Shintaido of America

By Connie Borden, the Shintaido Of America Board President

Welcome Jim Sterling and David Palmer as new SOA Board Members! Shintaido of America board has had several vacancies in the past few months, so we thank Jim and David for agreeing to an interim board appointment until June 2025. Board members serve two-year terms and we appreciate that Jim and David would complete vacancies until our next board elections in August 2025.

Meet these two people:

Jim Sterling

Jim Sterling is ranked in Shintaido as General Instructor, Yondan Kenjutsu, Sandan Bojutsu and Nidan Karate. Most recently he has been serving as an officer of SOA as Editor of Body Dialogue and is a member of the SOA National Technical Committee (NTC) and International Technical and Examination Committee (ITEC). Jim has worked as a writer, consultant, and project manager in San Francisco for many years. Since Jim started practicing Shintaido in 1976 he has been a guiding force of the Pacific Shintaido group and interested in advancing Shintaido both through keiko and organizational structures.

Read this interview with Jim.

David Palmer

David Palmer has been involved with Shintaido since 1984 when he met H.F. Ito and asked him to critique the first iteration of his seated massage protocol. Both Shintaido and massage are movement forms, one active (you move yourself) and one passive (someone else moves you). The interplay of these two sides of the movement coin have been foundational to his professional and personal life.

Prior to entering the field of massage, David spent ten years as a developer and administrator of social service programs for nonprofit agencies in Chicago and San Francisco. His work included the creation of the first nationwide social service hotline in 1972, the National Runaway Switchboard. While working for the Wieboldt Foundation, in 1974, he staffed the development of the first association of private family foundations in the United States, the Donor’s Forum, a model that has been duplicated in major cities throughout the country.

David began his professional massage career in 1980. Before his teacher, Takashi Nakamura, returned to Japan in 1982, he prepared David to assume operation of The Amma Institute. The Amma Institute was the first school in the United States exclusively devoted to traditional Japanese massage. It was here that David first began experimenting with teaching his graduates to work on clients seated in a chair, rather than lying on a table. In 1989 David stepped down as Director of the school to focus full-time on the development of the Chair Massage industry.

Listen to the episode of the Shintaido of America podcast with David Palmer published on September 20, 2023.