Books
From Mindfulness to Heartfulness: Transforming Self and Society with Compassion
Millions have found mindfulness to be a powerful practice for reducing stress, enhancing attention, and instilling tranquility. But it can offer so much more—it can transform you, make you more fully awake, alive, and aware of your connection to all beings. In Japanese, the character that best expresses mindfulness, 念, consists of two parts—the top part, 今, meaning “now,” and the bottom part, 心, meaning “heart.” Using stories from his own life as the son of an Irish father and a Japanese mother, a professor in Japan and America, a psychotherapist, a father, and a husband, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu describes eight “heartfulness” principles that help us realize that the deepest expression of enlightened mind is found in our relation to others.
When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities
The son of an Irish American father and Japanese mother, Murphy-Shigematsu uses his personal journey of identity exploration and discovery of his diverse roots to illuminate the journeys of others. Throughout the book, his reflections are interspersed among portraits of persons of biracial and mixed ethnicity and accounts of their efforts to answer a seemingly simple question: Who am I?
Multicultural Encounters: Case Narratives from a Counseling Practice
This volume uses fascinating therapeutic encounters to help clinicians understand and respond to the needs of their increasingly diverse clientele. Emphasizing the importance of balancing general cultural awareness with a consciousness of openness and curiosity, Murphy-Shigematsu urges clinicians to look beyond their assumptions and stereotypes to learn their clients’ cultures
through eliciting key narratives. Keeping the client and therapist center stage, the author shows the complex ways in which their cultural self-narratives interact.
Synergy, Healing, and Empowerment: Insights from Cultural Diversity
Efforts to encourage social justice and community health consistently run up against a significant barrier: the scarcity of valuable health and education resources. For people who need these resources but lack access to them, the consequences are devastating for both the individual and society as a whole. Guided by the concept of synergy, this groundbreaking collection explores alternatives in the
areas of counseling, education, and community health and development. Synergy refers to the process of two or more things coming together to create a new, greater, and often unexpected whole. When synergy exists, formerly scarce resources can expand and become renewable and
accessible to all.
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Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender, and Identity
Transcultural Japan: At the borderlands of race, gender, and identity provides a critical examination of being other in Japan. Portraying the multiple intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, the book suggests ways in which the transcultural borders of Japan reflect
globalization in this island nation. The authors show the diversity of Japan from the inside, revealing an extraordinarily complex new society in sharp contrast to the persistent stereotypical images held of a regimented, homogeneous Japan.