English Site of Yuri Morita Empowerment Center
The Empowerment Center offers training/seminars to learn how to utilize somatic and empowerment approaches in their professional works and daily lives.
Profile of Yuri Morita
Yuri Morita is the author of over 31 books and the Director of the Empowerment Center located in Osaka, JAPAN.
The Center offers professional training & consultations to the governments, corporations and non profit orgs, workers/volunteers on the topics of diversity, human rights, communication, harassment prevention, and strategies to prevent violence against children and women、She is recognized as one of the pioneers of participatory styles of training/consultation on diversity and human rights.
She has been a strong advocate of nonviolence and empowerment as a professional trainer, a lobbyist to the Diet and an author. She has published over 31 books, two of them received national awards, Asahi Journal Nonfiction Grand Award on “Sacrd Soul:the life of Dennis Banks, the Leader of American Indian movement” in 1988, and Sankei Children Cultural Award on “Anata ga mamoru anatano kokoro to karada (Protecting your body, mind and soul) “in 1997.
She also has received numerous awards on her leadership. Among them was the 57th National Public Health Award of the year of 2005 for her 25 years of leadership and pioneering work in the field of prevention of violence against women and children.
In 2001, she developed MY TREE Parents Program for parents to recover from their abusive relation to their children. The program has been implemented nationwide in Japan for the last 22 years. With its somatic approch and empowerment methods it has helped 1500 parents recovered from abusive behaiviors. Along with in deapth communication skills it teaches meditation and Kiko(qigong)movement and ask participants to practice them every day.
In 2018 she has developed the Workbooks of MY TREE Junior Program for teens and children to recover from sexual violence. MY TREE Jr Kusunoki(Camphortree) program is for teens with behaiviors of sexual agression. MY TREE Jr Sakura(Cherry) program is for children with victimized trauma of violence. Both programs utilize somatic approch and its dayly meditaion practice is important part of the programs.
Since 2014 she has been leading ALOHA HEALING YOGA & ALOHA KIDS YOGA implementing Yoga classes in the residential treatment centers for children and teens who have trauma of abuse and ADHD and/or ASD. With the evidence of many researches of effectiveness of yoga/meditation on mental and physical health along with her belief from over 30 years of yoga/meditation training she intends to help increasing ability for concentration and emotional ajustment of children and youth who have been exposed to violence and maltreatments. She is the recipient of Youth Development Award of 2016 by American Yoga Alliance, the largest yoga certification organization in the world. Under her leadership over 100 certified leders of ALOHA KIDS YOGA teach the children/teens yoga/meditation in various parts of Japan. The effects of the ALOHA KIDS YOGA has been studied using CBCL(Child Behavior Check List) since 2014 and has been presented at national conferences.
She holds Master degree on Phenomenology of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley California, USA. She is a certified Ericksonian Hypnotherapist. She worked as a trainer for the Child Assault Prevention Training Center of Norther California then for the Dep. of Health of the State of California for 8 years. During 1990~97 she worked as a principal analyst for the University of California Office of vice-President developing and conducting training on diversity and human rights for the staff and faculty of the UC system. She received the distinguish employee awad of UC system.
She has served as a visiting professor for the Graduate School of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan.
API Women, Faith & Action Yuri Morita http://apiwomenfaithaction.blogspot.jp/2009/10/yuri-morita.html
Yuri Morita Author and Human Rights Activist
http://www.internationalcap.org/yuri-morita-author-and-human-rights-activist/
Empowerment training draw interest across Japan Japan Times Korean Report in Hangle
http://empowerment-center.net/moritayuri/森田ゆり・新聞記事など/
| Training Seminar |
The main function of the Empowerment Center is to offer training seminars for developing human resources on violence prevention, diversity,human rights and peace communication. Fifteen to twenty training seminars are being held annually. Each session takes 1 or 2 days. Most sessions are conducted by Yuri Morita.
The topics of the trainings are the following.
Leadership, communication, facilitation skill, participatory training skills
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| Violence, child abuse, domestic violence
For those who work with cases concerning child abuse, DV, sexual harassment, and other violations of human rights,
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Each training usually has 30－40 participants using participatory activities,such as ice breakers, role plays and other group work. The training offers the meththeirods and skills which participants can put in use immediately in workplaces and communities.
The participants come from all over the country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Many of them work in the field of education, social service, health care, medicine, law, sports, business management, governments, university, as well as survivors of violence and abuse. Over 8000 people have attended the trainings of the Empowerment of Center for the last 20 years.
ALOHA KIDS YOGA ALOHA HEALING YOGA
Yoga Training
ALOHA HEALING YOGA and empowerment of body and mind (1day)
Mindfulness and Empathy :Empathy training by chair yoga and meditation (1day)
ALOHA KIDS YOGA leader training course(3days)
Laughter Yoga Leader Training (2days)
MY TREE parents program :
for parents who want to stop abusive behavior to their children
The core cause of child abuse is not poverty, not luck of education but luck of self-respect and emotional un-stability of the care givers.
In the MY TREE Parents Program with its holistic approach of body, mind, and emotion the parents regain self-respect and learn communication skills to guide and discipline their children. Its mindfulness breathing practice helps parents to manage stress and balance the system of body and mind. The small group work with other parents in the similar conditions brings them inspiration and hope.
The program was developed by Yuri Morita in 2001 and has been implemented by the child guidance centers and other government and private organizations in Japan. As of 2015 over 115 groups were formed and 900 parents completed the program.
http://www.9.zaq.jp/empowerment_center/mytree_english.html
Text books for the program
