Shiatsu Cave: About the practitioner:
Hello, and welcome. My name is Mary Caine, your shiatsu therapist, and owner of Shiatsu Cave. Below is a summary of my background in therapeutic massage & bodywork.
Therapeutic Massage: Sarasota School of Natural Healing Arts, Sarasota Florida 1984
Therapeutic Massage - Swedish 1984
Zen Shiatsu 1985
Healing Touch 1990
Shiatsu Namikoshi and Anma 2010
Thai Yoga Massage 2010
Cranio Sacral Technique 2011
State of Florida Department of Professional Regulation Board of Massage MA 005653 (1984-1992)
Shaitsu 2010: CenterPoint Massage & Shiatsu School & Clinic , Minneapolis MN. www.centerpointmn.com
CenterPoint school closed in 2020 and redirected their students to Northwestern Health Sciences University. their website information is still up but have canceled classes. Their clinics contact number: 952-885-5444
Continuing Education 1984-2024.
Hospice of the Twin Cities, Plymouth MN massage team volunteer 2011-2012
www.hospiceofthetwincities.com
Professional memberships: ABMP & AOBTA current
City of Anoka massage business and practice license 2011-2025
My Story
My training in therapeutic massage started in Sarasota Florida in 1984 at the Sarasota School of Natural Healing Arts where I first discovered the preventative nature of therapeutic massage therapy could also be used to help transform average health into superior wellness.
Other styles of massage & bodywork were also taught and shared in class at SSNHA, or offered as weekend workshops, including a few different styles of shiatsu. My favorite is zen shiatsu, an extended meridian theory.
In 1985 I started with a small clientele of women, had a chance to work with some great people in the natural healing arts and practiced for about 6 years before moving back to Minnesota.
In 2010 I completed the full-time shiatsu course at CenterPoint Massage & Shiatsu School & Clinic (the bodywork part of m&b) where Namikoshi, Japan's National form of massage is taught, along with DoAn Kaneko's (one of America's Shiatsu pioneers, visit his website at www.chi-time.com) Shiatsu Anma, a more traditional Japanese approach to massage and bodywork, including a few lineage styles of shiatsu; Kawaguchi and Oto School Ampuku to gain the 750 hours in bodywork to satisfy National certification self-regulatory requirements, or a future Minnesota State Board of Massage.
The shiatsu modalities taught at CenterPoint follow the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and include foundation and pathology of TCM from Zang/Fu and 5 Elements theory, side by side with modern anatomy, physiology & pathology. Also did a little updating on kinesiology, Thai Yoga Massage and craniosacral therapy.
I have an interest in music, tones and healing.
My all time favorite research:
The work of a North Korean doctor Kim Bong Han. He first presented his work in the 1960s, and did not exactly go unnoticed, but Bong Han himself disappeared shortly after. His research was in finding Langerhan cells throughout the body, previously thought to be found mostly in the pancreas, and he thought they were affected by light and represented another immune system.
Today, his work is being looked at more carefully and currently referred to as Bonghan Channels in Acupuncture. Light is picked up by the body at the acupuncture points. Here's a link to one good article published in Acupuncture Today in 2009: http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=31918
Light therapy on acupuncture points is used today. The acupuncture points are entryways to neural pathways. Two French doctors demonstrated the pathways in the 1980s by injecting radioactive solution into points. Getting the point right meant lighting up the deeper network involved. Missing the point and the radioactive solution just pooled around the surface area.
My interest in massage as a natural healing therapy probably started with my Norwegian paternal grandmother who preferred going to her chiropractor for massage therapy, also encouraged her grandchildren to try out their massage skills!
When I was about 15 my maternal grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer and given 6 months to live. There was nothing that could be done but put her affairs in order. Not too long after that, while shopping in downtown Anoka she ran into her old family doctor, Dr Spurzem who was a brilliant diagnostician, retired by then, took one look and asked his old patient what was wrong. He wrote down a phone number of a doctor in Minneapolis, gave it to my grandmother and told her to call right away. A few days later, my grandmother was having a radical mastectomy. Followed by chemo therapy and radiation, and went into remission.
One of the things my grandmother said about how she made it through the chemo and radiation was that every day during the rough spots a friend of hers who kept chickens would bring her fresh ice cold eggnog.
Her cancer returned about 20 years later taking the course of liver to spine. More rounds of chemo and radiation. While visiting with me in Florida that winter and during these treatments my grandmother and I were watching the Phil Donohue program one morning. He was talking about how the liberal use of prednisone for women was causing cancer, taking the progression of breast to liver to spine, who knew! Then remission again, but all in all lived a good life for about 35 years since the first surgery.
Somewhere around that 6 months to live diagnosis given to my grandmother, by a few years later I think I was experiencing mild enough panic attacks to go (relatively!) unnoticed, but by the time I was 17 a friend invited me to a free yoga class on Cocoa Beach on breathing exercises (might have seen something I didn't!!). The classes were given by Yogi John Twombly. I came away from Yogi John's breathing exercises with a life long practice of remembering to just breathe
Later on as cancer reports piled up in general and especially among family and friends, I became more interested in every cancer story and eventually started looking at alternative approaches, since modern medicine approach is pretty much a latter stages emergency approach usually resulting in surgery, chemo and radiation. But what happens leading up to cancer? Where does it start? At what point critical mass? Can it be turned around? I had heard another story early on, of a friend of the family up in the country who had cured his wife of cancer. She was also given 6 months to live. Our country neighbor made his wife elder bark tea as a treatment. She went into remission and lived another 20 years.
I'm still looking at and comparing alternatives to cancer related surgery, chemo and radiation treatments. The other day ran across a youtube video of an oncology nurse who after many years was fed up with what she had seen over the years working in oncology, and switched over to the holistic side of cancer treatment and recovery. I like her story really well! Her website is www.mywellnesstutor.com . Her youtube video interview is also on this website where she talks about tracking markers.
If only there were a device like the little EKG instrument and ap, or for blood sugar levels, a person could actually track whatever it is that gets them closer to cancer and what moves them farther away from cancer. If a dozen or more different viruses can mutate from the same bacteria depending on the environment the bacteria is in, then a person could keep playing with their environment until they got it right. I like the www.teloyears.com slogan: If you can't track it, you can't manage it.
If you happen to be browsing massage for cancer information, here's a link to: https://www.cancercenter.com/treatments/tumor-markers/ the Cancer Centers of America Treatment home page. This link will take you to the tumor markers page, one of the more than 50 diagnostic classification links listed to the right of the page..
Also ran across a wonderful blog/discussion on www.wellnessmama.com on comfrey and cancer. So, all I can say is good luck out there, just know there are options and get started early doing your own research.
These days I'm pretty much of the opinion that therapeutic massage & bodywork is one the best natural healing therapies for encouraging the body to relax and remember how to heal itself.
I hope you find Shiatsu Cave a good place to enjoy massage & bodywork more often.
Note: I'll be retiring from my studio by Mid May, taking my last clients in studio May 15th, 2024. My 5 year lease is up then! June, 2024 will start a new lease period for me, so, it's time! Great people to rent from, reasonable, and I've loved that little cave studio! Probably time for me to scale down, although I still love massage, and feel its a number one helpful tool in the natural healthcare practice. So, I've taken up writing a science fiction novel (what else, massage across the galaxy!) and will probably try to get organized at home and maybe even do a little traveling - probably just to the North Shore to do some hiking and visit with family, and at the very least Grand Marais in time to pick comfrey at it's peak with my sister-in-law : ) But, it's a start!
It's been fun, and thank you to all the beautiful ladies who came to see me over the years : ) Keep in touch by email, phone, text, etc. Feel free to connect if you have questions, and I've tried to keep up with gift certificates, but if there are any out there, please get in and use them, even if they are ancient!
Thank you for your interest in natural health care.
Wishing you good health and peace of mind,
Mary Caine
For more information on shiatsu and other massage & bodywork modalities visit: www.massagetherapy.com
Last updated on March 4, 2024