History

In the early 1980s, Shiatsu therapist Harold Dull taught at the School of Shiatsu and Massage in Harbin Hot Springs, California, which also has a thermal bath. He experimented with breathing patterns, meditative presence and meridian stretches in warm water and began to adapt Zen Shiatsu for water. He called this new form of bodywork WATSU, a neologism of water and Shiatsu (Schoedinger, 2011).

Dull developed WATSU as a meditative and nurturing practice. He emphasised the “heart connection” and observed that WATSU induced deep relaxation with physical and emotional effects. In the early 1990s, physical therapists and other health care professionals began using WATSU for a variety of orthopaedic and neurological conditions. More and more therapists from various disciplines subsequently included WATSU in their treatment programs and WATSU gained increasing acceptance as a form of water therapy (Dull, 1993).

In German-speaking countries (DE-AT-CH), the method was influenced by various other sources from 1994 on:

• Dr. med. Christian Larsen enriched the method with the concept of Spiraldynamik^®. As a result, traditional WATSU movement sequences were optimised and partially supplemented or reduced in accordance with a more comprehensive anatomical understanding, taking into account findings from research on movement pedagogy.
• In contrast to the original American concept, the accompaniment of emotional processes was declared an essential part of the method in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at an early stage. In particular, content from Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP), founded by Jack L. Rosenberg, was taken up and integrated.