The Module 2 training in Source Point Therapy (SPT) has reached its final day (on the first day, see “Concrete Ways of Accessing the Blueprint, and How a Body Changes“). Here I want to look back at day two, November 22 — the day with the most technique in Modules 1 and 2 combined. I went in looking forward to it.
Module 2 runs from nine to five, as Module 1 did. What surprised me is how strictly Japanese participants keep to time. Unlike trainings abroad, on this occasion as on the last, nearly everyone had gathered by ten to nine. More often than not we began ahead of schedule.
The morning starts by reviewing the previous day. We sit in a circle and each person speaks, after which Hiro guides a short meditation. The meditation follows the theme of the day, and is led so that you can feel what it is like to be receiving SPT yourself.
We learned three techniques: the Stick Figure, the Guardian Point, and the Crescent Moon.
For the Stick Figure, you picture the body as a stick figure — lines joined at the points of the joints — and trace those lines with your hands. Where you find something stalled, you clear it using the methods already learned.
Because it works directly on the musculoskeletal system, it is said to be effective for lower back pain and stiff shoulders. Hiro said that the energy field underlying the fascia in Rolfing can come into order this way, which makes a Rolfing session easier to carry forward.
For the Guardian Point, you touch eight designated points on the body in turn, lightly, with two fingers. It is said to be useful for colds, including before symptoms appear, for insomnia, and for settling yourself when you are somewhere the flow of energy is poor.
Rather than putting the body in order, the image of repairing what is amiss fits better. Since it can also be taught to clients as self-care, I would like to pass it on through my Rolfing sessions.
The Crescent Moon is used to bring the body’s rhythms into order, and is said to be useful for women’s conditions and menstrual pain. You trace the lines below the feet and below the pelvis. Because it balances left and right, it can stand in for the Diamond Point that closes a session.
So the day was mostly technique. It ended with a gathering at a restaurant near Yodoyabashi station, where we got to know one another better.
I will write about the third day next time.
Note, August 2026
Of the three techniques learned that day, here is what this piece says about the Guardian Point. You touch eight designated points on the body in turn, lightly, with two fingers. It is useful for colds and insomnia, and for settling yourself when the flow of energy around you is poor. Rather than putting the body in order, the image of repairing what is amiss fits better.
That is as far as it goes. Where the eight points are, and why those, I did not record.
The hands learned first
The learning went hands first. You touch the designated places and watch how the body changes. That is how it settles in. The technique works whether or not you know what you are touching.
Two years later, in December 2017, I took the supplemental course. There, in order to deepen our understanding of the Guardian Point and the Sacral Hold, we were given the history of cranial work and its basic anatomy: the lineage beginning with William Sutherland, and how that approach spread beyond osteopathy. What the Guardian Point is close to, and how it differs. That the three points above the pelvis relate to pelvic alignment and the balance of the legs. That the point below the clavicle relates to the balance of the sternoclavicular joint and the movement of the first rib. The four points on the cranium. Each was taken up through its relationship to breathing and to anatomy.
I learned the same technique again two years on, through a different door.
What I came to feel there was that SPT can be done by learning the techniques without knowing anatomy, but that knowing anatomy deepens your understanding and awareness in a session. This piece is written from the first half of that alone.
I think the order was right. In the 2025 Advanced Training, what I received from Jeff Maitland’s thinking was that energetic work and subtle skills should not be taught at the beginning — that they belong after clear touch and a grounded, calm way of being have been established.
In this field, the order of learning is itself part of the design.
What I did not write here
What stands out on rereading is the omission. I did not record where the eight points are. I did record what it is good for: lower back pain, stiff shoulders, colds.
What a person writes down when they have just learned a technique reflects what they took to be important at the time. I wrote what it works on. I did not write what I was touching.