Zen Mindfulness - Sei Ki HeartTouch - Tai Chi Qi Gong

Sei Ki HeartTouch Emotional Bodywork

Therapist Training

Anthony teaching HeartTouch in London March 2023

Sei Ki HeartTouch Emotional Bodywork is rooted in Sei-Ki, Shiatsu and the Hara traditions of Japan and framed within Western Mindfulness science & Polyvagal Theory.

As well as facilitating personal transformation and self learning, this course explores the embodied foundations of co-regulation and care suitable for assisting people experiencing any level of distress including serious anxiety based disorders, complex trauma and psychosis.

I am inviting 6 experienced bodywork practitioners in Switzerland with or without personal lived experience of mental health issues to join me for a year-long Sei Ki HeartTouch Emotional Bodywork Training on a hybrid basis, combining 3 in-person weekends in Bern between June 21st 2025 and April 2026 with short monthly online sessions.

There will also be guided Hara training self-practice and a requirement for 40 client case treatments over the period.

Participants can choose client groups to work with as a form of research to test the efficacy of this kind of approach and can write up a short thesis of what they have learned from the experience, including testimonials from the clients.

The categories could be anything: people with anxiety issues, chronic depression, acute psychosis, complex trauma / sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorders, anorexia, teenage self-harm, women experiencing domestic abuse, refugee trauma etc.

We can publish the results on a website together and so establish our own 'evidence base' for the method to show prospective employers with whom we might be able to take contracts such as mental health charities and psychiatric clinics.

Our final aim is to lay the foundations for a new emotional bodywork profession focused around embodiment and nervous system regulation.

Course Detail

Anthony teaching Sei Ki HeartTouch in Basel

Sei Ki HeartTouch Emotional Bodywork is a pragmatic adaption of Sei-Ki, founded by the late Akinobu Kishi, for working with people experiencing extreme emotional and mental distress.

The emphasis is on meeting people where they are at and maximizing the chance that a healthy resonance can be established with them whatever the level of trauma and possibly paranoia the individual may be experiencing.

This means that a big part of the course is about working on ourselves.

Our journey together will be one of returning to simplicity, to our original nature. Finding our relationship to the ground, our centre, our heart and opening the raw energy of the Hara.

As we nourish our life feeling and resonance with all that is, our capacity to share this with others through our presence & touch will come naturally and joyfully.

Over the 3 workshops we will be developing our capacity to work with individuals in different ways.

The first way, when there is little spontaneous calling or katsugen coming out will naturally be more patterned. A simple emotional bodywork routine, just 'being together', which in itself, can be profound for people to share in.

At this level, it may also be possible to introduce techniques from other training such as Shiatsu or Chi Nei Tsang. Sei Ki HeartTouch is not closed to making use of techniques your body has learnt from other ways of working. What is important is that your body is doing it, not your 'head'.

We find our own 'style' in this work, there is no need to be imprisoned by my style or anyone else's, but they can help as inspiration.

Anthony teaching in Milan

The second level, when the resonance is stronger and you start to feel the body 'calling', naturally requires form to be dropped. You spontaneously follow the calling and meet it as best you can with the skills you are able to offer.

The touch may be soft and energetic or more 'physical' as one simply responds to the 'requests'. It may be possible to combine this with techniques still, though only in response to the felt sense that it is wanted.

The third level is when there is clear katsugen coming out, or the person is in an emotional process, however you see it.

You simply support the process, whether that be through giving zen-like space and support or spontaneously swimming with the person through their process in a 'shamanic-like' two-person katsugen. How this manifests will depend on your talents.

I will keep 'head learning' to a minimum, though there is a natural role for grounded, supportive listening and conversation in Sei Ki HeartTouch Emotional Bodywork.

You need the individual to take responsibility for their own recovery and to support them with practices to work with. The hara practices we learn through the course, double as recovery practices to share with clients.

Finally, this work is still rooted in Sei-Ki, which is a practical Ki Therapy suitable for helping with any condition, not just emotional inbalance. Participants can make use of the training as a preparation for working with Sei-Ki more generally.