Tantsu™ A Path of Sacred Support

Tantsu™ (TANTric shiatSU) is a practice that combines elements of tantra and shiatsu. Like yoga, Tantsu is done in clothing that insures privacy and is loose enough to allow stretching. 

"When you hold someone; feel their surrender and your connection to them it is hard to maintain a judgmental or superior attitude. When you feel another letting go of tension and the fear behind it, it is hard to hold onto your own fears".    Harold Dull 

Tantsu™, a new Path (Exerpts from a recent letter to his Chicago Students)

Tantsu, a form of bodywork done on a mat, was developed 25 years ago to bring the nurturing of Watsu (WATer shiatSU) back on land.  It is characterised by breath-coordinated, whole body holds, in which the Base is supported, while the rest of the body is pressed moved and stretched to release tension and restore and deepen connection.  This support and containment helps release tension and access the sources of our energy while providing a place of stillness and peace. 

 In the emptiness at the bottom of the breath is the greatest peace, a peace that can surround and envelope us, just as we surround and envelope the one in our arms. Being held is our first experience of healing.  When an infant is in pain, reaching out and touching them does not have the same effect as picking up and holding them.  For the infant that containment is a return to the safety of the womb.  For us, the clearer our resonance, the more balanced our flow, the freer our wave, the more open the return back into the emptiness, the greater is the peace that contains us.

A Path of Sacred Support

Characteristically someone walks away from a Tantsu with a greater contact to forms of his or her energy, and a greater access to peace.  Similarly the holder walks away with a greater sense of connection to others, of heart, of oneness.  For this reason we encourage everyone to enter Tantsu as a Path of Sacred Suport and esperience fully both the holding and the being held. 

 Like yoga, Tantsu is done in clothing that insures privacy and is loose enough to allow stretching.  As with any form of bodywork, those being held may, at moments, access that form of their enerhy society partitions off as sexual. Being in a space safe from either shame or expectations, some find this an ideal place to allow that energy to reunite to their whole being's Creative Life Force.  To allow this healing, it is absolutely necessary that those holding the space, have no sexual intention neither during nor after the Tantsu.  That is not to say they cannot resonate in their own being and in their own heart to whatever is being freed within those in their arms and share the peace and oneness that accompany that resonance.

Tantsu and Diagnosis

The components of the name Tantsu, Tantra and Shiatsu, come from parts of the world that have elaborated their own separate methods of systematizing and diagnosing our energies.  In Zen Shiatsu, we are taught to just be with sommeone, to not try to do something to them to stay empty as we hold more than one place letting whatever energy is released under one hand fing its way out the other hand to wherever it was needed.  Co-centering's meditations show us a way to  access all of creation within us in the emptiness at the bottom of the breath.  In Watsu those in our arms teach us to allow them to access whatever level of their being they feel drawn to, an access working from a diagnosis would limit.  The same is true of Tantsu.  Pay attention,  Avoid any movements that might aggravate preexisting conditions, and let the energy move as it will. Be present.

From its Origins to a new Path

Tantsu ws born in the same year as Watsu (1980) with the intention to bring back on land the nurturing holding that I had found to be so powerful in Watsu.  During my first trips to Europe I taught more Tantsu than Watsu, particularly in Munich, where the large sanyassin community welcomed it, and in Paris, where the head of the French Shiatsu Association invited me every year to teach Tantsu.  Tantsu continues to have a greater acceptance and application in Europe than in America, where bodyworkes have a greater fear of intimacy and litigation.  Keeping up with Watsu's growth has taken up all my attention.  This year I was surprised with a request to teach a Tantsu course in Chicago.  Serendipitously the week I had agreed to teach in Chicago was the week during which the school at Harbin, where I developed Watsu over the last 25 years, decided to hold a ritual to transfer the school to a new owner.  I was pleased to find my students in Chicago had already been helping people with the Tantsu from m first book, "Bodywork Tantra" in their Tantra trainings.  I felt I had found a lost child.  Besides being a form for professional bodyworkers, Tantsu could be a path in which non-professionals could share its benefits.  Realizing some of Tantsu's positions utilizing seiza and the Thai meditation position, would limit the public's access, I decided to develop a basic path of full body holds anyone could be in, and an ongoing path.  We are developing a training program for those wishing to lead Tantsu Path groups.

Harold Dull

Tantsu™ is being trade marked by Harold Dull, it's founder in 1980.

For some views of Tantsu click below!