East or West?

What's the difference between Eastern and Western styles of massage therapy? It's impossible to describe without first considering the different paradigms of the traditional Eastern and Western ways of looking at the world.

The Western View

The Western view is fundamentally mechanistic. According to this paradigm, the human body (and indeed, the universe) is made up of a lot of parts that work together according to complicated cause-and-effect relationships, like the parts of a machine.

According to this view, parts can break down or get out of alignment with each other, and affect the functioning of the organism. Diseases and injuries can be seen as damaged parts.

Speaking very generally, Western healing systems, including massage styles, address the parts of the astonishingly complex machine that is the human body. That's why Western medical charts are based on various systems of parts: the musculoskeletal system, the digestive system, the nervous system, and so forth.

The Eastern View

The Eastern view is fundamentally energetic. According to this paradigm, the human body is a visible, palpable expression of the interplay of various energies, the same energies that course through the universe and in fact are the universe. The human body can be seen as a pattern of energy channels, or meridians. Diseases and pains are symptoms of blockages and imbalances along these channels.

Eastern healing systems address the energy flow and balance. Specific points along the energy meridians can be stimulated or soothed to create effects at other sites along those meridians. That's how a doctor of acupuncture might insert a needle in your shin to treat your digestion, or in another spot on your shin. Eastern styles of massages also use the knowledge of these meridians and the points along them, but use touch instead of needles. And that's why Eastern medical charts show lines running through a human body, with a lot of dots with explanatory labels all along them.

Different Styles

Western styles of massage include Swedish, Deep Tissue, and Soft Tissue. These use stroking and kneading the skin and muscles for relaxation and pain relief.

Eastern massage modalities include TuiNa (Chinese medical massage), Shiatsu, Thai massage, and JinShinDo. Eastern therapeutic massage uses a completely different set of movements than Western. Instead of stroking and kneading, there is pressing of specific acupressure points, striking the body with the sides of the hands or with cupped palms, rocking the body, rolling the backs of the hands along the body, and many more varieties.

Eastern massage tends to be more vigorous, but this is not necessarily the case, as in the gentle Thai massage. The fundamental difference in paradigm between East and West is what opens the way to the evolution of the different Eastern and Western styles.

So which is better? You might as well ask which is "real," the Eastern or the Western way of looking at the world. Both are useful for achieving various goals.

Our Point of View: Integration

At East-West Healing Arts Institute, we believe there is no reason to shut out the wisdom of one paradigm in favor of the other. When the human race has made such great discoveries and developed such extensive, effective tools for healing through touch, why not make the most of it?

That's why we teach thorough courses in Western-style anatomy & physiology and pathology, and we teach a comprehensive course in the theory of Easternmedicine, too. We teach both Eastern and Western massage modalities.

East or West? We deliver both.