UpClose & Personal - Complementary Therapies

All over the country, massage therapists are stepping into the future by embracing the past, using ancient foot pressure methods to thrill their clients and keep the agony of wrist and thumb injuries at bay.

But this technique is not what you might think. Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy® is completely different from its cousin, barefoot Shiatsu mat work.

Colorado therapist Ruthie Hardee, who refined the technique and teaches it around the country, makes sure that safety is always the top priority. While grasping a wooden bar attached securely to the ceiling, therapists maintain balance and control the pressure of the massage while standing above the client.

Golden Ratio's Hardee Ashiatsu Table

The reviews have been glowing. “The ability to maintain
the integrity of my own spine while applying some of the deepest and most luxurious pressure to my client is unmatched by any other technique or style of massage I have ever studied,” said James Reishman, a certified Rolfer from Cincinnati, Ohio, who recently was certified in Hardee’s course.

While Hardee’s approach is distinctly Western, its roots lie in her own childhood and a visit to Thailand with her father, a tropical medicine physician. “While in Bangkok, I had seen a woman standing on a man holding onto bamboo rods suspended from the ceiling in a health club near the lobby of our hotel,” Hardee recalled. “At the age of 12, I didn’t even know what a massage was.”

Later in her travels, Hardee saw a similar technique at work in the Philippines. “In a public gathering place, there were many padded cots and an assembly line of small Asian women massaging as many as five men at the same time. All would hold onto a long, wooden bar spanning the whole ceiling, sometimes engaged in very loud conversation with each other as they pummeled and rocked through the men’s clothing.”

Hardee filed the information away in her memory until her own career as a massage therapist began and she started to study Shiatsu.

“The courses I took spent little time on foot compression and focused more on traditional Chinese medicine,” she said. “Because my particular client-base was not interested in receiving somatic or energy work, I searched to find a method based less on energy and more on osteopathic and myofascial systems using the feet, but there were none.”

Hardee was also beginning to feel the intense physical effects on her back and her hands in her work. “I just wanted someone to educate me on how to use my feet and give my aching hands a break from years of doing deep tissue work on tough working-class types who seem to all suffer from chronic low back pain.“

Hardee decided to develop her own technique based on Ashiatsu. (Ashi is a word for “foot,” and atsu refers to “pressure.”)

She incorporated styles from the likes of such foot massage experts as Dr. Sun Shuchun, from the Institute of Orthopedics and Traumatology at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Shizuko Yamamoto, author of Barefoot Shiatsu, and Harald Brust and Prabhat Menon, co-authors of One Rope, Two Feet and Healing Oils.2

After 5 years of combining gravitational forces and utilizing myofascial methods for releasing fibrotic and adhered scar tissue, Ruthie’s feet were finally ready to go national.

She was armed with plenty of support too. She got approval from the National Board of Therapeutic Massage and the recognition of the American Medical Association.

Her technique emphasizes a relaxing yet invigorating approach. “Strokes are performed with smooth, flowing, gliding pressure, encompassing all parts of the foot with lubrication on the skin,” Hardee said. “We combine the warmth of Hot Lavastone Therapy™ with the pressure of the foot (which is sometimes cold), which makes for a perfect ‘yin and yang.’ The balance of power and softness come together in such a way that the client usually falls asleep, which is a welcome change from assisting or resisting the therapist as is common in structural integration work.”

Now, Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy is being used everywhere from Puerto Rico and Portland, Maine, to Guam and Indianapolis.

The technique helps reduce the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome and other wrist problems among massage therapists, Hardee said. “You can avoid injury to the thumbs and cut down wear-and-tear on the lower lumbar from constant bending at the waist,” she said. “With Ashiatsu, the therapist avoids the use of small repetitive hand movements. The time spent bending over the body is less because the weight of your legs is off the floor and your body weight is doing all the work, not your hands.”

“A lot of folks will be able to work longer because they’re not bending over, they’re not hurting their wrists and their shoulders,” said Dr. Jeff Beytin, a chiropractor in Tampa, Florida, who has undergone Ashiatsu massage from Hardee. But Hardee cautions Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy is much more than just walking up and down on someone’s back. “What many therapists don’t realize is that there are many contraindications to using direct foot pressure with structural movements. It’s more complicated than traditional heel acupressure through clothing.”

In her seminars, Hardee pays attention to detail by providing a different well-muscled guest client every day for the trainees to practice on. Therapists must consider a number of things before taking the course including if their weight is appropriate to apply Ashiatsu without causing injury to clients. “I personally talk to each therapist before they take my workshop to ensure they understand the underlying dynamics of this modality,” said Hardee.

For those who do meet the challenge of the 3-day intensive certification program, they are thrilled with their new skills. “Before, I used to have to go home at the end of the day and ice my hands. My thumbs and lower back would just hurt,” said Maureen Roy, a hotel massage therapist in Portland, Maine. “But now, I can do four or five or six big men and not even blink an eye.”

FOOTNOTES
1. Yamamoto, Shizuko, Barefoot Shiatsu (Avery, 1998).
2. Menon, Prabhat and Asokananda, Brust, Herald, One Rope, Two Feet and Healing Oils Editions (Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1999).

For more detailed information on this massage modality, please call 303-300-2511. You can also visit the Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy website at www.deepfeet.com or email to deepfeet@msn.com. Ruthie Piper Hardee, L.M.T., holds massage state licensure in Florida, Texas and Colorado. She is a Category A provider with the NCTMB and an education instructor bonded by the Colorado Division of Occupational Schools and Higher Education. She is the founder of Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy and the only instructor to date in the United States.

Randy Dotinga (rdotinga@aol.com) is a freelance writer based in San Diego.