Paper short abstract:

Previous research on the Japanese healing technique known as Naikan has almost exclusively focused on cognitive aspects of its core practice of structured introspection. This paper will discuss some other aspects, such as the bodily impact of the highly ritualised Naikan retreat.

Paper long abstract:

Despite its Cartesian grounds, Western medicine seems to implicitly acknowledge a body-mind unity through its notion of psychosomatic disease, where bodily disorders are understood as being caused by, or an expression of, a distress of the mind. The opposite causation, where bodily interventions (ranging from neuro-surgery to medication) are used to modify the mind, is also widely acknowledged. The efficacy of such procedures has also been a convenient way to sidestep the problematic mind-body dualism in favour of a more or less subtle reductionism. This paper explores another way of transforming the embodied mind. Naikan is a therapy or healing technique based on a Japanese form of Buddhist asceticism, which in the last thirty years has made into the West, where it holds a place on the margins of the so-called "awareness movement". Naikan could be seen as a reversal of many popular notions regarding psychotherapy as it deals with the client's current difficulties through an investigation of her (unacknowledged) debt of gratitude and wrongdoings toward others, rather than the harm caused the self by others. In Naikan "therapy" the client is instructed to investigate her history and relations to significant others in the light of the following questions: "What did I receive?", "What did I return?", and "What harm did I cause?" Such introspection often results in strong feelings of guilt and self-reproach as well as gratitude, and a cathartic state of deep repentance (J. zange), resulting in positive emotional and behavioral changes. Most research on Naikan has focused on the cognitive impact of such questioning. This paper will discuss the bodily impact and sensory perceptions which seems to play an important role in the transformative process through an analysis of the highly ritualized form of the Naikan retreat, where prolonged isolation, immobility and a meditation like inward focus play an important role.