Naoko Tomita shares how she helps lead a Zen school that aims to ensure psychological safety and assists people in reconnecting with their inner child, helping them realize what gives them the same sense of excitement they experienced as children.
A school to develop mental abilities
Nick: You also helped out Miki-san with his Zen school, which we talked about on the previous episode. So do you want to touch on the work you do with Miki-san?
Naoko: Zen school, is a school to develop mental abilities, it's like a six-month course. You try to discover one's own worldview, finding what you really want to do. Or maybe you can find ikigai there.
I mean, if you think you can make that as a business. Of course, you can create your own product or own business, but it's not that you have to do that. You just stick with your waku waku. Waku waku is a word, it's an onomatopoeia: bouncing of your heart, or the excitement thing.
So you just have to switch your mind, that you can stick with waku waku, always live with waku waku, and that will lead you to some new products, sometimes ikigai, sometimes it's something like that.
So the Zen school is done by the Zen meditation and the dialogue. And we do thorough self disclosure, ensures psychological safety in the team, and do meditation work to remember what your waku waku were when you’re 10 years old.
Nick: You’re sort of connecting to your inner child?
Naoko: Yes, and pick up the real two things that you want to do under the future. So I really had fun, and I was a graduate of that in 2019, and became a master after that. So I lead the Zen school right now.