Chris Jarmey
November 23rd 1954 - November 9th 2008
It is with great sadness and a huge sense of loss that we have to announce the death of Chris Jarmey on Sunday November 9th, of a heart attack, at his home in Wiltshire.
Chris knew he had a congenital weakness and that this was always a possibility and he did everything he could to keep himself fit and healthy, which is perhaps why he managed to stay with us for long enough to achieve as much as he did.
A deep passion for knowledge, wisdom and truth was his driving force. He studied and read avidly, acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of subjects relating to oriental medicine, movement, meditation, nutrition, anatomy and was constantly designing new courses to impart his learning to others. He possessed a unique and special talent for making the subjects clear, accessible and fun, which made him such a popular teacher and his books so successful.
He took up martial arts in his teens, qualified in 1978 as a remedial gymnast (a profession which later merged with Physiotherapy) and worked for many years within the NHS. At the same time he took up yoga and did a Sivananda teacher training in an epoch when yoga was considered to be the domain of hippys and oddballs. Never conventional, I think he took a certain pride in being the oddball in a mainstream profession, who nevertheless managed to acquire converts along the way, and pioneered the use of yoga and shiatsu in hospitals.
We first met on a yoga retreat at a Buddhist centre in 1982, where I felt my attention drawn to the person sitting in front of me in the meditation hall, who turned out to be him. At the time he was living in a community at Lower Shaw Farm and helping to run alternative courses and workshops (when he wasn't milking the goat or digging up potatoes). He then moved into the Sivananda Yoga Centre in Notting Hill and taught yoga and shiatsu there while also working in hospitals. The yoga centre was a potent melting pot of spirituality, philosophical conversation, extreme yoga practices, self development, and all too human intrigue. Chris managed to be in it without being part of it. He studied acupuncture, Chinese herbs and osteopathy to broaden his knowledge and still found time to entertain everyone at the dinner table with his stories and jokes. He could be a great raconteur and loved being the teacher and entertainer.
His shiatsu career began in 1970 when teachers were difficult to find in this part of the world, so he became one of the founding fathers of shiatsu in the UK. He went on to practise and teach both in the UK and abroad and opened the Shiatsu School of Natural Therapy in 1985, which then became the European Shiatsu School. Those of us who taught for him will always remember how his faith in us inspired our confidence and brought out gifts and resources we never imagined we had. Many of us have him to thank for our teaching careers, although we sometimes found the challenge of an ever changing and growing syllabus daunting and frustrating. Nothing was ever allowed to stagnate before the force of his creativity.
I last saw Chris in August, and spent a wonderful weekend at his house. I knew I could always call him up and invite myself down to Lockeridge, where he lived, when I needed a break from London. He was one of the most generous people I've known. He was running a qi gung course but said I could come and either join in or just hang out. I joined in. His courses were always fun and popular. He was a very talented teacher, had a penchant (he liked that word) for the unusual and a very good sense of fun. He took us out onto the Wiltshire downs and into the crop circles to do the qi gung. He loved the whole crop circle phenomenon and had even camped out to try to catch them being made, but they seemed to appear in the brief moments when he was asleep or looking the other way. An avid Star Trek fan, he liked to think it was all messages from aliens (I think he did wonder how come they shared our calendar when an 8 appeared on 8/8/98!).
Chris will be remembered for a very long time by many people for his truly inspirational teaching and ever present sense of humour, with a taste in puns that ranged from clever funny to groan awful and sometimes flowed almost too thick and fast! One of the brightest lights of the Shiatsu world has just gone out. He touched the lives of so many people through his teaching, practise and his wonderful books. We were not ready to lose him and he will be deeply missed. In his memory please tell all those you love that you care about them and ask them to do the same to the people they care about. We never know when someone may suddenly depart forever without saying good bye and Chris would have liked the idea of a ripple of love radiating out from his passing through the veil of separation between life and Oneness.
He leaves four children, Luke, Katy, Max and Tom and a hug hole in all our hearts.
Thank you, Chris, for being a part of our lives and may you pass quickly and easily to the realm of liberation.
(Written by Anna Blackmore)