Jin Shin Jyutsu Energy Healing

Jin Shin Jyutsu® is an energy healing technique with origins in ancient Japan. This gentle energy therapy isn't massage but involves the placement of the practitioner's hands on designated points on your body. The purpose is to harmonize and balance your body's energy so your body can heal itself. You can also practice the technique on yourself.

A hand mudra used in Jin Shin Jyutsu.

Although the origins of this technique are ancient, in the early 1900s Japanese scholar Jiro Murai organized the technique and began training students. One of Murai's students in the 1950s was Mary Burmeister. She brought the technique to the United States. Her business, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Inc., has trained thousands of students around the world.

How Jin Shin Jyutsu Works

The goal of this type of energy healing is to stimulate the movement of energy (ki) along the body's 26 "safety energy locations." These SELs are similar to the acupoints of Chinese Medicine and located on energy pathways (similar to meridians). Practitioners use very little pressure on the SELs, and their hands act like jumper cables that unblock the flow of energy or redirect it.

A session starts with you, fully clothed, lying on your back. The practitioner listens to the energy pulses in your wrists, uses these pulses as indicators of your body’s state of harmony, and decides which SELs to use to bring you into more harmony. 

Important Concepts

Jin Shin Jyutsu translates as "the Art of the Creator through the person of compassion." In The Touch of Healing, author Alice Burmeister states that this art helps you find the tone, the perfect expression of harmony, that exists within everyone. The core concepts of this art include:

• The life energy that circulates throughout the universe and within each organism manifests at varying levels of density called depths.
  
  
• Breath is the basic expression of life energy.
  
  
• Obstructions to life energy lead to physical, mental, and emotional disharmony. Obstructions are caused by attitudes, the five basic of which are anger, fear, sadness, pretense, and worry.
  
  
• Life energy moves through the body in distinct pathways called flows. Energy moves down the front of the body and up the back in a continuous oval.
  
  
• The SELs act as circuit breakers to protect the body when the flow of energy is blocked.
  
  
• Disharmony comes in many forms, which we give labels (such as a cold, indigestion, or even cancer or heart disease) but all arise from a blockage of energy.

Two Simple Techniques

The Touch of Healing teaches two simple techniques you can do for yourself. The first is "the thirty-six breaths." Breathe and count your exhalations for 36 breaths.

The second technique is jumper-cabling your fingers (hold a finger using the other hand) to harmonize flows in the the body. For more details and more self-techniques, see the book. 

A related technique is Jin Shin Do.

ShareFacebookXPinterestReddit

Photo Credit: Isabelle Ducau - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0