Welcome to the ToDo Institute's Library of Japanese Psychology and Purposeful Living. Please take your shoes off (Japanese style) and come in and browse through a wide variety of resources designed to help you meet some of the most challenging situations you may encounter.

Our work is primarily grounded in methods of Japanese psychology (particularly Morita and Naikan therapies) and if you have experience with Western psychology you will find these approaches quite different. For many people, the blending of the psychological, the spiritual, and the practical is a refreshing and useful contrast to the traditional methods offered in the West.

Our library is set up so that ToDo Institute members have full access to all our resources, over 100 articles, and non-members have limited access to the underlined articles listed in the right margin. If you'd like to become a member, click on "Become a Member" in the left margin of this page for more information and a list of the benefits. We are a non-profit organization and your membership helps support projects like this library and work with disadvantaged groups like prisoners, cancer patients, people with mental illness, and others.

As you read articles you are also invited to post comments and responses to the articles. At the end of each library article is a simple method for you to post your comments, which are then available to other library visitors.

So enjoy your visit and let us know if we can be of further assistance.

todo@todoinstitute.com

Best wishes,

Gregg Krech
Director, ToDo Institute

by Dr. Henry McCann

In the Huang Di Nei Jing, the core text of Chinese medicine that was written about 2000 years ago, there is a key chapter that describes the functions of the internal organs. In this chapter (Su Wen Chapter 8, Ling Lan Mi Dian Lun) it is said that the heart is the sovereign of the body, discharging the illumination of the spirit when healthy. In this same chapter it goes on to say that when the monarch (i.e., the heart) is in a state of brilliant illumination, all the other organs will be at peace, ensuring health and longevity. Furthermore, when the monarch is in this state of brilliant illumination, everything under heaven will have great prosperity.

The “heart” that is talked about in this chapter however is not the simple pump that propels blood through our arteries and veins. Rather, it is the symbol that describes the very spark of consciousness that defines being human. It is the sum total of our awareness, our emotions, and our affects. Thus, it truly is the sovereign of our life. As someone who practices Chinese medicine, I find that treating this heart in my patients is not so easy. . . .

by Gregg Krech

The end of the year is a wonderful time to reflect back on our lives and see how we've been living. When we reflect on the year we step back and get perspective -- perspective that can inform our behavior and choices in the coming year.

The following suggestions are adapted from Naikan: Gratitude, Grace & the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection (Stone Bridge Press) by Gregg Krech – (p.172-175)

1. Reflect on your mother, father or other people who have supported you during the past year. You may have received things during an earlier time period, but still benefitted from them during the past year.

2. Do Naikan reflection on someone with whom you’ve had difficulty, conflict, or tension during the past year. This is often the type of self-reflection we don’t feel like doing. Maybe that is an indication that it would be useful.

The basic format of Naikan reflection is simple: You look at a specific person for a specific time period. You then consider three questions, writing down your answers in three separate columns on paper:

In general it is useful to spend 45-60 minutes for each period of reflection.

3. Make a list of up to one hundred things you’ve received this past year without providing any compensation or consideration. These could be things you received as gifts, things you stole, or things you used without payment.

by Linda Anderson Krech and Gregg Krech

For many families the start of the school year has a more noticeable impact on day to day life than the start of the calendar year. This is certainly true in our family. As September rolls around, the daily routine of every member of our family, even our dog, changes. This year our youngest child starts middle school, so elementary school is now a part of our family history. We thought we’d share with you eight ideas we’re using to get off to a fresh start for the school year:

1. Sleep: A recent study of 3,120 Rhode Island teenagers found that 85% of the teens were cronically sleep-deprived and accumlated at least a 10-hour sleep deficit during the week. While adolescents need an average of 9 hours a night, 26% said they usually got less than 6.5 hours on school nights. Although it can be challenging to raise bedtime issues with our kids, sometimes that's what we need to do. Children can be in for a rude awakening when their bodies and brains make the adjustment from a lax summer routine to an early rising day. In fact, many kids face a 2-4 hour adjustment -- the equivalent of the jet lag that occurs when one flies from California to the East Coast. They may need our help to figure out a plan that will work. The same applies to wake-up time. Our daughters each have alarm clocks and are responsible for getting up on their own. If they miss the bus we drive them to school and they repay us in time for our inconvenience. As you transition to a new school year, consider giving your kids some added responsibilities. Once they get to college, they have to do it all on their own.

2. Organization: Try to create a good, solid daily routine for yourself, taking care of assorted tasks in the evening -- homework, teacher’s notes, backpacks, clothes, lunch money, etc. If your kids learn to get up with plenty of time to spare, you can minimize the chaotic morning rush. And in terms of the bigger picture, it can help to get a year-at-a-glance calendar so that everyone can get oriented to the bigger picture ahead. (We use Google calendar and find it immensely helpful).

3. Anxiety: Each child will go into the first day of school with a different sense of anticipation. For some, that anticipation is grounded in excitement. For others, . . .

By Linda Anderson Krech

We just returned from a family camping trip. On the way home we were thinking about the highlights of the experience. There was the hike that provided enough challenge for all of us (even our bouncy mountain-goat daughters), and that culminated in a spectacular vista of the Adirondacks below. There was the exquisite kayak trip we took, right from our campsite. The herons that put on a show for us. And the loons that serenaded us each night. We read by the campfire and played the guitar, and we had a long game of Life in the tent one morning, while waiting for the rain to stop.

But after giving it some thought, what stands out most for me was my potion-making time with

Congratulations Colorado! You are the only state with an obesity rate of less than 20%. Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25 percent. The deep South leads the obesity race where, generally, one out of every 3 residents is considered obese. This includes children.
What’s making us so fat? The newest findings, published in the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) noted that in a controlled study conducted by Harvard Public Health experts, the average participant gained a pound a year over 20 years. Common sense advice to eat in moderation (count calories) and exercise more has done little to curb the relentless rise in weight. The new study specifies foods to eat more often as well as those to avoid.

Here are the foods that contribute to the greatest weight gain based on the study. . .

Illusionist David Copperfield has made the Statue of Liberty disappear and walked through the

Great Wall of China. He founded Project Magic, a program using magic as occupational therapy. The U.S. Library of Congress named Copperfield a "Living Legend." In this audio segment, Copperfield talks about his father and his commitment to kindness.

by Peter Smith

In 1999, Peter participated in a course on Naikan reflection with the ToDo Institute. During that time he reflected on a number of his relationships, including his relationship with his mother. He wrote the following essay, describing how this reflection impacted on his relationship with her.

Last summer, due to economic circumstances, I lived with my mother and father. I was very nervous about this as the majority of the time my mother does not want me to live at home and I rarely want to live there as well. Just to put things in context, my mother is an alcoholic, addict, and, as I was growing up, was a rabid feminist who hated men and yet was utterly dependent on them at the same time. I am just as stubborn in many ways. I don’t put up with a lot of nonsense from her and neither does she from me.

In June, I began doing daily Naikan reflection on my relationship with my mother and went year by year, circumstance by circumstance. I was absolutely amazed by the generosity of my mother throughout my life. My former therapy taught me to hate her and blame my problems on her. Yet with Naikan, I saw a very scared woman who constantly gave and gave at her own expense. Who changed a thousand pooply diapers and nursed me through all kinds of illnesses. And in myself, I saw a kid, a teenager, and a man who did nothing but take and complain and inconvenience her.

I sent her a thank you card and an . . .

by Gregg Krech

Ten years ago, my colleague Lenn Murphy was asked to be on a crisis counseling team to assist families in the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster. Lenn had trained at the ToDo Institute and I had worked with him over several years at the Riverside School in Massachusetts. Lenn ultimately published an article about his experience working with children on the 9-11 crisis team. In his article he stated, “For years the prevailing approach to trauma was to ‘talk about the incident until you are healed.’ I believe the most effective intervention is to teach people to learn from trauma experience as you would from any life experience. To constantly go over the incident is counter productive – people need tools to help them get on with their lives.”

In the past ten years we’ve seen a devastating string of disasters including earthquakes, hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis and a European heat wave that killed nearly 40,000 people. Nearly every relief effort includes teams of mental health professionals who provide counseling to survivors and family members. And, according to Psychology Professor Scott Lilienfeld, of Emory University, some of the methods used for crisis counseling are not necessarily helpful. In fact, they can actually be harmful.

According to Lilienfeld, certain methods . . .