Huw Adams PhD

Huw graduated from the British School of Shiatsu in London and has been practising shiatsu since 1999. He is a graduate member of the U.K. governing body for shiatsu practitioners, the Shiatsu Society.  In 2006, Huw completed a 4-year apprenticeship in Seitai therapy, under the supervision of Japanese master practitioner, Tatsuo Nakamura. He also has certificates in three levels of auricular acupuncture: Detox, Liver wellness and Body Balance, received from the Yuan Clinic in London. In July 2008, Huw successfully completed a three year full-time physiotherapy degree at the University of East London (1st Class Hons). He is a member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists. Reflecting this training, Huw is able to draw on Asian and Western understandings of health and ill-health when assessing and treating his clients.

Huw's motivation and inspiration for practising a hands-on, touch-based therapies, stem both from his partial sightedness, and the fact that historically in Japan and Britain, visually impaired people have often made their living by practising hands on manual therapies such as seitai, shiatsu  and physiotherapy. As a research student based at Brunel University in England and Yamaguchi University in Japan, he has also researched the role of traditional health promoting practices in contemporary Japan. His doctoral thesis, entitled Sensation and Selfhood: An Ethnographic Investigation into Self-Cultivation Practices in Hiroshima City, was examined and passed in February 2004. The Japanese Ministry of Education funded his research.