Chico Shigeta

…My quest has truly been a vocation. Raised in my parent’s beauty salon in Shizuoka, I was encouraged from a young age to be receptive and to listen to the body and its vibrations. From the age of 5, I began to practice my massage skills on my family and salon patrons. Following high school, I major in Japanese culture and attend the Takayama Advanced Beauty College. There, I quickly realise that something is missing from a purely “outside” approach to beauty. My training helped to make the skin look perfect on the outside but the only women who were truly stunning were the ones who also projected harmony and confidence.

I had found my path: giving women the keys to restoring harmony in themselves and embracing their own unique beauty. From that point onwards, encounters and teachings which were to enrich my knowledge came naturally to me.

One of my first key encounters was with M. Kurebayashi, a blind energetic masseur, who showed me how to use energies to bring the body back into balance. He taught me the ways in which the masseur can be a gateway for energy. Massage calls upon the masseur’s sensitivity, upon his or her ability to transmit and receive energy. Humans and the universe are forever communicating. However the link between them can be disrupted: the presence of a masseur creates the required symbiosis to re-establish communication and to bring this turbulent relationship back into balance. I deepened my knowledge of wellbeing techniques through a training course with M. Hanamura, a disciple of Master Masunaga. It was during this period that I was able to perfect my pressure-based technique and also to discover the mysteries of the body and its meridians.

Inspired by a chance meeting with a French woman, I decided to move to France to understand the secret of the authentic French beauty. I make the acquaintance of Dr. Irene Grosjean, the pioneer of Naturopathy in France. From her, I learned the benefits of the primary source of vitality: a healthy diet. The importance of the seemingly self-evident motto ‘We are what we eat’ became clear. It was during my time at Dr. Grosjean’s side that I learnt the secrets of essential oils. Thanks to their unique molecular potency and aromatic virtues, I realized their incomparable potential on our health and beauty.

In 2002, I learned the fundamental balancing benefits of conscious breathing. I am myself a living example of its miraculous effects. I am able to give massages all day long without any signs of tiredness. Thus strengthened, my body remains untouched by the negative emotions which I extract during a massage.

Bringing together my teachings from Japan and France, I created my coaching method (Coaching Vitalité®) and a line of natural and organic essential oil blends to use in my massages. I set up practice in Paris and quickly became the favorite therapist of VIPs (Sofia Coppola, Isabelle Adjani, John Galliano).

But how was I to share the benefits of my method with a wider audience?