Cherandi Shiatsu Therapy, LLC - a ClassPass Partner

12/04/2025

Giving Thanks: The Art of Receiving Life’s Blessings

Human emotions are expressed in countless ways and with varying intensities and frequencies, and, in traditional Chinese medicine, are concentrated on the Fire element, the dwelling place of the Heart and one of the five elements of our Nature.

We must meditate on the fact that human emotions have their roots in the Wood element, mother of the Fire element, and dwelling place of the Ethereal Soul that connects the Heart with our Nature, with the Nature of all human beings and sentient beings.

The energies of Life originating from the Water element, mother of the Wood element, nourish our Ethereal Soul, and this nourishes our Heart with emotions.

When our Ethereal Soul is lost in the sufferings of Life, in the traumas and karmas that afflict us along the Path, negative energies are generated and proliferated in the Fire element, absorbing vital portions of Life energies, and can cause numerous illnesses, both due to an excess and imbalance of Yin or Yang energies in the Fire element and due to a deficiency of these same energies in the other four elements.

Positive energies and emotions do not cause any imbalance or harm to health and do not demand vital energies; quite the contrary, they invigorate the energies of Life by aggregating energies from Mother Nature, human Nature, and all of Nature around us, whenever truly loved by our Heart. With them, our Heart is illuminated and overflows with positive energies and emotions, making us donors of vital energy, originating and radiating from a full balance of the energies of the five elements, which together govern the health of body and mind.

Therefore, the long journey to reconnect with Nature, where we are sometimes patients and sometimes therapists to one another, is the best treatment for many of the diseases of modern times. Modern medicine catalogs each disease based on a growing and endless grouping of symptoms, leaving the identification and understanding of the causes and, consequently, the cure of diseases relegated to a secondary plane, or simply forgotten, and increasingly incomprehensible to medical science.

Medicine must strive to reconcile Nature and science perfectly, not allowing them to distance themselves or conflict, since we are, by our creation and, above all, human beings, with an ethereal soul, connected, sensitive, and dependent on all Life around us.

Enjoy the interview with Dr. Monica Vermani, a clinical psychologist and mental health advocate, for insights on the art of giving thanks.

https://truthsocial.com//posts/115613434993141858

08/24/2025

When Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) gained recognition in the West, the Qi energy channels began to be consolidated with names of organs of the human body and then associated with the various body systems connected to them, which ultimately guide, regulate and establish the health standards of the practice and procedures of the multiple specialties of modern Western medicine (MWM).

Thus, the organs and bodily systems found a parallel in the practice and diagnosis of TCM, and vice versa. TCM became more accepted and recognized as more scientific evidence it demonstrated, given the effective results of treatments recommended by MWM. Then, TCM became more of a complementary medicine than an alternative one. And even less complementary, the closer it is to treating the mind and Soul.

However, in TCM, the body, mind, and soul are considered a single, indivisible whole and must therefore be treated holistically. The cause and effect of imbalance patterns and disease are deeply interrelated with the balance and health of the energy channels that move in the circadian cycle of the five elements of nature. According to TCM, the mind is inserted into the Fire element, along with the energy channels of the "Heart"/"Small Intestine." On the other hand, the ethereal soul and the corporeal soul are inserted into the Wood and Metal elements, respectively, and the Liver/Gallbladder and Lung/Large Intestine organs. All these energy channels and the organs associated with them in Western cultures can therefore suffer and become ill due to disturbances of the mind (conscious emotional imbalances) and the soul (unconscious karma and trauma).

Thus, the energy channels permeate the body, mind, and soul and are amenable to treatment when Nature in its entirety is once again free to perform the miracle of physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Living an emotionally healthy spirituality combined with a natural and balanced diet is the most effective natural path to treating illnesses of the body, mind, or soul. Most Traditional Oriental Medicine, like TCM, Shiatsu, Ayurveda and Macrobiotic can substantially help patients to recover their natural state of health.

This excessive emphasis on a handful of organs and systems is typical of the scientific compartmentalization, the division of the whole into increasingly several smaller parts, leading to the subconscious belief that these organs and systems are, in fact, the rulers of the body and brain and must be adequately treated to restore our health. In the view of MWM, the clinical diagnosis must be reached first and foremost and then be categorized by the veritable compendia that dynamically standardizes the countless cataloged diseases of the body and "mind" (brain).

But additionally "TJ Hinrichs observes that people in modern Western societies divide healing practices into biomedicine for the body, psychology for the mind, and religion for the spirit, but these distinctions are inadequate to describe medical concepts among Chinese historically and to a considerable degree today." These 3 huge "specialty fields/branches" creates and sediments divisiveness among body, mind and soul and among a bundle of experts on these fields/branches leaving the patient wandering around them by themselves expecting that maybe one of them could isolated from all others operate the miracle of the cure or at least alleviate unbearable symptoms through medical interventions and medication.

We all know sleep is essential. But how do we determine why we may not be sleeping well and what to do about it? Read on to learn more.

07/20/2025

Preserving in ourselves, our souls, an emotionally healthy spirituality is the Way.

07/20/2025

"EMDR is one of the gold standard treatments for trauma, and PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. EMDR is also effective for other things like anxiety, depression, traumatic loss, grief, panic attacks, and many people are finding effective for chronic pain and even for performance related issues.

The theory about how this is helpful is that it provides a sense of dual awareness while we're remembering a traumatic memory, we're also aware of the here and now. And this disruption of the traumatic response to the traumatic memory, replacing it with a calming, soothing reminder or a stimulus effectively helps desensitize the intensity of stress attached to the trauma. Because it was too overwhelming for the brain and the nervous system, the psyche, to process it, it exists in a way that's disconnected from other memories and disconnected from other information in the brain.

EMDR is really an affirming and humanistic theory and approach in that we believe the client has everything within them that they need to heal and that it's just disconnected in the brain from the traumatic memory. In EMDR the free association within the process helps us connect the traumatic memory and the content attached to that memory, to all the other good and adaptive information within the client's brain. And in doing so, we're promoting healing and helping to reprocess that memory." - Dr. Scott Giacomucci

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine the Eyes, windows of our Ethereal Soul, dwell in the Wood Element of Nature.

"Wood correlates with the Liver and its paired organ, the Gallbladder.

While the Liver is akin to a General or an architect, strategizing and initiating the equitable distribution of resources and the smooth operation of being, the Gallbladder carries the Liver’s plan into action via wise decision-making. 'Clear vision', in every sense of the word, is at the core of the Liver’s mission, while 'Choice' is central to the Gallbladder.

The Hun, or Ethereal Soul, is the Spirit of Wood. The Hun endows us with the capacity to imagine and intuit, to heal repressed emotions and glimpse our destiny through dreams, to plan and orient with courage and clarity, to graciously relate to others and skillfully express our desires.

Flexibility, balance, and keen awareness of Self and Other are essential in maintaining a healthy dynamic with the energy of Wood. If not gracefully kept in check, the determination and passion of Wood can easily mutate into impulsiveness and recklessness, overbearing and aggressive behavior, or rigidity and paranoia. Or, when undernourished, it can wither into aimlessness, anxiety, timidity, and ambiguity of self and purpose." - Hannah Fries (California-based licensed acupuncturist and herbalist)

Overall, a disembodied Hun may be implicated in involuntary dissociation (such as in PTSD), conscious escapism (excessive daydreaming, procrastination, substance use, etc.) and nightmares.

EMDR Therapy Explained: What is It? This video explains the basics of EMDR therapy, including introductory information about how it works and what to expect ...

07/20/2025

Sugar Blues is a book by William Dufty that was released in 1975 and has become a dietary classic. According to the publishers, over 1.6 million copies have been printed.

"The status of sugar, as a product of refining, was compared to drugs: He**in is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the poppy and they refine it into o***m and then they refine it to morphine and finally to he**in. Sugar is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the cane or the beet and then refine it to molasses and then they refine it to brown sugar and finally to strange white crystals.

John Lennon’s personal assistant Frederic Seaman described Lennon’s diet in the book The Last Days of John Lennon (1991):
- He launched into a passionate lecture on the dangers of sugar and told me to keep an eye out for a book entitled Sugar Blues at Better Nature, the local health food store where I would buy most of his food. He extolled the book by Gloria Swanson’s former husband William Duffy, because it exposed sugar as a "poison". He asserted that he did not want Sean to become a "sugar ju**ie", like so many other American kids who grew up to be overweight, pimply teenagers." - Sugar Blues/Wikipedia

50 years later...too much added sugar can be one of the greatest threats to cardiovascular disease in the US.

"Most people consume many different types of sugars from a variety of foods and beverages in their diet. A high intake of sugar is linked to an increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. Sugar is a type of carbohydrate, a macronutrient that provides energy (in the form of calories) from foods and beverages. Carbohydrates are classified into: monosaccharides, and disaccharides. The monosaccharides include glucose, fructose, and galactose. The major disaccharides include sucrose, lactose, and maltose.

Fructose, glucose, and sucrose are found naturally in fruit and some vegetables, while lactose is found in dairy and maltose is found in germinating grains. Fructose and glucose are also found naturally in honey, as well as in common table sugar. An increasingly important distinction among sugars as they pertain to health is whether they occur naturally in foods such as fruit, vegetables, and dairy, or whether they are added sugars (added to foods and beverages during manufacturing, processing, or preparation).

Sugary beverages are the greatest source of added sugar in the diet, followed by sweets and grains such as ready-to-eat cereals. Intake of added sugar, particularly from beverages, has been associated with weight gain and higher risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

For most people, consuming natural sugars in foods such as fruit is not linked to negative health effects, since the amount of sugar tends to be modest and is "packaged" with fiber and other healthful nutrients. On the other hand, our bodies do not need, or benefit from, eating added sugar." Harvard Health Publishing Staff

Why Sugar is Sabotaging Your Gut Health"One of the worst things we're looking at right now is sugar intake. Because everything can grow from sugar, all the microbes, all the mold … Seventy-five percent of the immune system is the flora in your gut," says Dr. Dana Churchill.https://ept.ms/DetoxAlzh...

07/20/2025

"If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraine, or back pain, it may pay to look beyond physical causes to what’s happening in your life - and in your mind.

On “Vital Signs,” a leading expert on chronic pain and mind-body medicine reveals how pain is created in the brain and how it can be “unlearned” through reprocessing, emotional awareness, and expressive therapies." - interviewer

"...we did a study where we took 222 people, evaluated them for chronic neck pain and back pain, and 98% of them had abnormal MRIs but very few of them had serious MRI like an abscess or a fracture or a tumor or something. The vast majority of them had these mild abnormalities that are also seen in healthy normal people; so we need to separate out people who have structural problems from people who have what we call neuroplastic or mindbody condition.

There are two main therapies: a pain reprocessing therapy and emotional awareness and expression therapy.
..so expressing our pain in feelings is a much healthier way than holding our feelings inside never expressing them never speaking up; because holding our feelings in is a recipe for the danger signal in the brain to start becoming active and alerting us, kind of like a smoke alarm, that there's something wrong, I mean, it might be headache it might be stomach pain, anxiety or depression, and so this relationship between feelings and pain is really a close one and a powerful one and one that's very tied in to how our brains actually work.

So, you know, one of the messages that we have is that a lot of times people who grew up with difficult childhoods have adapted to that by holding everything in trying to be perfect trying to be the best they could possibly be and never rocking the boat, never speaking up, never putting themselves first, and then later in life as more stresses pile up, those kind of personality traits holding everything in makes it more likely that they will develop chronic back pain, headache pain, stomach pain or other disorders and when they begin to realize this connection maybe they start to speak their needs, maybe they start to live a more authentic life. - Dr. Howard Schubiner

Deep meditation seeks precisely this: to bring life to the now and then, letting the past and the future, the past projected forward, be what they really are: objects of the mind, which perpetuate karma and suffering, which feed the forces of disintegration with nature, which transport and eternalize the most negative, destructive and traumatic energies, making them seem present, real, and essential, functioning as a demagnetized compass that disorients decisions and life destinies.

The 5 negative energies that adhere to each of the 5 Elements can be very harmful to the health of the body, mind and soul, and the extent of the energetic disharmony caused by them can be assessed by the time and intensity of their presence in the patient's daily life (and soul).

If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraine, or back pain, it may pay to look beyond physical causes to what’s happening in your li...

07/20/2025

Unfortunately, even more recently, the lack of or discredit of a greater and deeper knowledge of human nature is actually weakening people's health more and more; and essential components of the 5 Elements (of Nature) are becoming seriously compromised, affecting the natural balance of the vital energies yang and yin, and then, rooting patterns of disharmony that are expressed by symptoms of excess and/or deficiency, of excessive activity of the body and mind and deficiencies of rest and peace of the soul. Thus, the following issues are increasingly intense and common:

1) Poor, non-natural and non-organic nutrients, together with inattentive eating and shallow and restless breathing and sleeping, essential life metabolisms that bring and renovate energies inside while expelling undesired energies to the outside.

2) Stress and anxiety, or their extreme opposite, which are expressed through depression, despair and loneliness the portraits of a fading, impaired and hopelessness Life.

3) Absence of spirituality, wisdom and intuitiveness, nourishment of the soul, replaced by rationality, science and information, nourishment of the mind. Mind in control of the Soul, Fire in control of the Wood, and not the reverse, the Nature's way.

4) Health treatments predominantly focused on symptoms (which define diseases), rather than their causes (which define patterns of disharmony in TCM), on the disease rather than the patient, besides being not integrative with complementary medicine.

5) Social conflicts and diseases reflecting the disaggregation of the 5 Elements of Nature within people's lives and souls, generating and reinforcing severe imbalances as autoimmune health conditions.

Unity, Oneness and Togetherness are fundamental principles of Nature. Human souls cannot live isolated in a circle of high-tech connections, which pushes them increasingly into a state of emotional and spiritual disconnection from each other. Living against these principles is at the root of many of the chronic diseases that are spreading and increasingly infesting health systems.

The health conditions perceived in the Corporeal Soul of the Metal Element is seen as imbalances in the natural flow of Nature's energies through the meridians that permeate all body and mind. And as the 5 negative energies are characterized by disturbing this natural flow of life, it is no coincidence that they are among the main causes of diseases, which consequently only spread and intensify every day.

A long and winding path lies ahead of us until humanity understands, respects and follows Nature, its Nature, our Nature, the Nature of every sentient and living being.

By Hillary Thing, LAc Lyme and similar devastating stealth infections are on a rise across the world. Chinese medicine practitioners across the United

07/20/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-huberman_a-very-interesting-study-shows-that-a-disrupted-activity-7323349161150423040-e3c5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAMFWfYBnkiAicFvEvyOg3syNIy3QhVZsOA

A very interesting study shows that a disrupted gut microbiome in fibromyalgia (based on mouse and human data) supports the idea that improving gut microbial conditions may help. You can wait for more research or simply consume one to three servings of low-sugar fermented food daily, according to ot...

07/20/2025

Unlocking Sleep: How Yin and Yang Foods Impact Rest

"Chinese medicine can categorize anything as yin or yang ... So the ancient Chinese didn't analyze food based on how much carbs, fats or proteins was in it, but they looked at the foods in real life," says Dr. Silvio Verbeek.

"The philosophical school that developed the theory of Yin and Yang to its highest degree is called the Yin-Yang School...Many schools of thought arose during the Warring States (476-221 BC)...The school is sometimes also called the Naturalist School because it set out to interpret Nature in a positive way and to use natural laws to man's advantage, not through attempting to control and subdue Nature (as in modern Western science), but acting in harmony with its laws. This school represents a form of what we might call naturalist science today, and the theories of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements served to interpret natural phenomena, including the human body in health and disease.

It could be said that the whole of Chinese medicine, its physiology, pathology, diagnosis and treatment, can all be reduced to the basic and fundamental theory of Yin and Yang. Every physiological process and every symptom or sign can be analysed in the light of the Yin-Yang theory.

Understanding the application of the theory of Yin-Yang to medicine is therefore of supreme importance in practice: one can say that there is no Chinese medicine without Yin-Yang." - Giovanni Maciocia

Unlocking Sleep: How Yin and Yang Foods Impact Rest"Chinese medicine can categorize anything as yin or yang ... So the ancient Chinese didn't analyze food based on how much carbs, fats or proteins was in it, but they looked at the foods in real life," says Dr. Silvio Verbeek.https://ntd.nyc/Sleep

07/20/2025

"TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) nutrition refers to the dietary principles and practices rooted in traditional Chinese medicine theory. It views food not only as a source of sustenance but also as a form of medicine that can influence health, balance, and overall well-being." - Botanical Point

Harmony in the body is achieved by eating for your constitutional element and following seasonal dietary changes.

07/20/2025

It would be very opportune and enlightened if science, which has been gradually participating in the promotion and development of Integrative Medicine, recognized that human emotions do not originate, do not interact and do not multiply in our minds individually, in each of the brains of human beings, but instead, have their origins and their subsistence within our souls, where they are connected, nurtured, and strengthened both positive and negatively.

Negative emotions, as time goes by, have a huge power to confuse and distort the mind and, in sequence, the human body, being a source of countless illnesses. Along with the deterioration of nutrition and its lost connection with Spirituality, I believe that negative emotions when very present and preponderant in human minds are the cause of most of the severe and chronic diseases affecting body and mind, as listed by modern Western medicine.

Without knowing the roots of these diseases, especially in their primordial connection with the mind, it is challenging to promote a more natural and holistic treatment that allows the patient to face this "external" source of imbalance and to find more spiritual forces to stay in the long term on the natural equilibrium side of the Yin and Yang powerful forces of Nature.

Traditional Chinese Medicine recognizes these "emotional" patterns of disharmony and even defines the connection between negative emotions and each of the 5 elements of Nature, its circadian cycle, their respective organs, and energy channels.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the world of souls is neither mystical nor metaphysical. It is as real as the reality that science acknowledges and operates. The only fundamental difference is that science is still unaware of it, although some initial research by outstanding scientists who study the brain nervous system already points in this direction.

The Ethereal Soul lives in the Wood element, and from there, all our life's emotions depart and return, renewed or blurred, connecting us to the souls of all living beings. Love and compassion are only possible with two beings, and without the other we are nothing, and reason to love vanishes. We must love our Neighbor, as it is never very illuminating (and healthy) to love our own self.

This goes for good and evil. That is why one of the secrets of Shiatsu is to treat each other, the therapist as a helper (not a healer), always under the auspices of Mother Nature. She is the only One who can deal with, protect, and reinstate the sacred balance, isolating us from all the destructive energies (and emotions) coming from evil.

Preserving in ourselves, our souls, an emotionally healthy spirituality is the Way.

Emotions are among the most powerful forces in human life. They can drive us to create timeless art, make life-altering…

04/14/2025

The Five Elements theory is one of the most important fundamental principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and, therefore, of the practices and services adopted and offered by Cherandi. At Cherandi we believe that the effectiveness of shiatsu is closely related to following and being guided by the laws of Nature, beautifully portrayed for many centuries by the principles of TCM.

The Five Elements theory is one of the most important fundamental principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and, therefore, of the practices and services adopted and offered by Cherandi. At Cherandi we believe that the effectiveness of shiatsu is closely related to following and be...