline of physical and emotional connection between two people, where in the water we are all equally accepted. This discipline was taught to personnel with aquatic and massage ability, which in addition have interest in helping and healing to other people, thus creating Water Shiatsu. Soon it became a formal school of massage and aquatic work.

As of today the school is dedicated to train professionals worldwide. Watsu has become a great alternative in most recognized Spas in the world and also in physical therapy hospitals for children and adults where they are training therapists to be able to offer this alternative. The therapy, according to Harold Dull, entails a great presence in here and now with the person who is being floated. The instructor must be physical and mentally centered in the breathing and rate of the undulations that the body of the other person needs. The session requires great silence and sense of compassion for the floated person. The care and support, as well as the movements create an aquatic fluidity dynamics that only those who has experienced it can express.

The experience of receiving these treatments has proven excellent results in different conditions giving back the joy and energy of life that only water can provide. A flotation with this massage is an incomparable, relaxing and energizing experience. Watsu as massage modality agglutinates the therapeutic power of the body manipulation with the healing qualities known from the antiquity of water, besides to become a meditation.

The therapy developed in a tempered or cold swimming pool depending on the circumstance since cardiac conditions, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia effects improves, which provides a pleasant sensation of confidence and security. In the aquatic environment, the weight of the body becomes light and each movement is slower and smoother, two of the characteristics that define Watsu.

Normally, floaters are used and placed to the height of ankles so that these sensations are increased while the body floats on the aquatic surface. The instructor works stand up, with the water covering him up to the chest zone, moving around the patient stretching his joints and muscles, directing the body with rhythmical and repetitive movements so that the water provides the massage. The movements and massages are alternated with moments of calm to extend each sensation. It differentiates the vitalizing from the massage with the calm that provides the water.

The water is an ideal element that allows contacts and postures, mainly in the zone of the spine, which would be impossible elsewhere. Torsions, inclinations are made and the patient is also placed in positions that allow the work in less accessible parts of the body. Points are pressed that have to do with the fluid of corporal energy, power centers that also are touched in other therapies like acupuncture. All these manipulations help in addition to improve the sanguineous circulation and the purification of the organism in pleasant surroundings.

Aside from the massage itself and the action of the water, is also important the environment where the Watsu is developed. It must be a calm and quiet place, that allows connection with the body, feeling something so basic but often inappreciable, like the own breathing. The Watsu is more and more common in aquatic and rehabilitation centers in Europe and the United States. It is certain that it is much more developed and is more usual in countries like the United States, since was born in the Mecca of the Spas and the innovation of therapeutic treatments where already it is applied in particular swimming pools.

The therapeutic value of Watsu is based in the capacity to alleviate pain, strengthen the body and give back flexibility in patients who were lost the hope of movement for any reason. This type of massage is effective in front of problems like stress, the insomnia and the lack of energy, and also to improve muscular and bony upheavals of the column and the joints. It can alleviate migraines and is useful against any painful upheaval that implies rigidity and tension.

The benefits of Watsu are not only physical, they go further on. It acts in the psychic plane providing calmness and providing the encounter with oneself therefore alleviating the ills that pronounces in the body but that are originated in emotional aspects. In fact, during a session of Watsu is possible to produce liberation of not solved emotional problems. They can receive children and adults of any age and physical conditions, and not to know how to swim is not an impediment to benefit from all its qualities.

This allows doctors and professionals of the health to recommend noninvasive alternatives of massage in patients with chronic conditions, post surgical trauma, emotional trauma, arthritis, elders, Alzheimer patients, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis and rheumatism, among others. The technique is available at Scuba Dogs with the trainer and therapist Debbie Torrellas. For more information contact us at 787-783-6377.