Koshi Balancing™ – A structural approach to Japanese acupuncture

The Koshi Balancing™ Method

The Koshi Balancing™ Method (KBM) brings a structural approach to Japanese acupuncture. Using careful palpation and manual medicine techniques, this integrated approach addresses the underlying structural system and supports overall constitution, energetic flow, and physical movement.

KBM focuses on two concepts, structural distortion and bio-tensegrity, to identify misalignment in the body. Seeing, palpation, movement, and acupoint stimulation are used to correct this misalignment. When the meridians are in structural alignment, qi flows, movements are graceful, and there is harmony in mind, body, and spirit.

Patterns of Alignment and Distortion

Humans are bipedal upright structures in the field of gravity. While gravity pulls us down, life force (qi) rises up, creating a dynamic relationship from feet to head. The ancients understood this whole-body relationship in terms of the complexly layered channel system. This ancient channel system is mirrored in the contemporary concept of bio-tensegrity and the myofascial system’s quality of dynamic reciprocity.

Structural distortion in muscles, joints and fascia inhibit free flow of qi, blood and fluids. Hashimoto Keizo’s Sotai “Patterns of Distortion” informs the clinical approach. These compensatory adaptations zig-zag across the body. The patterns of myofascial distortion represent chains of kinetic compensation that can travel through the entire body.

The Koshi Balancing™ Kata assesses and balances 7 critical transitional structural zones. These are often zones where compensation patterns transfer tensegrity stress to another part of the body. Sotai movements combined with acupuncture, teishin or acupressure can rebalance structure, and therefore function, thus enhancing Free Flow in body and mind.

About Jeffrey Dann

Jeffrey, founder of the Koshi Balancing™ Method, has been an educator and community health practitioner for the past 45 years.

A respected acupuncture teacher, he has taught internationally as well as at national conventions and for doctoral programs on both coasts. He is a full professor at the Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder, CO where he is also director of the Aloha Wellness Associates Clinic. He is a teaching assistant for the Barral Institute’s Visceral Manipulation core courses.

A former editor of the North American Journal of Oriental Medicine, he has published numerous articles in that journal. For the past 10 years, he has been an organizer for the Japan In-Touch Acupuncture and Moxibustion International seminars offered by the American Integrated Medicine College (Berkeley).