Entries this day: Kimura_Institute cycle

Kimura Institute

10:31am JST Monday 26 April 2010 (day 14642)

Last year, I took a beginner shiatsu course from the Kimura Institute (one room in Kimura-san's apartment), and thought it was okay, but not great instruction. I didn't get any detailed correction from Kimura-san; he just worked on me, and I worked on him, then paid him 5000 yen or so per lesson. Upon finishing the course, he seemed supportive of my future endeavors in shiatsu practice, though I didn't plan to go back to him for any more non-instruction.

Today, I called him, "hey this is Rob Nugen; I'm trying to get an education visa to study Thai massage in Thailand so I need a recommendation from a school in Japan."

"Okay; if you draft it, I will sign it," he agreed.

"Great! Do you have a school letterhead?"

"No, but I have a rubber stamp with the school's name and address."

Fair enough.

"Okay, I'll call you back to let you know if that's enough."

I asked the woman at Thai embassy if his stamp was good enough for the letter; he doesn't have letterhead for the school. No problem, she said.

I called Kimura-san back, "they said it's no problem," then, thinking of logistics, "do you have a printer?"

"why?"

"Um, I was thinking I might be able to email you a document and it would be um, okay to print it there."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Rob Nugen. First name is R-O-B; last name is N-U-G-E-N."

"And when did you say you came to the school?"

I'm not so good with questions involving when things happened. "Um, last year, I think, um, like summer? We met each Thursday at 10am. It was just a 10 hour course; it's okay if you don't remember," I said, slightly heartbroken that he didn't remember.

He flipped through his documentation and found it, "ah, you said you are a programmer, right?"

"Yes; I'm a programmer."

"I don't show that you finished the course, you didn't say anything so I wasn't sure.."

"Um,"

"Why did you ask me?"

"The Thai embassy asked for a recommendation from a school, and yours is the only school I've attended in Japan, [plus it's associated with healing. So I thought...]"

"Why don't you call someone else?"

"よろしくおn。。 「ガン」" == "thank you ver　[CLICK]" and he hung up before I could finish the word. Sigh.

cycle

7:05pm JST Monday 26 April 2010 (day 14642)

In my men's group tonight, a man said about me, "I see you set boundaries or tests for yourself, that are extremely difficult to maintain, and you're bound to fail them. When you judge that you have failed this test, that generates the feeling of shame in your life."

"The test is not you; the judgement of failure is not you; the shame is not you. You created all of those."

"I don't know where the cycle started, but I've seen you felt shame in your life around perceived sexual addiction, so you set up a test to prove something to yourself, and when you fail it, you're feel shame anyway."

"The action is not the problem. The judgement of failure and resulting feeling of shame is the problem."

"When you obsess about something, you lose prana, or life energy."