Saturday, March 16, 2019. I flew out of Haneda early for Itami to take the lower limb course (March 16–17) of IMAC — Center of Integrative Movement Assessment — with Hiroki Sato of TEN the space for your Life & Body, in order to sharpen my hands-on work.
This was my sixth time at IMAC, the first since EROM, held in Tokyo on January 27 this year (“IMAC (5) — EROM: Learning How to Assess Range of Motion from the Ground Up“).
I had taken the lower limb course once before, on April 3, 2016 (“IMAC (3) — The Lower Limb“). But my experience with Rolfing and bodywork was shallow, my knowledge of anatomy insufficient, and the sheer volume of information so great that keeping up with the seminar was all I could manage.
So I left it for a while, waiting until I needed it. Taking the visceral class last November (2018), I felt that I was ready. Sessions had accumulated and the problems had come into view, and in order to work on them I began taking the courses again this year (“IMAC (4) — The Viscera and the Muscles: How Does Muscular Function Affect the Organs?“).
Rolfing is effective for stiff shoulders, low-back pain, and other symptoms, but that is a by-product.
What it puts at the center is the balance of the body. Follow the method Ida Rolf taught, in sequence, and over ten sessions the balance of the body organizes.
Basic Rolfing training, though, puts its weight on balance and on sensation, so there is little chance to learn how to verify in detail how the muscles are changing, seen from anatomy.
For instance:
- 1) I had been working by feel, but seen from the muscles and the skeleton, what exactly was changing? And how does one assess movement?
- 2) Many clients have trouble in the trunk or the viscera. Seen from the muscles and the skeleton, how should that be approached?
- 3) Many clients are in pain. How can a session be offered that reduces it?
The basic training does not necessarily provide answers to these.
What Hiro offers in IMAC is welcome because he passes on only the methods that have produced results in his own clinical work: how do you assess each muscle from the movement of the joint? Is there really an effect, before and after a session?
What is remarkable is that it is upgraded year after year.
This time the lower limb course moved through six meridians of East Asian Medicine, joint range of motion, and anatomy: how should one approach the body within its connections? A new way of seeing the body as lines — as meridians — had entered.
Among other things:
- 1) How does the range of motion of a joint widen?
- 2) What is the relationship between the viscera and the musculoskeletal system?
- 3) What is the relationship between the meridians of East Asian Medicine and the musculoskeletal system?
I was shown simple manual methods that were genuinely startling, and the sessions ahead have become something to look forward to.
Participants were not only Rolfers but physiotherapists and acupuncturists, which is good for picking up different ways of seeing the body. And receiving short sessions while getting feedback from Hiro was a good chance to sharpen my own bodily sense.
Meeting Masamichi Abe, an acupuncturist at Kazenone Clinic, at the visceral class last time was what set this in motion (he was there this time too), and in April 2019 I began taking his course in East Asian Medicine.
East Asian Medicine seen from Western medicine, and Western medicine seen from East Asian Medicine, are both of interest to me, so this year I want to deepen IMAC and my understanding of East Asian Medicine together.
Note, September 2026
This is the course where East Asian Medicine enters. The lower limb material moved through six meridians, joint range of motion, and anatomy. A way of seeing the body as lines — as meridians — had been added, the article says.
I had taken the same lower limb course three years earlier, in April 2016. There were no meridians in it then.
The article says it is upgraded year after year. The course itself had been moving.
I had been moving too. But in two ways.
One is in the article. In 2016 there was too much information and keeping up was all I could manage. I left it for a while, waiting until I needed it. At the visceral class in November 2018 I felt I was ready.
The other is not in the article.
In June 2018, the Japanese edition of Daniel Keown’s The Spark in the Machine came out. I bought it and read it straight away. It set out the idea that fascia may be what the meridians actually are.
It was not that I thought there was a connection. I thought there might be one.
Two months later I bought Erich Blechschmidt’s The Ontogenetic Basis of Human Anatomy: A Biodynamic Approach to Development from Conception to Birth, and worked through it slowly.
Then, in November, at the visceral class, Hiro and Abe started running experiments. Range of motion in the muscles along a meridian, and what happens to the body when a point is stimulated. Watching it happen in front of me, I took in East Asian Medicine as something felt rather than as theory, for the first time. In the same class, Hiro also taught embryology.
The following month I went back to Keown in the original. The Japanese edition had been interesting enough that I wanted to check it for myself.
What I noticed on rereading was that the book also dealt with embryology. How the organs move as a fetus becomes a newborn, and how that matters in the forming of the meridians. Having just heard about embryology in the visceral class, my understanding of that side deepened as well.
Over six months, embryology had come at me from three directions. Two books and a course.
And four months after that, in this course, six meridians entered the lower limb material.
The order matters. I read a book and held a question; I watched a scene that answered it; I went back to the original to check; and then the content of the course changed. Even if there had been meridians in the 2016 lower limb course, I do not think I could have received them. I had no question.
In the note on the previous course I wrote that what I had left was IMAC, and that the question had continued. The question I meant there was pain. Over those two and a half years, another question had been forming alongside it.
Not deciding in advance is what made the difference, I think. If I had decided that fascia and the meridians were connected, it would have become a matter of confirming it. Because I held only the sense that there might be a connection, I could take in what happened in front of me as it was.
Keown’s account is still a hypothesis. It stands at a different stage of verification from Schleip’s work on the receptors. Something unproven worked as a way in. That does happen.
From the following month I began attending Abe’s course in East Asian Medicine. In the same month, the upper limb course completed the twelve meridians. Two paths running alongside each other in the same direction.