Root To Rise: A Zenthai Shiatsu Introduction to the Wood Element Workshop

Zenthai Shiatsu: Exploring the Wood Element 🌿

Step into the energy of spring and explore the qualities of the Wood Element through the practices of Zenthai Shiatsu, therapeutic touch, yoga and mindful movement.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Wood is associated with growth, renewal, flexibility, vision and direction. Spring offers a natural invitation to awaken, move, expand and create space for new beginnings.

Throughout this immersive workshop, we will explore the Liver and Gallbladder meridians, which are associated with the Wood Element. You’ll learn how to map and trace these meridian pathways, explore key acupressure points, and experience how movement, touch and mindful awareness can support greater flow and balance in the body.

We’ll weave together yoga, therapeutic movement, assisted stretching and Zenthai Shiatsu bodywork, creating an opportunity to both give and receive nourishing touch. Through this embodied exploration, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of the Wood Element while experiencing its qualities through your own body.

No previous experience with Zenthai Shiatsu is required. Come ready to move, connect, explore and receive.

What you’ll experience

• Be nourished and supported by two experienced facilitators as we explore the wisdom of the Wood Element and the transition into Spring.

• Somatic exploration of the Liver & Gall Bladder meridians, using mindful sensing, acupressure points and therapeutic movement.

• Gentle, conscious touch through Zenthai Shiatsu, exploring assisted stretching, movement and therapeutic bodywork.

• A Wood Element-inspired yoga practice, weaving together movement, breath and embodied awareness.

• Seasonal nourishment, with a beautiful Wood Element-inspired afternoon tea included in the workshop.

• Journaling and reflection, creating space to connect with your own intentions, insights and sense of renewal.

Led by Michelle Freeman & Christine Rossouw

About Your Facilitators:

Michelle Freeman

Michelle Freeman is a yoga teacher with over 30 years of experience in movement, mindfulness, and embodied practice. Based on the Sunshine Coast, she is the owner of Nambour Yoga Centre, where she leads teacher trainings, workshops, and retreats both locally and internationally. Michelle’s teaching weaves together vinyasa, yin, breathwork, and meditation, grounded in a deep respect for both traditional philosophy and modern understanding. Known for her warm, inclusive approach, she creates spaces that invite connection, self-inquiry, and a return to simplicity, supporting students to move, breathe, and live with greater awareness and ease.

Michelle's foundations for her teaching come from a deep reverence of traditional yoga practices that embody the philosophy of cultivating a calm, peaceful state of mind through yoga.  She makes annual trips to India to study with her primary yoga teacher, Dr. Vidwan Vijaya Kumar and also has a background in Exercise Physiology and yoga therapy.  She is a qualified Zenthai Shiatsu therapist and Zenthai flow teacher for ten years, completing her training in 2017. Michelle specialises in blending the ancient wisdom of yoga with modern science to help students feel more free, embodied and connected.  

Christine Rossouw

Christine Rossouw is a yoga teacher, storyteller and Zenthai Shiatsu therapist. Her journey with yoga started 2 decades ago. Having spent years as a student and teacher, Christine holds a deep reverence for the rich traditions, philosophy and teachings of yoga. A lifelong seeker, whose inquiry into the human experience has led her to the study of mythology, astrology, neuroscience, eco-somatics and bodywork, Christine’s classes invite students into a felt inquiry and exploration of inner and outer relationality, so that new somatic fluencies can be woven with tides of action and surrender, gathering and disseminating, the arc of expansion and contraction, the sacred pulse contained in seasons of being. 

Christine creates spaces that honour curiosity and reciprocity, where breath and movement are medicine, and belonging the balm capable of restoring connection with ourselves, each other and the living, breathing animate world we belong to. And here on the mat, at the kaleidoscopic confluence of our ever-becoming, the soft return, over and over again, to our essence of home-ness, presence and wholeness. 

Christine bows deep to her many teachers, both on and off the mat. The great teacher that is Life Itself, the teachers that arrive as emotions, experiences and inside-out explorations, the teachers that live in the winds and the unbound spaces of wonder.