Dohsa-Hou - a Japanese Psychorehabilitative Program: It's Impact on Body Consciousness

Dohsa-hou & body consciousness

British Educational Research Association, Annual Conference (BERA)

11-14 September 1997, York University, U. K.

Dohsa-hou

A Japanese Psycho-rehabilitative program:

Its Impact on Body Consciousness

Asghar Dadkhah*

Kyushu University, Japan

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*Address all correspondence to: Asghar Dadkhah, Department of Clinical Psychology,

Faculty of Education, Kyushu University, 6-19-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-81, Japan

E-mail: <>

Abstract

In this study "body" is considered to be the actual state of a person's existence. Body effects the "self" through body movement. Clients' consciousness and feeling about their body has an effect on their postural appearance and body movement. Some of them have under-developed knowledge about their body consciousness. By applying dohsa-hou training (a psychotherapy technique) they may be helped to improve knowledge of their body consciousness, which will, in turn, cause changes in body posture and movement. In this study we investigated the effect of dohsa-hou on changing body consciousness, postural movement, and sports performances of disabled sportsmen. The results indicated that this training is a useful method for helping disabled sportsmen to improve their body-consciousness, gain control over both their own bodies and minds, and, in addition, that it may be useful in making training programs for them.

body-consciousness, dohsa-hou, performance development, body posture

The tendency of a person to direct attention inward or outward is a component of self-consciousness. ‘Self-consciousness is the experience of self-focused attention, associated with negative cognitions and emotions regarding one's self or the evaluation of the self by others’ (Buss, 1980, 1985). Individuals differ videly in attending to their private and public aspects of their body consciousness. These two dispositions, ‘private and public self-consciousness’, are measured by the self-consciousness inventory (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975).

A general distinction is made between private aspects of body from the public aspects. ‘Private body-consciousness identifies attention that is focused on the internal aspects of one's body but public body-consciousness refers to attention being focused on external aspects’ (Miller, Murphy, & Buss, 1981). The satisfaction a person has with his/her body will depend upon the relative importance the person places on each of these aspects of his body-consciousness (Kelson, Cooke, & Lansky, 1990).

The present experiment aims at examining such consciousness in neurogically handicapped children with changes effected by a Japanese psychorehabilitative program, Dohsa-hou.

Dohsa-hou is a Japanese psychological rehabilitation method which focuses on the improvement of the motor difficulties of cerebral palsied children, has been studied by Naruse (1967). Dohsa means “the process of the subject's own (owner's) self striving to realize a body movement that is intended by himself. It is a psychic activity, which is a goal-directed striving, to make a realized pattern of body movements coincide with the intended pattern of motion”(Naruse, 1973). It is the subject's self-controlling activity of his own body movement which is schematized as a process of "intention-striving-body movement" . In the process of the client's goal-directed striving, the trainer is able to activate the client's mind and facilitate the activity of his self through his experiencing of goal directed Dohsa (Naruse, 1985, 1992). Ono (1983) and Konno (1978) applied it to autistic and hyperactive children. It improved their posture, movement, and affective life. Kamohara (1980) and Tsuru (1982, 1985) applied Dohsa-hou to schizophrenic patients and found the quality and the consistency of their walking improved.

In this research, by applying Dohsa training to disabled children, the present author investigated the change in body-consciousness as rated by their mothers following a structured interview with the children.

Method

Subjects Seven male children (age range = 8 - 14 yrs., M 10.6 yr., SD 2.43 yr.) belonging to special elementary school (M education = grade 3.3 ) with a dignosis of cerebral palsy (severity of handicap = moderate) were studied. These children also had moderate level of mental retardation as rated by a routine examination . Their common physical problems were those of standing balance, "incomplete" walking and poor coordination of hands and legs during walking and running.

Measurement Body Consciousness Questionnaire, developed by Miller, Murphy, and Buss (1981), was used following an adaptation in Persian version. Since the present research was not intended to measure body competence, items belonging to this factor in the original questionnaire were omitted. For the purpose of adaptation, the questionnaire was translated in Persian language and back-translated into English. The correlation between original English and Persian versions was (Pearson’s r) .89. The factor analysis done on the items yielded two orthogonal factors, as in the original questionnaire, private and public body consciousness. On two items (2, 10), the cultural differences were observed; however for the sake of the present experiment, such issue was avoided and discussed elsewhere in terms of cross-cultural validity of the questionnaire.

The adapted version of the quesionnaire had 11 items altogether (Private = 5 items, Public = 6 items, as in the original) with response alternatives ranging from 1 (extremely uncharacteristic) to 5 (extremely characteristic).

Procedure The Persian version of the Body Consciousness Questionnaire was administered to the cerebral palsied children (for the judgment to be recorded by their mothers) in a pre-post design, intervened by the Dohsa-hou training. The training procedure was followed after the manual of Dohsa-hou (Naruse, 1967,1985). The focus was on the desire: (1) to move or relax the subjects' body voluntarily, (2) to increase the awareness of moving or relaxing by themselves, and (3) to help them to convert the extension / flexion pattern of their postural deviation to a correct pattern. The principals of the training tasks were relaxation of body (especially the rigid parts), gait training, standing on the knees training, and walking training - which were vertical postures in a gravitational environment.

In the special school, with cooperation of school authorities, a suitable room was chosen. The procedure was carried out five times a week, each time three hour, and in total it took one month (each case had 8 sessions training).

Results

Data (see Table 1) were analysed with a 2 (Condition: pre-post) x 2 (Consciouness: private, public) mixed factorial design. The main effect of Condition was significant, F = 14.17, df 1,12, p<.003. The body consciouness score was significantly higher in the post-condition (M = 3.0) as compared to the pre-condition (M = 2.23) suggesting an improvement following training, see Fig.1. The main effect of Consciouness was also significant, F = 6.73, df 10, 120, p<.001. The score on private body consciousness was significantly higher (M = 2.78) than public body consciousness (M = 2.45 ), see Fig.1. The interaction of Condition x Consciousness was nonsignificant.

An item-wise analysis was done for the main effect of Condition. In the post-condition, three items of private body consciousness yielded significant difference: Item 1 (t = 3.24, p<.05), Item 2 (t = 3.3, p<.05), Item 5 (t = 6.97, p<.001) while two items of public body consciouness yielded signficant difference: Item 9 (t = 3.29, p<.05), Item 11 (t = 2.83, p<.05).

Discussion

Findings of the present study suggest that Dohsa-hou, the Japanese psycho-rehabilitative training method, has a positive impact on the body consciouness of the cerebral palsy children. The index of consciousness was significantly higher following one month ( 8 sessions, 56 hours altogether) training program. Private body consciousness was found to be significantly higher in either pre or post-training conditions. It suggests that children with cerebral palsy are more conscious about their private as compared to public aspects of body consciousness.

The interaction of Condition x Consciousness was found to be nonsignificant. This finding suggests that the Dohsa training did not alter their direction of consciouness, internal (private) or external (public), although the degree of consciousness was increased significantly. In the process of Dohsa-hou, it is the subject’s consciousness which produces the desired change in the resultant motor activity (Naruse, 1985, 1992). The increased level of consciousness, as observed in the present study, is therefore not unlikely. However it would be premature to draw a definite conclusion in this direction since few studies are conducted in the area. Further the kind of diabilities, the palsied children had in this study, might have certain idiosyncratic effect on the observed change.

References

Buss, A. H. (1980). Self-consciousness and social anxiety, San Francisco: Freeman.

Buss, A. H. (1985). Self consciousness and appearance. The Psychology of Cosmetic Treatments. New York: Praeger Scientific.

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527.

Fisher, S. (1968). Development and structure of the body image (Vols. 1&2). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kamohara, K. (1980). For application of psychological rehabilitation on schizophrenics. The Journal of Rehabilitation Psychology, 8, 22-27.

Kelson, T.R., Cooke, A.K., & Lansky, L.M. (1990). Body image and body beautification among students. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 71, 281-289.

Konno, Y. (1978). Motor control method by lifting up arm for action change on a hyperactive child. Bulletin of Clinical & Consulting Psychology, 24, 187-195.

Miller, L. C., Murphy, R., & Buss, A. H. (1981). Consciousness of body: private and public. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 397-406.

Naruse, G. (1967). Psychological rehabilitation of cerebral palsy-I: On relaxation behavior. Japanese Journal of Educational Social Psychology, 8, 47-77.

Naruse, G. (1973). Psychological rehabilitation. Tokyo: Seisin Shobo.

Naruse, G. (1985). Theoretical approach to Dohsa-training. Tokyo: Seishin shobo.

Naruse, G. (1992). Recent development of Dohsa-hou in Japan. The Journal of Rehabilitation Psychology, 19, 7-11.

Ono, M. (1983). Analysis of change on a hyperactive child through the motor action exercise. Paper presented at the Association of Japanese Clinical Psychology, Tokyo: Seishin Shobo.

Tsuru, M. (1982). Improvement of motor action and changes of social action on schizophrenic patients. In G. Naruse (Ed.), Evolution of psychological rehabilitation; Fukuoka: The Institute of Psychological Rehabilitation.

Tsuru, M. (1985). Dohsa method for schizophrenia, In The Association of Japanese Clinical Psychology. Case Study of Clinical Psychology, 3, Tokyo: Seishin shobo.

Table 1Mean (SD) body consciousness score in two conditions

Condition Pre-testPost-test

1