“Through Jin Shin Jyutsu our awareness is awakened to the simple fact that all that is needed for harmony and balance with the universe – physically, emotionally and spiritually – is within myself. Through this awareness, the feeling of complete peace, serenity, security, the oneness within is evident. No person, situation, or thing can take these away from me.’ – Mary Burmeister (quote from A Touch of Healing)
We have JSJ as our inheritance, and our two hands act as jumper cables to energize and revitalize the body’s system. All we need is the desire for awareness. We set our own limitations with our own ‘individualized’ desires. JSJ is simplification the mystifying of the unknown (fears).
Based on ancient knowledge of the body and creation, Jin Shin Jyutsu was passed down orally from one generation to the next and had virtually disappeared in Japan until rediscovered in the early 1900s, by Jiro Murai, a Japanese philosopher. His student, Mary Burmeister, brought the art from Japan to America
in the 1950’s.
It was 17 years before Mary Burmeister started sharing Jin Shin Jyutsu with others. “I just felt I had to know something before I could say I knew it. Then I realized, “you cannot say you ever really know an art like this.” A chiropractor became her first student. “Our group grew to about six students, including a psychologist, a physician, and another chiropractor. That’s how it began.”
Mary explains that our revitalizing energy, which flows up the back and down the front of the body, can become blocked within 26 ‘safety energy locks’ (SELs), located throughout the body and in the organs themselves.
“As we abuse our bodies in our daily routines, mentally, emotionally, digestively, or physically, our safety energy locking system becomes activated,” says Burmeister. “This is simply to let us know we are abusing our bodies.”
“Jin Shin Jyutsu not only aids the body, but changes the attitudes that underlie the physical symptoms. It helps everything from head to toe and toe to head. There are 27 trillion cells in the body, and if we smile, all 27 trillion cells smile with us. This is how we help ourselves in health.”
“In Jin Shin Jyutsu there are no teachers or masters, they are all the same. I always say, “Be the example.”
“Life is not a struggle. Life is enjoying the now. It’s simple.”
During her over sixty years of study, research and love of this Art, Mary translated the teachings, wrote books, gave treatments, and lectured all over the world. She retired from teaching in 1989 and released her physical form in February, 2008.
“An Interview with Mary Burmeister, Master of Jin Shin Jyutsu®” by Melissa Higgins.
Article published in March/April 1988 issue of Yoga Journal.