This article brings together two pieces written in July and August 2015, combined into one in September 2026. It covers exchange sessions with Akinori Ito and Kosuke Sato (July 8, 2015) and a session with Keiji Takada (July 29). A note from 2026 follows at the end.
Introduction
Not long after receiving certification and returning to Japan, when I had only just begun offering sessions in Shibuya, I had the chance to receive work from three Rolfers.
Kosuke Sato
July 1, 2015, an exchange session. Like me he had traveled around the world, and he had started practicing Rolfing that year (Ko Rolfing). He offers sessions in Roppongi and Machida.
We were able to talk about what to watch out for when starting out, and how to convey what Rolfing is. Newsletters by email, a blog, a newsletter for clients — all useful when thinking about how to explain Rolfing clearly.
He was the first Rolfer I invited into my own session room. That made an impression on me, and the exchange went easily. His work was delicate in the hands, and warm, as though enclosing you. The session was so comfortable that I lost consciousness, and I regret that I do not remember all of it.
Akinori Ito
July 7, 2015, an exchange session. He is the Rolfer from whom I first received the Ten-Series (Relief Space), between December 2013 and April 2014. He is also the person who gave me the impetus to become a Rolfer myself.
It was the first time I had invited him to my session room in Shibuya. I had never imagined that within such a short span I would be facing him as a colleague, and I was nervous right up until we began.
What interested me was that when I worked on him, he seemed to convey a sense of leaving it entirely to me — and it went more easily than I expected. In the middle of the session I could see clearly what I should be doing. I kept the work to a minimum and the time was short, but it was good to receive feedback on what I might improve.
His session wove together Rolfing and Source Point Therapy. After the Ten-Series ended on April 12, 2014, I had received one maintenance session from him. That one had not made a strong impression.
This time the impact was startling. It may sound rude to say so, but I was struck by how much someone’s skill can develop and change in a single year — and at the same time encouraged, since it meant there was room for me to improve as well if I kept building day by day.
Ito has been influenced by Hiroki Sato, a Rolfer who runs TEN (the space for your Life & Body) in Osaka.
The session began with body reading. When he asked what I was aware of, I said that my left-right balance was tilted to one side, and that there was some discomfort in the sense in my left inner ear.
I lay on my back and the session began. As with Hiro, it started without his hands touching me. His hands were near my neck, and yet the right side of my lower back and hip began to move on its own. My shoulder, my spine, my lower limbs moved too — and when the balance came into order, it stopped, just like that. As with Hiro, it was a strange experience.
There were moments when he touched the base of my right leg and my right shoulder, and I felt my body coming into order. It was interesting to watch the line of the body settle as it went. At the end, when he touched the coccyx, the tailbone lengthened downward and the head rose upward — a sense that the spine had become free.
When the session ended and I stood up, I was genuinely surprised. The inner-ear sense, yes, but also my feet: they were firmly on the ground, and my body was in order.
During the Ten-Series the previous year, I had strongly felt Ito wanting, somehow, to give this client a good session. This time I felt nothing of the kind. It was as though his mind had become empty. When I asked, it turned out he had brought meditation into his daily life.
And I felt strongly that his approach was not to treat, but to give the other person space to think — to offer the options they needed in the form of a hint, so that they notice for themselves. I think it gave me a hint about which direction to take my own Rolfing.
Keiji Takada
On July 21, 2015, on the recommendation of the Rolfer Takami Kamata, I went to receive a session from Keiji Takada of Rolfing & Bodyworks. He was the fifth Japanese Rolfer from whom I had received work, after Kaori Nakamura in Munich, Akinori Ito, Yasushi Fujimoto, and Kosuke Sato.
The first surprise came on entering the session room. Healing stones were placed at key points around it. He had acquired them, he said, while taking the Rolf Movement certification training in Brazil.
I have written before about how important the idea of holding the space is in Rolfing (see On Knowing the Importance of Holding the Space).
When a person is going through something, giving them the time and the space so that the setting feels safe to them. What matters is providing a safe, steady environment — not judging, not criticizing, not blaming. A neutral condition, you could say, in which the person can be as they are. And trusting their intelligence, so that they can arrive at their own answer.
The moment I stepped into that room, through those stones, I could feel how much he values holding the space.
The session began with a questionnaire and body reading. Rather than the kind of session done lying on a table, it started from walking and standing — closer to Rolf Movement.
When I mentioned that my hip joints were stiff, observations came one after another: your knees are probably not in great shape, and your hands must tense up in the way you take yoga postures. And because I could see clearly that he was neutral, keeping his own body in order, it all felt natural. I could hand myself over in complete safety.
Working mainly on the joints between the top of the foot and the shin to widen the range of motion, I came away having learned a way of walking that puts less load on the knees. What interested me was that, with that way of walking, he gave me the time and the interval to take it in. To be given that interval is, in a way, to be given a degree of freedom.
What surprised me was that he had brought an element of martial arts — aiki — into his Rolfing. He had pursued martial arts, including with the martial artist Akira Hino, and in the course of observing them had learned that a martial artist’s body comes into order without Rolfing at all. That was what led him to take it in. He sends aiki from ten meters away, directly in front, and I could see clearly that, just as with hands-on work lengthening fascia on the table, the body moves and comes into order of its own accord.
Finally, on the table, he worked on my arms and around the shoulder blades. Through lengthening fascia I was able to experience the difference in awareness between the inside and outside of the arm and hand, and how the way you use the hand when placing it down in Ashtanga yoga postures — chaturanga dandasana, for instance — determines how much load falls on the shoulder.
Keiji Takada is also a board member of the Japan Rolfing Association. His way of adjusting the body and his sense of distance are exquisite. There is still a great deal to learn from Advanced Rolfers, and I learned how much it matters to experience work from many different people. I want to keep receiving sessions from Rolfers every month or two.
Note, September 2026
Three things that would acquire names later are already in the session with Akinori Ito.
The first is that it began without his hands touching me. His hands were near my neck, and yet the right side of my lower back and hip began to move; when the balance came into order, it stopped. A strange experience, I wrote.
As the text says, this was the same as with Hiro — I had received Source Point Therapy in Osaka two months earlier. Ito had been influenced by Hiro. This is the record of receiving it from someone other than Hiro for the first time. I would take Module 1 that October; I had experienced it twice before then.
The second is the observation that his mind seemed to have become empty. During the Ten-Series the previous year I had strongly felt him wanting to give the client a good session. This time that was absent. When I asked, he had brought meditation into his daily life.
The neutrality I took in during the Advanced Training in 2025 came as three requirements about how the practitioner places their own body. Shape the Hand, Finding Back Space, Hara. This piece observes the same thing ten years earlier, from the side of the person receiving. That the practitioner is not trying to do anything is something the recipient can tell.
The third is the sense in the left inner ear. Asked what I was aware of, I named the tilt in my left-right balance and the discomfort in the left inner ear.
That sense had not resolved by the end of the Ten-Series. The series finished in April 2014, and this session was in July 2015. In December 2025, receiving SSP, I would reach it by another route — in the form of being able to feel the balance between the left and right inner ear as a bodily sense. A discomfort that persisted for eleven and a half years is being named here too.
As for the session with Keiji Takada, it is the fourth appearance of holding the space.
Until then I had written about the phrase as something I had been taught. It came up constantly in the classroom in Munich; I wrote about how I had understood what it meant, and later used it as a tool for explaining how a therapist works. In every case it was an account of how I had taken it in.
Here I feel it from the outside, in another practitioner’s work, the moment I walk into the room. Because healing stones had been placed there, I write, I could tell how much he values the idea. What a practitioner holds important shows up in the room without being said. This is the first record of confirming that as the person on the receiving end.
And these three sessions fall a little over three months after certification. I was certified on March 25, 2015, and returned to Japan on April 14.
Across eleven years of records, there are not many occasions on which I received work from another Rolfer. From Japanese Rolfers, five by this point. What accumulated afterward were records of courses and trainings. The records of being on the receiving end are gathered in this period.