It all started in Mt Sinai Hospital Toronto, Canada September 1977. I, or perhaps more accurately said, my soul was floating above my bed looking down at my anesthetized body. The doctors had misdiagnosed an appendix attack. My appendix subsequently burst and there I found myself above my ripped open body with tubes draining my abdomen below. My new rising reality was such a great feeling- free-flying, smiling, higher and higher, up and away into the tunnel of darkness… When I heard a voice “What are you doing? –get back in your body-You have work to do.” My startled self-squeezed myself back in my body. I woke up the next morning and said to myself: Ok, it’s time to take my life into my own hands. After 6 weeks of tests, an unnecessary exploratory surgery, I was released from the hospital a week before my 24th- Birthday Oct 31, 1977. I moved to New York City in March 1978 to pursue my music career and began searching for a Tai Chi Chuan teacher to help me improve my health.
Seymour Koblin
After my first 3 years of studying Tai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung, Nei Kung and Taoist meditation with Master C.K Chu – practicing 5 hrs /day, I found myself wanting to more about how Chi traveled through the body. I started studying Shiatsu with Wataru Ohashi. In 1981 I took my first Oriental diagnosis class and realized I had more work to do if I was to reflect the level of health I knew was possible. I added to my already busy study routine, Macrobiotic classes with Michio and Aveline Kushi, Shizuku Yamamoto and Anne Marie Colbin. I made frequent trips back and forth from NYC to Boston and Becket and eventually began assisting and scribing for Michio Kushi’s consultations at the Macrobiotic Center of New York.
Seymour Koblin
Thus by 1984, I found myself nearing graduation from Ohashi’s school and becoming certified at the Kushi Institute. Ohashi failed me on my final practical shiatsu exam, saying this was the highest compliment he could pay me because “Seymour you are destined to create your own style -come work on me once you have developed your unique form of Shiatsu.” He gave me a list of 5 people to work on who had developed something unique after graduating from Ohashi’s school. I thus began developing Zen-Touch™, passed my test with Ohashi, moved to California and started my own school in San Diego California 1989 called the School of Healing Arts.
I knew that we had to offer more than Zen-Touch™ Shiatsu, so I developed a very wide and versatile curriculum at the School of Healing Arts that is today called International College of Holistic Studies. The College is newly governed by Kieu Vo and her amazing team of colleagues and co-workers. Zen-Touch™ Shiatsu is still actively taught within the versatile academic programs at ICOHS,
My activities are now dedicated to continuing education and mentorship training at iSOHA in San Diego and Prague, my close connection with Paula and Neha at Healing Hands School of Holistic Health in 3 locations in Southern California, and other international schools and centers globally.
Seymour Koblin
My personal work in Zen-Touch™ Shiatsu, Macrobiotics, Tai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung Nei Kung and Taoist meditation have shown me that the best way to learn is through the apprenticeship/mentorship model. While I spend a lot of time teaching and introducing larger groups of mainstream newcomers to the world of Holistic Health, I also spend considerable time teaching individuals and small groups of serious students who are interested in learning holistic healing in a personal environment.
I learned the most when Michio or Shizuko showed me how to feel, assess and make recommendations in a personalized way with the clients I assisted them with. I remember Shizuko guiding my finger on a clients belly to show me how to feel a fatty cyst, or a stone or a tumor. Michio would point out features and mannerisms of a client that led him to make a “diagnosis” and explain why this customized remedy he came up with would be the perfect solution to alleviate a symptom. This personal experience is impossible to communicate in books or classes alone. I carry on this tradition through my private internship training.
My Books, “the Art of Zen-Touch™”, “Shaping Our Destiny”, “Chi Cultivation” and “Circulation and Food for Life” present helpful education that becomes complete when studying in the internship format. The poetry, illustrations and general writing style in them convey a change in consciousness style that makes the books bigger than the information on the pages.
I look forward to meeting you and in the meantime –
Seymour Koblin
Study well, be diligent. Practice the principles and then wait…Breathe.. Feel… Shhh…. Listen,
follow the message that is born from the silence within.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]