Watsu

About the Book

This is a book about water, about our bodies in water and how, floating and stretching one another to our shared breathing pattern, we achieve new levels of peace and oneness. Many consider Watsu the most significant advance in bodywork in our times. While other forms are based on touch, Watsu creates a more profound connection through the holding and the deep connection with the breath that being in water facilitates.

The trust established combines with the relaxing effects of warm water and Watsu's moves and stretches to create a modality of extraordinary depth that has both specific therapeutic results and healing on many levels. Besides having countless applications in therapy, it brings new depths of 'connection' into the lives of the many sharing its simpler moves with family and friends.

This third edition completes the first 25-year evolution of what came into being when Harold Dull started floating people at Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California, applying the stretches of the Zen Shiatsu he had studied in Japan. It illustrates, step by step, the major positions and forms of Watsu. It introduces Watsuchanics (the body mechanics of Watsu) and other developments that help students learn Watsu.

More than sixteen therapists and practitioners have added contributions detailing the use of Watsu with all ages and the growing number of conditions that Watsu is proving to alleviate in clinics and spas around the world. New chapters feature Watsu with children and a form of Watsu that can be used in home spa/hot tubs. Also illustrated step by step is a complete form of Tantsu which brings Watsu's nurturing power back onto land.

More than a thousand images have gone into this book to give as clear an illustration as possible of the movements and forms of Watsu and Tantsu.

About the Author

Harold Dull BA MA is the president of the Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association, and the creator of Watsu,Tantsu and Co-centering. Harold has trained with the creator of Zen Shiatsu in Japan, Shizuto Masunaga, and the two teachers to first introduce it in America, Reuho Yamada and Wataru Ohashi. The profundity and effectiveness of the bodywork forms he has created reflect his passionate practice and deep understanding of energy and the body; the creativity of these forms reflects his background as a poet in the San Francisco Renaissance. His book, Watsu: Freeing the Body in Water, now in its 3rd edition, is an eloquent testament to the power of both his writing and his bodywork. Harold speaks several languages, which allows him to teach his work all over the world. He has been honored with the International Aquatics Award from the United States Water Fitness Association; honored at the National Aquatic Exercise Conference in Japan; and in 1998 received the Tsunami Spirit Award from the Aquatic Therapy and Rehab Institute.