Earlsheaton dad’s shiatsu therapy ‘saved’ son’s life

LIFESAVER?: Shane Spencer may have saved the life of his son, Riley, using his shiatsu skills. The pair are pictured with Caroline Hadfield. 

Published on Wednesday 5 September 2012 07:00

FULL-time dad Shane Spencer learned the hard way that being a shiatsu therapist was what he was meant to do.

After a spell learning the Japanese healing technique, Shane put his skill on the back burner.

It wasn’t until years later, when he started treating his new son’s heart condition, that he realised he truly had a gift.

The Earlsheaton father-of-one started studying shiatsu 12 years ago as part of his university studies, but had to leave his course suddenly.

Then, in 2008 when son Riley was born with a heart murmur, Shane started practicing shiatsu techniques on the new-born’s arm.

He said: “Six weeks went by and when Riley woke for feeding five or six times a night I got up with him and as I fed him, I gently worked the heart meridian – which runs down the inside of the arm to the little finger – with my thumb in the attempt to maybe help him.”

But Shane, who lives in Frances Road, was dealt a blow at Riley’s six week scan when doctors said the baby would need an operation as soon as possible as blood was not flowing into his heart properly.

After the operation, Riley was put on life support.

Shane, 29, worried that his shiatsu had made his son’s condition worse.

“Our world got turned upside down,” he said. “The next 11 days went by in some kind of weird dream with lots of tears and no sleep.”

But soon news came that actually, without Shane’s shiatsu, Riley may have suffered a heart attack before his operation.

He said the heart has thousands of tiny veins which go down the arm, taking pressure off it.

“Maybe, just maybe, I helped to direct Riley’s heart by working the heart meridian in the arm,” he said.

Shane has decided to open his own shiatsu therapy practice in Dewsbury, and first told us about his venture via Twitter.

Coment

This piece of news, published in the newspaper Dewsbury Reporter on Wednesday 5th September 2012 , is about the story of a family in which the baby was born “with a heart murmur” and his father has help this disease unknowingly. Without his shiatsu’s treatments, maybe his son wouldn’t be alive.

This father, who has studied shiatsu during 12 years, always tried to his baby was well, and when the doctors noticed him that the baby should be operated, he feels really bad, because he thought that it was be his fault.

Shiatsu Japanese for "finger pressure"; it is a type of alternative medicine consisting of finger and palm pressure, stretches, and other massage techniques. There is no scientific evidence for any medical efficacy of shiatsu, but some shiatsu practitioners promote it as a way to help people relax and cope with issues such as stress, muscle pain, nausea, anxiety, and depression. And it this case it looks that it worked.

Recent studies have shown that there are many types of heart disease, all of which have some effect on the heart. Different diseases will cause different effects but at the same time, one effect can be due to more than one disease. But we can’t know yet, how this type of alternative therapy has help by this way to this disease so difficult to remedy.

Who knows… if the that father hadn’t done this  the baby, maybe, wouldn’t be alive now.

In my opinion I think that it is a sentimental story, surely a little bit retouched… I only know that it’s very difficult to heal this kind of diseases, especially if they are related with the heart and the blood and they happen in children. For me it is very difficult to believe it, but it really it is true I admire this man because he can say that HE HAS SAVED HIS SON, and I see well that he had set up a clinic to help more people. If I were him I would be proud of myself.