What is shiatsu?
Shiatsu can be translated to 'finger pressure' which is a massage technique, but, the term 'shiatsu' implies a unique set of principles describing how to best help someone with massage. In shiatsu, a practitioner uses elbows, knees and thumbs to strategically apply static, steady pressure.  Pressure is firm but kept comfortable and applied over important areas of the body to both compress tissues in an area as well as share around cellular components that the area could be lacking. Cellular components like blood and amino acids are shared among an area by a vacuum created through slowly removing the static shiatsu pressure and letting the area fill with blood and fluid again by virtue of the bodies own atmospheric pressure. Slowly but steadily, shiatsu mixes together cellular components so that they can find their magnetic partners in an area. White blood cells will be attracted to things that shouldn't be there, broken pieces of cellular debris find the lymph drainage system, enzymes and amino-acids find their appropriate receptor - etc. 

To summarize, Shiatsu -

1) Facilitates a high degree of cellular respiration.
Through carefully applying techniques, shiatsu can maximize the amount of circulation being provided by a massage - making the best use of a client’s time as possible in terms of effectively improving and maintaining tissue health in those who do not often subject their muscles to a regular "squish".  

2) Engage a client’s ‘parasympathetic’ nervous system (trick the body into relaxing). 
Shiatsu works near the nerves of the body to ;
 (A) Clear debris that may be causing stimulation that we learn to ignore.

 (B) Bring a person's attention into their body - a subconscious reminder that everything is O.K.

 Many people rarely spend time in a 'rest-and-digest' state due to stressful modern lifestyles and physiological imbalance. It’s important that we spend at least half of our time being relaxed in the ‘rest-and-digest’ gear so that the body's resources can be allocated as needed, and, so that the body can begin to work through it’s to-do lists.  Through shiatsu, a person's mind becomes more familiar with what it feels like to be relaxed , making it easier to find relaxation in day-to-day living.

In studying shiatsu therapy, students are given a background in traditional East Asian medicine to see exactly what is keeping their clients from getting into that ‘rest-and-digest’ gear on their own time and better prepare them for finding internal balance in our modern environments.