Morita Psychotherapy

[Guest guest]

Hi all

I stumbled across a new form of psychotherapy a few days ago. It's a

type of psycotherapy based on Zen and Shinshu Buddhism called 'Morita

Psycotherapy'. It was developed and still practiced in Japan. It

sounds like something that could be very useful in reforming my core

beliefs and behaviours, traumas, memories, etc ie `personality'. Help

me rid myself of nada related trauma.

The introduction to Morita Therapy from a website:

Morita Psychotherapy is about outgrowing your problems. Let us be

clear at the outset that I cannot make your problems go away. No one

can. Life brings to all of us problems as well as successes, despair

as well as joy. The Apostle wrote that he had learned to adapt

himself to every type of circumstance, even being in jail. And the

Buddha pointed out the inevitability of loss, sickness, ageing, and

death in human existence. Life cannot be an uninterrupted high. So if

there are bound to be occassional lows it seems sensible to have a

strategy for taking them in stride.

The same goes for shyness or chronic pain or tension or lethargy or

any disability. If life has brought you such a problem (or even if

you have created that problem yourself) you need to learn how to take

charge of it so you can make the very best of what life allows.

Anyone who promises more arouses my doubts about their ability to

deliver.

The ideas behind this book have been around for hundreds of years.

They are basically Buddhist, but don't let that fact mislead you.

They are no more religious than the concepts of psychoanalysis or the

power of positive thinking or the principles of the American

Constitution. They are simply the summed up experiences of people who

suffered themselves and treated a lot of other suffering people over

the years. They make good common sense. Some eighty years ago a

Japanese psychiatrist called Morita pulled together some of these

ideas to turn his life and the lives of many of his patients into

demonstrations of the constructive possibilities that lie within us

all. His methods are still practiced in Japan today. I have

translated Morita's thoughts into terms understandable to Westerners

and have added a notion of my own here and there, but the essence

remains unchanged. The principles are as applicable to you and me as

they were to the Japanese of Morita's day and today. We are, after

all, humans. And human suffering is human suffering wherever it is

encountered.

Has anyone encountered Morita Psychotherapy before? Have you tried

it? Does it work? Has it been useful for you? Would you recommend me

to try it? I only discovered it recently and I want to find out

whether it is worth looking into.

If you have never heard of Morita Psychotherapy before I have been

posting about it here:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HealingPDs/message/76

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HealingPDs/message/79

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HealingPDs/message/86

Thanks for your help

Monte