Introduction
On Sunday, May 16, 2021, at nine in the morning, I received a Rolfing session from Akinori Ito, who runs THE CIRCLE in Kobe — Relief Space, as it was called then.
Since finishing my training in Munich we had traded sessions twice and had been in an IMAC training together, but I had not had a proper session from him since March 2014.
He made time for me this time, so I want to write about it.
How We Met
Let me start there.
When I was working at a pharmaceutical company, I did yoga regularly as a way of getting rid of stress. Practising the postures, the range of my joints and muscles widened gradually, and then hit a ceiling. Looking for more flexibility and more range, I became interested in various kinds of bodywork — Alexander Technique, yin yoga, the Feldenkrais Method.
Then, in 2013, something significant happened.
In early December 2013 the woman I had been seeing and I separated, and I took it badly. My health went, I was off work for a while, laid up in bed. By the middle of December I had recovered. Then, on December 23, through a connection, I went to a friend’s wedding party.
As the saying goes about the old man and his horse — there I met the person who would change the course of my life. Ito, newly certified as a Rolfer, happened to be there.
He was friendly and easy to talk to, though we had never met. His card said Rolfer. I already knew about Rolfing through a book by the Noh performer Noboru Yasuda, so I was curious. I had decided that I would take sessions from the first Rolfer I met, so I booked one there and then.
Ito works in Kobe now; at the time he practised in Machida and in Ebisu. The first two sessions and the remaining eight were all in Ebisu, once a week, a full ten-series. (See How I Found Rolfing — Searching for a Way to Deepen the Postures.)
The impression stayed with me, and following it, I resigned from the pharmaceutical company — notice given May 30, 2014, effective July 12 — and started the training in August 2014. (See Becoming a Certified Rolfer in Europe — The Certification Training of the European Rolfing Association.)
I was certified, opened a practice within walking distance of Shibuya station in June 2015, and here I am.
What Came of It
As it turned out, Ito began renting my treatment room, and after I moved from Shibuya to Ebisu he has continued coming once a month when he is in Tokyo. I owe him a great deal.
Through Ito I was also introduced to Hiroki Sato, a Rolfer in Osaka, and went on to study IMAC and SourcePoint Therapy with him. Both are now central to the sessions I offer, so what came from meeting Ito is beyond measuring.
In January of this year, 2021, I developed atopic dermatitis and have been dealing with it since; it is taking time. He picked up that I was not well, suggested a session, and that is how this one came about.
The Session
We began with standing and sitting — my left and right were out of balance — then supine, checking the range of joints and muscles. What caught his attention were the spleen meridian, the governing vessel and the conception vessel. He worked through a SourcePoint Therapy session, during which I drifted off. It felt wonderful.
The warmth of his hands is what stays with me. Beyond that, the quality of how he holds the space, and the sense of someone staying alongside the client — I was able to let myself be exactly as I was.
His touch waits for the client to change. There was a feeling of two people heading in one direction, organizing a body together.
At the end he placed his hands on my sphenoid and observed what happened. I felt the tension leave me all the way down to my feet, and a single straight line down the middle.
I was still in the middle of getting my health back, but it brought home again how much receiving maintenance matters. I slept solidly for two hours afterward and felt my spine and pelvis settle. It was a session that showed me what is possible as a bodyworker.
Conclusion
Ito, thank you for making the time.
He comes to Ebisu occasionally, but he is based in Kobe. For anyone in the Kansai area who is interested, do look up THE CIRCLE.
And Ito — let us keep building Rolfing together as colleagues. I look forward to it.
Note, September 2026
This article mentions seeing Ito’s business card. It said Rolfer, and I was curious because I already knew of Rolfing through a book by the Noh performer Noboru Yasuda.
In 2026 I wrote a piece about that book of Yasuda’s. It concerns the Japanese view of the body, and one of the stories in it is about a muscle he tore. He did not go to a doctor; he observed his own body without putting a name to it. Once a name is attached, treatment for that name begins, and the body in front of you disappears from view.
So I came back, thirteen years on and for a different reason, to a book by the person who first brought Rolfing to my notice.
There is another line in this article that determined everything after it: that I had decided to take sessions from the first Rolfer I met.
Because that was already decided, I booked on the spot when I saw the card at that wedding party. From there came a ten-series with Ito, leaving my job, going to Germany. Ito introduced me to Hiroki Sato in Osaka, and through him I studied IMAC and SourcePoint Therapy. Those two are now the pillars of my sessions.
I did not choose the first person by some method of choosing. I had the method in place beforehand. Looking back, that is what mattered most.
A word about rooms as well. Ito went on to use my treatment room. The same thing has happened with someone else: a client who had come for a ten-series became an Ito Thermie practitioner, spent a period renting my room, and now has one of her own. From receiving to practising, from someone else’s room to one’s own — several people have gone down that road.
Finally, the session itself. It was SourcePoint Therapy.
I had in fact received it once before, from Ito. What stayed with me was only the sense that something had changed although he had barely touched me, and I had no idea how to put that into words. Being able to put it into words came later, after I began studying in Osaka.
The order in which one receives things and the order in which one understands them are not the same. By the time of this article, the words were there.