On Sunday, October 11, 2020, the fifth day of Module 3 in Source Point Therapy (SPT) arrived. The typhoon had passed over Osaka and the weather was turning; by the afternoon there was even some sun.
The fifth day also began with a check-in. Together with Bob Schrei (hereafter Bob) and Donna Thomson (hereafter Donna), we looked back on the karma of the fourth day. Listening to the participants, the experiences were different for each person. They differ, but rather than getting caught in the experience itself, what matters is which experience you look back on. Since the experience changes each time, we were advised, noticing is the more important thing.
In the meditation we scanned the body. The guidance took each of us from the crown to the toes at our own pace, and it felt close to what in yoga is called yoga nidra.
After the body-scanning meditation we moved to the day’s subject, the emotion LEVEL.
A LEVEL in SPT is one of the various elements that contribute to a symptom appearing on the outside of the body. To approach such an element, you access the frequency it holds.
There are five LEVELs — trauma, karma, emotion, ancestors, and belief systems — and Module 3 takes up three of them: trauma, karma, and emotion. Trauma was explained and practiced on the third day (see “After Three Days: How Trauma Is Handled Within Energy Work, and Why Intent Matters“), karma on the fourth (see “The Fourth Day: How the Class Proceeds, and Karma as Volitional Action“).
The fifth day was emotion.
Bob opened with an anecdote about a doctor, and shared that one hundred percent of low back pain comes from emotion.
For something that important, SPT works in the order of trauma, karma, and emotion. Among the LEVELs, it comes third in priority.
Emotion is the easiest to picture, which makes this strange in its way. In SPT, emotion is also handled at the trauma and karma stages, and it seems that much of it resolves there.
What is interesting is where emotion sits in SPT.
A healthy state in emotion means being able to move smoothly from one emotion to another without effort. Suppose there is sadness, or anger. Being caught in it indicates a block. If you can move between emotions, the state is healthy.
Whether an emotion is good or bad has nothing to do with it, and you can work with it without understanding its content.
What is good about SPT, you could say, is that you do not have to think about complicated things.
What is remarkable is that when the practitioner can move smoothly between emotions, working with a client’s emotions becomes easier.
And indeed, since I began practicing SPT five years ago, there are times when I feel that I am less affected by a client’s emotions.
What strikes me again is that this is a view characteristic of SPT, which came out of meditation. Meditation looks at each emotion from a wider view without attaching to it, and I felt something similar in SPT.
After that, Bob taught us how to work at a distance.
Distance work in SPT divides into two: a short session of fifteen minutes, and an online session of one hour.
Working at a distance also exists in Jikiden Reiki, which originated in Japan (see “How It Came Down to Us” and “Jikiden Reiki and Kotodama“). Both involve obtaining permission from the person, forming an image, and attending to the name and the place. In the case of Jikiden Reiki, however, a ritual element and the date of birth are required, whereas SPT needs only the name and the place.
As for the difference between a regular session and a distance session in SPT: in a regular session you scan, looking for the Entry Point and the primary blockage, while a distance session focuses on the level of energy and so involves no scanning.
The steps are set out one by one, but doing it matters more than hearing it explained in words.
So we carried out the work with Bob’s guidance, holding an image of ourselves. It brought on a state close to meditation, and I thought this might be easier than meditating. When I get back to the studio in Ebisu, I want to use it for self-care.
Before the pandemic, the shorter session was the more common of the two. Having gone through lockdown in the United States as well, Bob has newly begun offering regular sessions through SPT, and it seems to be working. Hiro says it is effective and to try it, so I intend to offer it to those who need it.
The afternoon exchange session took up emotion. It was the fifth exchange session. It had the strong feeling of a final stage in bringing the body into order, and I sensed the last day approaching.
Tomorrow the participants and I are due to receive an awareness session from Donna. SPT, it is said, came out of Donna entering a meditative state and putting various questions about the body. To think that I would receive on the final day an awareness session I had wanted to experience since Module 1 was a happy prospect.
At the end of the fifth day, together with Hiro and the participants, we drew up the questions to put to Donna. I want to look forward to the last day.
Note, August 2026
This piece sets out the procedures for working at a distance in some detail. Because it covers both SPT and Jikiden Reiki, it became a comparison only I could have written at the time.
Two forms of distance work, set side by side
Distance work in SPT comes in two forms: a fifteen-minute short session and a one-hour online session. Jikiden Reiki has distance work as well (see “How It Came Down to Us” and “Jikiden Reiki and Kotodama“).
What they share is obtaining permission from the person, forming an image, the name, and the place. What differs is that Jikiden Reiki requires a ritual element and the date of birth, while SPT needs only the name and the place.
There is a further difference within SPT itself, between regular and distance work. In a regular session you scan, looking for the Entry Point and the primary blockage. At a distance you focus on the level of energy, and there is no scanning.
I learned both of these in the same year, 2015 — Jikiden Reiki in July, SPT from October. Both use the hands, barely touch the body, and can be done at a distance. And still the procedures differ.
Energy work tends to be spoken of as one thing. In practice, each system has settled on what it requires and what it does not. Whether a date of birth is needed is a difference in what the system relies on.
The pandemic changed the shape of it
This piece also records a moment when the practice itself shifted.
The shorter session had been the more common one. Then, after lockdown in the United States, Bob began offering regular sessions at a distance, and it was working. The teaching side was changing the form of what it offered to fit the circumstances.
Module 3 itself was doing the same thing. The two founders could not travel to Japan, so Kitahama in Osaka was linked to Santa Fe online. It was the first time the two of them had taught that way.
In its content and in its setting alike, distance turned out to be the subject of those six days.
Emotion handled without entering its content
The subject of the day was emotion.
SPT’s definition is clear. A healthy state means being able to move smoothly from one emotion to another without effort. Being caught in sadness or anger indicates a block; being able to move means the state is healthy.
And whether an emotion is good or bad has nothing to do with it. You can work with it without understanding its content.
The direction differs from what I had learned in the basic Rolfing training. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing follows the response that remains in the body; Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory works with how the autonomic nervous system answers safety and threat. I drew the same contrast in the record of the third day, but on the day given to emotion it becomes plainer still. Nothing is asked about what happened. Only whether movement is possible.
A view characteristic of a method that came out of meditation, I wrote at the time. Looking at each emotion from a wider view without attaching to it: that shape has become the method itself.
The same thing happens on the practitioner’s side
The piece goes one step further from there.
When the practitioner can move smoothly between emotions, working with a client’s emotions becomes easier. And I record my own experience: since taking up SPT, I feel less affected by a client’s emotions.
Ten years later, in the Advanced Training, I would be handed the phrase Kind Indifference — the practitioner standing at a position that is neither over-involved nor indifferent. In the note on the third day I wrote that being pulled by the symptom appears on both the client’s side and the practitioner’s. Here the same structure appears around emotion.
The healthy state asked of the client turns out to be the state asked of the practitioner. At the time, I wrote it as a benefit of the technique.