Shiatsu College, Manchester

08/10/2025

Are you a carer, or Care-experienced, or on Universal credit (or similar benefits)? It's that time of the year when we start taking bookings for our shiatsu clinics, and this year we have some funded places for people from these disadvantaged groups. Come along and try out shiatsu for free, in a friendly setting at Manchester Buddhist Centre.

You will get a professional, individual shiatsu session, in a room with 4 or 5 others receiving at the same time. Your shiatsu practitioner will be a Year 3 student or a graduate. The clinic will be supervised by a teacher who is an experienced shiatsu practitioner, who can be on hand if any help is needed.

Here are the dates and times (all Saturdays):
Nov 15th at 10.45, 12, 1.45, 3
Dec 6th at 10.45, 12, 1.45, 3
Jan 10th at 1.45 or 3
Feb 7th at 1.45 or 3

To book your Shiatsu session please contact us via Messenger or email.

Care-experienced means you spent time in a children's home, or you were fostered or adopted as a child.
Being a carer means you care for a member of your family or friend, eg if they have a disability.

07/10/2025

Low-Cost Shiatsu Clinic News! With some free places!

At Shiatsu College Manchester we have four clinics per year, where our Year 3 students and graduates offer shiatsu to members of the public.
We can offer these sessions at a low cost - £30 full price and £20 unwaged/retired/concessions.
This year, we also have some funded places in our clinics, so that more disadvantaged people can have some shiatsu for free (more info below).

Dates and times:
November 15th: 10.45am, 12, 1.45 or 3pm
December 6th: 10.45am, 12, 1.45 or 3pm
January 10th: 1.45 or 3pm
February 7th: 1.45 or 3pm

Location: Bodywise Natural Health centre, Central Manchester

Contact us via email or Messenger to book your place.

Our funded places are for people who are care-experienced (adults who spent time in children's homes or were fostered or adopted as children); people who are currently carers (eg caring for a family member with a disability); or on Universal Credit or similar benefits. If you would like to book one of these places, please let us know, and tell us which category applies to you (we don't need loads of details). You won't need to pay for your session.

06/10/2025

Looking forward to my Ancestors and Ancestral Qi workshop! 1st November, for any shiatsu practitioners, graduates and advanced students. We will be exploring a variety of topics around Ancestors, including how we can feel resourced by connecting with our benevolent ancestors; and how we might work with ancestral trauma.
Here is a picture of my grandfather serving in Australia during World War 2 (at the back, second from left in glasses, smiling).

If you have trained in shiatsu, and you would like to know more about this workshop please contact me.

£85, central Manchester, 10.30-5.30.

18/09/2025

Our year of teaching begins on 27/28 September - we are nearly full, but we might be able to squeeze you in if you want to start Year 1 of our training, or just come along for the weekend! Learn a Shiatsu and Acupressure routine to practice on friends and family; experience a weekend of connection, body awareness and fun!
(No cats will be there)

16/09/2025

Shiatsu workshop with our brilliant colleagues and students!

Join us for a fun afternoon learning simple yet powerful bodywork exercises and self-care techniques from Shiatsu and Qigong.

24/08/2025

I just had a look at my info for the past year, and I discovered that I have given 551 professional shiatsu sessions, and taught 16 days of shiatsu! Thanks to all my clients and students, looking forward to plenty more shiatsu over the coming year!

05/08/2025

We are looking forward to welcoming our new students in September!
We still have some space for people who want to begin their shiatsu studies with us this year. You can sign up for one year, and then progress into Year 2 and 3 for the full Diploma programme from there. Contact us by email or Messenger to get your registration form.

We have a limited number of spaces for people who want to come for the Introductory weekend only (27/28 September), or who want to do that weekend with the option to continue into Year 1 if Shiatsu College Manchester suits them! Contact us by email or Messenger to get your registration form.

We are also looking forward to seeing our returning students, and we have space in Year 2 and Year 3, for people who have studied shiatsu and completed part of their training already. Get in touch to discuss this.

14/07/2025

Are you hoping to start training with us in September? If so, it's a good time to get in touch as we have limited places remaining!

25/06/2025

Engaging our minds as shiatsu practitioners

It's a topic where there are a variety of opinions in our profession! Some practitioners work in an emptier mind than I do.
That is a great option, if it works for you!

I love working with composites - our Zen Shiatsu approach to creating a focus for the session. The composite describes how the two meridians we are working with link together. When we work with a composite, we are engaging the mind to integrate information.
We may connect to the Spiritual capacity of Earth – the Yi or Spirit of Understanding, which carries the sense of the purpose within the whole and the illuminating quality of insight (Beresford-Cooke, Shiatsu Society Journal, 2018). ‘The Yi understands with certainty’.
We could ask our mind to be present in a certain way during our shiatsu treatments – perhaps, open, curious and engaged with the process, in service to the universal purpose – or whatever works for you.
Remember that imagination, insight, memory, seeing patterns, creating a good description of our experience, are all qualities of the mind, (as well as other aspects we might want to reduce, like prejudice, overthinking, negativity, and disconnect from the body and emotions). In shiatsu we align our own bodies through paying attention to how we are using them. We can align our minds in a similar way.

ESF - European Shiatsu Federation
Shiatsu Society (UK)

24/06/2025

Looking forward to our last teaching weekend of the year!
We have a few spaces for 2025-26 if you would like to come and learn shiatsu with us.

We are drawing close to the end of the academic year at Shiatsu College Manchester - time for some people to make a completion, and for others to celebrate where they have got to, before we all continue on the next part of the journey!
Here is a poem I wrote on this subject.

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The seeds are ripe

The seeds are ripe. It is time.

My mother tree provides for me
a fat round body.
Star inside a circle
small earth drawn to great earth
weight, juice, flesh, I drop

My mother tree, she covers me
in my spiky puffa jacket.
Green the jacket, white the pockets,
bouncy the landing, joyful the landing
cracking apart or staying whole
opening white or waiting, turning brown

My mother tree conjures for me
a flying machine. Green wings
I am spinning, spinning, flying, breasting
the wind, down I whirl and down I
circle, spinning, spinning
grass friend rising
landing, splaying wings

My mother tree, she spins for me
gossamer threads
silken drifts
in a tiny cloud I float away
catch and pause and float and
drift and dangle tangle, drift and
drift and drift

My mother tree, she paints on me
nut-brown courage -
a strong shield, an armour.
Branching with my family
brothers and sisters
each tucked inside a coracle,
a strong wind and thundering down we go.

The seeds are ripe. They fall when it is time.

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I am posting more for Shiatsu Awareness Month (June!)




ESF - European Shiatsu Federation
Shiatsu Society (UK)
The Shiatsu College

23/06/2025

"I love Shiatsu because it is
Portable
Sustainable
Climate-friendly
Deliciously enjoyable… and can return us to our primal state of health and wholeness."

Anne Palmer, Shiatsu practitioner and teacher.

Throughout June we are posting contributions we have received from people who wanted to tell us one thing they love about shiatsu. If you would like to tell us one thing you love about shiatsu, please feel free to comment and share our posts!

All contributors have given us permission to share their words, with the names or initials given.
'1 thing I love about shiatsu' is a collaborative project for (an initiative of the Shiatsu Society (UK) ) and (an initiative of the ESF - European Shiatsu Federation ).
It is being managed by Hannah Mackay - Shiatsu and creativity for The Shiatsu College

Shiatsu College, Manchester
Shiatsu College Brighton
Shiatsu College Hastings
Shiatsu College Norwich
Shiatsu College London










{photo credit: Shiatsu College Manchester}

20/06/2025

Do you dare to move like a barefoot professor?

[do not answer this question from the confines of your computer chair]

Out in the garden we’re all moving with a ‘yes’, though the sheet drying on the line has caught on a twig, and the tulips are still green pointy-headed potential, instead of flowers. Things you don’t really think of are here too, like delicate rosemary flowers, and the garden fork, very straight and vertical, and deflating footballs on the path.
It’s too cold to be barefoot just now. My wellied feet squish down on the muddy lawn and a rotten apple, take care not to skid. I’m a bit like a barefoot professor, with these stiff shoulders seeking more dimensions of movement, full of noticing, and my back exploring its bend. Today, my audience is this bay tree, growing with great vigour, surrounded by its own browned fallen leaves. In an absence of humans, I link arms with this shirt upside-down on the line, move hand-over-hand along the duvet-cover towards the cavalcade of socks.
It’s daring to be here, and be different, and be yourself. This morning, shiatsu-ing an artist, I thought about how creativity is a movement towards something that is not there yet, that it can only become as it unfolds, through curiosity and practice. We like bringing things together, you and me, how the hedge meets the grass, how the aeroplane sounds through the birdsong, how the cool damp air brings the end of the nose into feeling focus.
Doing it, we are in it, and we are it. Bring in the words too, and it’s reaching towards magnificence, while magpies skitter on the roof and somewhere, a wren sings.

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some of my writing bringing together different strands of my Shiatsu and movement practices, and my connections to academia!


ESF - European Shiatsu Federation
Shiatsu Society (UK)