I have introduced Takami Kamata, the Rolfer living in Frankfurt, several times in this column. When she returned to Japan in July 2015, I took her Jikiden Reiki seminar — three days, from July 18 to 20. Across four columns I gave a brief account of how Reiki spread to the West, what history it followed in Japan, and what I experienced firsthand (see “The Background, and How the West Took It Up,” “How It Came Down to Us,” “Jikiden Reiki and Kotodama,” and “Before and After“).
At the end of last year she returned again. A Jikiden Reiki seminar ran over two and a half days, from December 25 to 27, 2015, beginning on the afternoon of the first. I could not attend all of it, but I took part again as a returning student — the morning of December 26 for the second unit of the first part, and all of December 27 for the first and second units of the second part. Four people attended the former, three the latter. A small group.
In October and November 2015 I had taken Modules 1 and 2 of Source Point Therapy (SPT) with Hiroki Sato, the Rolfer who runs TEN — the space for your Life & Body in Osaka (hereafter Hiro). (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?“)
Perhaps because I came to the Jikiden Reiki seminar having practiced SPT in the meantime, I was able to share and reflect on a good deal — including the question, from daily experience, of how to combine SPT, Jikiden Reiki, and Rolfing.
I have written before about how I use SPT and Jikiden Reiki differently (see “Source Point and Jikiden Reiki: How I Differentiate the Two“).
Looking back, I have been bringing energy work — SPT and Jikiden Reiki alike — into my practice ever since I learned the manual work of Rolfing, that is, since being certified as a Rolfer at the end of March 2015. And I did so while still holding the question of where the difference between Rolfing and energy work lies.
The hypothesis I formed at the outset was that energy work would work for everyone. If that were so, bringing it in early in a Rolfing series ought to make for better sessions. So I used it actively from the beginning.
Six months of experience left me feeling that it may not, in fact, be for everyone. This comes from experience, so I cannot say whether it is right. I want to test it going forward.
It is something I also felt when I was doing coaching and tarot sessions: just as a person will not open up unless trust has been established, SPT and Reiki call for a readiness on the part of the person receiving.
Put another way, at least three things are needed. That trust has been built with the client. That the person is ready to open. That, at a deeper level, the person is ready for dialogue.
My sessions are almost entirely with Japanese people living in Tokyo. And when you think about it, given the density of the population and the harshness of the business environment, many people have withdrawn into themselves and closed off.
In my own years at a pharmaceutical company, I saw people in my department, every year, struggling with some form of psychological difficulty. Unable to adapt to the workplace, they ended up on leave. Seen that way, it seems difficult for someone who meets those three conditions to arrive early on.
SPT and Reiki are not especially difficult technically, so they can be put into practice right away. But when the fundamental consideration for the other person drops out — how to build trust, how to communicate — a block goes up in the mind. Work carried out with every intention of producing the fullest effect produces no effect at all. In that sense, the practitioner’s own life experience — their capacity as a person and their capacity to observe — is what gets tested.
So since the start of 2016, my sessions have been changing. I deliver the basic first through seventh Rolfing sessions properly and keep SPT and Reiki to the minimum necessary — I have become more mindful of less is more.
And in doing so, I wait until those three kinds of readiness are in place. It amounts to a shift in mindset: it is not too late to add SPT or Reiki in the second half of a series rather than the first, and there is no need to hurry. Of course some people respond immediately, so I want to stay flexible there.
For 2016, with my experience still shallow, I want to make it a year of deepening the manual work. I do not know how my thinking will have changed by the end of the year, but I want to put experience first, keep the courage to admit mistakes, and move forward.
Note, August 2026
This piece records, in one place, the forming of a hypothesis, the practice, the testing, and the change of course.
The hypothesis at the outset was that energy work would work for everyone. If so, better to bring it in early. So from my certification at the end of March 2015 I used it actively.
Six months in, I revised that. I had noticed there were conditions on the receiving side: that trust has been built, that the person is ready to open, that at a deeper level they are ready for dialogue.
And I changed course. Deliver the first through seventh Rolfing sessions properly, keep SPT and Reiki to the minimum, and wait until the readiness is there.
A habit from my earlier profession
Hypothesis, practice, testing, revision. That shape came from twenty years in medical research and the pharmaceutical industry.
The piece even includes the caveat. This comes from experience, so I cannot say whether it is right; I want to test it going forward. It declines to conclude from six months and leaves the finding provisional.
I had done the same thing before studying Jikiden Reiki. Having signed up for the seminar, and before the first day, I looked up how NIH allocates its funding and what level of evidence the clinical research reaches (see “The Background, and How the West Took It Up“). I apply the same measure to what I am about to study.
There the measure was aimed at someone else’s method. Here it is aimed at my own practice.
Where less is more came from
The piece sums up the change of course with the phrase less is more.
I had received the phrase itself in Phase III, in February and March 2015, taught as attending not only to what needs working on but to what does not. I knew the words.
It took six to ten months for it to happen under my own hands. The same thing had occurred with SPT: I wrote in November 2015 that checking the breath had grown shorter and that I hesitated less over which places to work (see “What the Sessions Have Taught Me“).
And ten years later, Less is More came back as a central idea in the Advanced Training. Support change with the minimum necessary intervention. With energy work, the point of judgment is when the body’s own adjustment begins (see “Journey to Becoming an Advanced Rolfer — A Summary of the Road to Certification“).
Received as a phrase, confirmed in practice, and then received again as a position within a system. The same words three times, at three different levels.
The conditions were not only on the receiving side
Rereading it now, what I want to adjust is where the conditions are placed.
The piece puts all three on the receiving side. Has trust been built? Is the person ready to open? Are they ready for dialogue at a deeper level?
Ten years later, the same problem was framed from the practitioner’s side. What Ray McCall offered as the answer to Where do you start? was that the practitioner holds a perceptual state in which safety and reassurance can be felt. Whether the field is safe is treated not as a quality of the person receiving but as something the practitioner makes.
Then again, the piece touches on this itself. When the fundamental consideration for the other person drops out — how to build trust, how to communicate — a block goes up. The practitioner’s own life experience, their capacity as a person and to observe, is what gets tested.
The conditions are placed on the receiving side, and then the making of those conditions is placed on the practitioner. Both are there. They are simply not sorted out.