For the three days since arriving in Frankfurt on Friday, December 9, I stayed at the session room of Takami Kamata, a Rolfer living in Oberursel, near Frankfurt. While there I ran a two-day Jibunjiku seminar — on finding one’s own axis — and did a Rolfing exchange with Takami.
The seminar was a condensed version of one I had run in Japan, given in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Very limited time, mostly classroom work. Even so it seemed to land with surprising force, which was a pleasure. I have written about the seminar’s content before, so I will leave that aside and take up the exchange here.
The last time I saw Takami in Frankfurt was October 2014, when I visited during the Munich training. We were introduced by Giovanni Felicioni, the Rolfing teacher we have in common, and met in Frankfurt on my way to a yoga training.
Takami has been studying Jikiden Reiki on her occasional trips back to Japan (see “Jikiden Reiki (3) — Jikiden Reiki and Kotodama“), and we have kept in touch. What was odd was that I had never received a session from her. During this stay we agreed to exchange: I worked on her on the morning of December 10, and she worked on me on the morning of December 11.
People who had received sessions from her had told me for some time that
“Takami’s sessions hurt.”
So while taking in the body reading and the aroma she uses to prepare the space, I was tense right up to the point where the session began. Then she put a hand on the left side of my ribs, around the heart, and said
“Something happened here, didn’t it?”
and after a word or two along those lines, I had the sense that I could leave myself with this person, and I did.
What surprised me was that the session proceeded with almost no pain — and that rather than working the places around it, she took hold of the core of the thing and worked from there. That was new to me.
I think about balance and generally start from the ground, working gradually toward the core. Going straight to the core was new, and a surprise, and a discovery all at once.
She mixed in prompts like “try imagining it this way,” and the session moved quietly. Perhaps because she works with the hands of Jikiden Reiki, the effect of release deepened as it went.
She also told me that a mountain near Oberursel, where she is based, is a place of power, and that the energy from it fills the room. It was as she said: the space was in order, and I could feel it when I was the one giving the session — it was easier to work.
It was the first time I had received a session that goes to the core, and it was remarkably comfortable to receive; the hour and a half felt very short.
With Frankfurt finished, I move to Leipzig tomorrow, December 12. Half a day there, and a mentoring session with Kathrin. I plan to write about that next time.
Note, September 2026
The exchange has continued.
Takami is in Frankfurt, so it is not frequent. Even so, we did it three times in 2025. That is nine years from this session.
December 2016 was the first one. Until then we had known each other without ever having worked on one another.
I first met Takami on October 25, 2014, in Frankfurt. Giovanni Felicioni introduced us.
On that day I decided to take Phase III in Munich rather than in Boulder, Colorado, as originally planned. She also urged me to work as a Rolfer. I was in the training, but I had not settled on what would come after it. Two things about where I was headed changed on that one day.
She is one of the people I owe this to.
What this piece describes is seeing a way of working different from my own.
I start from the ground. Organize the feet and the breath, bring the support through, and move gradually toward the center. It is the order of the ten-series itself. Takami skips that and puts a hand on the core. The moment she said “Something happened here, didn’t it?”, my body had already given itself over.
Nine years on, my way of working has not changed. I still start from the ground.
In between, I did learn to set the order aside. What the 2025 Advanced Training took up was building a session for the state a person is in, each time, rather than following a fixed procedure. What is the client expecting? Which principle is missing? Where do you start?
Having learned that, I start from the ground.
Being able to set the order aside and setting it aside are two different things, I think. Being able to depart from the sequence does not make departing from it the better thing. In my case, bringing a person through the foundation is what makes the work easier for their body to take in. Nine years told me that this is my way of working.
Takami’s way is still new to me. That is why the exchange continues. That we are not alike has something to do with it.