Seitai (整体) is a form of bodywork and alternative medicine practice, originally developed as training tool within health education.
[3] Important to its development was a regular meeting group of experts in various fields of traditional Japanese medicine, led by Noguchi, called Dainippon Rengō Chiryō-shikai.
[4] Seitai is known in Europe due to its practice by Itsuo Tsuda beginning in 1972 (with dojos in Paris, Geneva, Milan, Rome, Madrid, and Palma de Mallorca) and Katsumi Mamine in Barcelona the following year.
[5] The origin of the word "seitai" is set forth in a work in Japanese by Michio Takahashi, a master of seitaijutsu (正体術) very popular in the early 1920s.
The term for body, karada (體), comes from classical Chinese; this fact suggests that Takahashi wanted to guide his school in a specific line.
Noguchi collaborated and coordinated a group of prominent experts in traditional Japanese medicine, who met periodically during World War II.
[7] Yoshida Naoki thus describes the composition of this group:[4] Before and after the war, there was an organization called Dainippon Rengo Chiryoshikai, under the direction of Haruchika Noguchi.
In this way, members presented more consistent results and, from that moment on, seitai sōhō was considered a preferred therapeutic method.
[4] This list should be completed with Keizo Hashimoto, inventor of Sōtai (操体), and Tsunezo Ishii, creator of the "living ki" method from which Noguchi acknowledged having been greatly inspired.
He used the nervous system to arouse spontaneous movement.Haruchika Noguchi, had studied many Eastern and Western therapeutic methods in a self-taught manner.
[14] But Seitai Noguchi is not only based on the knowledge of therapeutic methods or observations related to health, but also on teachings of Tao and Zen.
You have to learn to use your own body.»Seitai rests on Noguchi's postulate that the body has a natural ability to rebalance itself in a way that ensures its proper functioning.
[] So every time we adapt the environment to ourselves, the need arises to do new improvements to facilitate digestion and we become even weaker [...] But this does not mean that we have lost our natural faculty, that is not why we become weak.»[16]According to this conception, health is considered in a particular way: disease is nothing more than the symptom of a body trying to restore its balance, and it will become a chronic disease when the resources to restore health are lacking or hindered.