On December 2 and 3, 2017, I visited TEN, run by the Osaka-based Rolfer Hiroki Sato (hereafter Hiro), to take the Source Point Therapy Supplemental Course (hereafter SPTSC).
I had taken Module 1 of the Source Point Therapy (SPT) training from October 10 to 12, 2015, with fifteen participants, and Module 2 from November 21 to 23, 2015, with thirteen (on Module 1, see “Learning the Blueprint: The Information Needed for a Human Being to Take Human Form,” “Using Sensation Rather Than Knowledge: Accessing the Blueprint,” and “The Final Day.” On Module 2, see “Concrete Ways of Accessing the Blueprint, and How a Body Changes,” “How the Training Runs, and What Techniques There Are” and “What Is Healthy Information for the Body?“). The training goes as far as Module 3, which I have not yet taken.
I had attended practice meetings in Tokyo several times, but it had been a while since I had taken SPT training.
Having been away from SPT for some time, I had two reasons for coming back. One was that, having added meditation to my daily yoga practice, I had come to feel afresh how much it matters to deepen SPT. The other was that two and a half years had passed since my certification as a Rolfer, and I wanted to look at SPT again.
So over the past three months or so I had gradually been bringing SPT back into my sessions. It was at that point, on October 2, 2017, that Hiro’s email announcing this class arrived. Since it was for those who had completed Module 2, I could see it would deepen the basic work. It filled quickly, but I managed to sign up.
I flew to Osaka on an early flight on December 2, and the class began at nine. With eighteen participants, we started with introductions, shared what we hoped to learn, and meditated.
After reviewing the basic techniques, we worked in groups of three, exchanging sessions while checking whether our work had drifted into idiosyncrasy. We divided into practitioner, observer, and recipient, and reviewed the techniques from Modules 1 and 2 within the time available.
From the afternoon of the first day, in order to deepen our understanding of the Sacral Hold and the Guardian Point, we were given the history of cranial work beginning with Dr. William Sutherland, along with its basic anatomy.
I learned how much it matters to know the historical background. Who has been involved in cranial work. How a method that began in osteopathy spread to people outside it. The three levels required in cranial work — biomechanical, functional, biodynamic — and how each approaches the work. The relationship to energy work. The line running from cranial work to biodynamics. Placing these in context brings into view how schools and their technical vocabularies use their terms, and where the Guardian Point differs from cranial work.
I was impressed by how freely Hiro shared knowledge backed by experience — from books, from classes he had taken, from his work as an interpreter.
On anatomy, we covered the relationship between breathing and the cranium, the difference between the viscerocranium and the neurocranium, and what is actually being done in session seven of Rolfing. Hearing this after two and a half years of giving Rolfing sessions, I think my understanding deepened.
With that knowledge in hand, we moved to the Guardian Point. Three points on the pelvis governing pelvic alignment, the rhythm of the hip bones, and the balance of the legs. A point below the clavicle governing the balance of the sternoclavicular joint and the movement of the first rib. And four points on the cranium. Each was taken up through its relationship to breathing and to anatomy.
After the classroom portion, we moved to practice.
Two exercises stay with me. In one, to feel what the Diamond Point and the Navel Point actually do to a body, the observer placed a hand on the recipient’s sacrum while the practitioner worked. In the other, we palpated the anatomical locations of the Guardian Point, and while the practitioner carried out the Diamond Point, Guardian Point, and Crescent Moon, the observer touched three places in a set order — the shoulder, the ankle, and the cranium together with the sacrum — to feel the changes.
Where Modules 1 and 2 were about learning technique, the SPTSC was about deepening what had been learned. It was exactly the experience I needed.
Feeling directly what happens through the Diamond Point and the Guardian Point. And, as an observer, learning with what attitude to approach the work, with feedback along the way. This is a perspective absent even from the basic Rolfing training in Germany, and I learned a great deal from it.
Other things came into view as well. What to hold in awareness while working — the shape of the Golden Egg, or the Midline. The quality of contact, understanding by feel the fine gradation between touching and not touching. What it means to enter the process of a body’s change, and how to meet that change; riding the wave was one phrase used. What happens as a process comes to an end, such as a shift in the rhythm of the breath. The range was wide.
And I came to feel directly that while SPT can be done by learning the techniques without knowing anatomy, knowing anatomy deepens your understanding and awareness in a session.
What I had been thinking about coming into this class was how to refine the awareness of yielding to the Blueprint — the greater intelligence, to put it another way — that SPT rests on. How to face the Blueprint while making use of what is good in the ego, when technique and awareness alike are prone to becoming heady and idiosyncratic. I hoped to learn even a little about that.
Hiro’s feedback was precise, and the great gain was that a direction came into view on two points. One, that SPT is something that produces results. Two, how to position it alongside Rolfing.
Over lunch and dinner there were chances to talk with the other participants, and I learned a lot from people in the same line of work. The group was a good one and the conversation ranged widely. Back at my practice, I want to bring SPT in and put it to use for each of my clients.
My thanks to Hiro for holding the SPTSC, and to each of the participants I learned alongside.
Note, August 2026
This piece is where the lineage behind SPT is disclosed for the first time.
On the afternoon of the first day, in order to deepen our understanding of the Sacral Hold and the Guardian Point, we were given the history of cranial work beginning with William Sutherland. How a method that began in osteopathy spread beyond it. The three levels required in cranial work: biomechanical, functional, biodynamic. The relationship to energy work. Where the Guardian Point differs from cranial work.
At the time I noted this down as interesting background. Ten years later I would receive the same line again.
The same background surfaced in the Advanced Training
In the 2025 Advanced Training, Ray McCall and Hiroyoshi Tahata both emphasized light touch. The background given for this was that from the 1980s onward, with John Upledger at the center, the ideas of biodynamic craniosacral work were transmitted to people beyond osteopaths, and that this had a large influence on the Rolfing community.
Unlike the strong pressure of Ida Rolf’s era, the direction shifted toward valuing a proper presence that allows body and space to reorganize naturally. This is one form of energy work, and it was the central theme of that training (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
Which means that the history of cranial work I heard in Osaka in December 2017 and the account of Rolfing’s shift I heard in Tokyo in 2025 were the same story.
Come to think of it, Bob Schrei, who created SPT, is both a Certified Advanced Rolfer and a biodynamic craniosacral therapist. A system built by someone holding two lineages at once would naturally contain both. But I did not make that connection then.
Learn the hands first, the background later
This piece records another side of SPT as well.
The eight points of the Guardian Point are set down concretely here for the first time. Three on the pelvis, governing pelvic alignment, the rhythm of the hip bones, and the balance of the legs. One below the clavicle, governing the balance of the sternoclavicular joint and the movement of the first rib. And four on the cranium.
Two years earlier, learning this technique in Module 2, I wrote about touching eight points with two fingers and recorded neither their locations nor the reasons for them (see “How the Training Runs, and What Techniques There Are“). I wrote only what it was good for.
This piece assesses that order itself: SPT can be done by learning the techniques without knowing anatomy, but knowing anatomy deepens your understanding and awareness in a session. Unnecessary as technique, necessary as understanding.
I think the order was right. What I received from Jeff Maitland’s thinking in the 2025 Advanced Training was that energetic work and subtle skills should not be taught at the beginning — that they belong at the closing stages, after clear touch, presence, and a grounded, calm way of being have been established.
Hands first, background later. In this field, the order of learning is itself part of the design.
What the two and a half years were for
This piece says I had been away from SPT for a while. Two years after Module 2, spent using it in actual sessions; then, over three months, bringing it in more often; and it was in that period that the announcement arrived.
The same material, and what I could take from it was entirely different. Hearing the explanation of what session seven of Rolfing is doing, after two and a half years of sessions, deepened my understanding, I wrote.
Module 3 would come three years later still, in 2020. The reason was that the basic techniques were complete at Module 2, so I put it off. Leaving gaps was how I worked with this system.