Concepts, lectures and practice sessions, with sources.
Explore how Tatsuya Onuma approaches overthinking, bodily experience and our relationships with others. This public reference is for readers, writers and AI-assisted research.
English explanations are based on Japanese material. Original Japanese names and sources are retained. English titles and summaries are translations or editorial summaries, not verbatim statements by Onuma.
10 concepts · 132 recordings
Concepts
10 entries
These summaries distinguish Onuma's own concepts from established terms he uses in his work. Source links lead to Japanese material.
Compensatory Thinking
代償思考
A Japanese term coined by Tatsuya Onuma
In Tatsuya Onuma's explanatory concept, thoughts and narratives may compensate when bodily sensations are not sufficiently registered. He uses this concept to understand recurring thoughts in relation to the body's state.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
Replaying a conversation from earlier in the day at night, unable to stop even though further thinking brings no answer.
When you want to consider your bodily sensations and living conditions alongside the thoughts that keep recurring.
Scope and limits
Recurring thoughts alone do not establish the body's state or the cause of those thoughts.
The existence of related research is distinct from empirical confirmation of the entire mechanism proposed by this concept.
Onuma's proposed concept and clinical interpretation. The English name is a translation of his Japanese term.
A concept used in Tatsuya Onuma's account of the body
A state in which thoughts keep circling through words and interpretations without an exchange with what is felt in the body. Tatsuya Onuma describes it as a loop of thought disconnected from bodily experience.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When continued self-analysis seems to take you further away from what you actually experience.
When you want to consider the relationship between continually assigning meaning to events and what you actually feel.
Scope and limits
The term does not refer to all thinking.
The distinction does not depend simply on whether thoughts are positive or pessimistic. It concerns their relationship with bodily experience.
Onuma's interpretation from the perspective of bodily experience
A state in which the body's functions, including those of its muscles, internal organs, and nerves, can perform to their full capacity. Tatsuya Onuma includes both the functions being exercised and the capacity or potential to exercise them.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When you want to consider how the whole body can function, beyond the appearance of its posture.
When you want to distinguish being at ease from being able to take on necessary physical demands.
Scope and limits
It does not mean only good posture or relaxation. Efficiency in relation to gravity is one aspect.
The concept does not claim that a single sensation or finding can assess the functioning of the whole body.
The existing definition is presented here. Its precise distinction from responsiveness remains under consideration.
In Onuma's framework, gen-kankaku is the body's own inclination toward pleasure or discomfort, prior to conscious or verbal interpretation. Tatsuya Onuma distinguishes somatic rationality, which concerns a state, from gen-kankaku, which concerns the feeling of that state.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When considering what is felt in the body before emotions or thoughts are put into words.
When you want to distinguish a sensation of which you are consciously aware from the feeling of the body itself.
Scope and limits
It is not synonymous with interoception.
It is understood within the possibilities determined by the body's current state. A stronger feeling does not mean that the body is in a better state.
A foundational concept in Onuma's account of the body
Tatsuya Onuma's explanation of kamae in relation to body schema
The way habitual patterns of movement and feeling take shape in the body in a particular situation. In Tatsuya Onuma's usage, kamae includes both defensive ways of holding oneself and ways of being open to people and surroundings.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When you want to consider bodily tension or patterns of movement that recur around a particular person or in a particular situation.
When considering an experience in which you understand something intellectually, yet your bodily response in that situation does not change.
Scope and limits
The term does not refer only to defensive responses.
Observing someone's kamae alone does not establish their personality or what happened in their past.
Kamae is explained here in relation to body schema.
A practice developed by Tatsuya Onuma in which attention is directed to sensations arising through movement, such as gently shaking the body or stroking it with one's own hands. It emphasizes learning about bodily structure, sensing for oneself, and adjusting how one moves.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When you want time to move and feel your body amid a daily life spent sitting still and thinking.
When you want to learn how to use your body through everyday movements and regular practice.
Scope and limits
The practice does not call for enduring pain. Its intensity and rhythm are adjusted to one's condition that day.
This overview is neither a set of instructions for individual movements nor a guarantee of medical effects.
The Texture of Experience and the Feeling of Being Alive
手ざわり・生きた心地
The use of these terms in Tatsuya Onuma's account of the body
Tezawari describes the feeling of the body being in contact with the world. Ikita kokochi describes a definite, felt sense of being alive. Tatsuya Onuma uses these terms to consider the qualities of experience itself.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When you want to consider what an experience feels like in itself, apart from achievement or evaluation.
When everyday life feels lacking in a sense of reality, and you want to put that experience into words.
Scope and limits
The terms do not refer only to pleasant sensations. Unpleasant sensations can also be part of the texture of experience.
Tezawari and ikita kokochi are not defined as two strictly separate kinds of sensation.
The approach to learning about the body taught by Tatsuya Onuma
The capacity to sense the state of one's own body and respond to it on the basis of that feeling. Tatsuya Onuma also describes it as learning to understand a person's concerns, as expressed in words, together with what is happening in their body.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When you want to consider mental fatigue or everyday concerns in relation to your body and life.
When your work involves listening to others and you want to understand their words together with their bodily experience.
Scope and limits
It includes sensing and trying things for yourself, rather than only remembering information.
The body is understood as changing through its relationships with people and environments, rather than as separate from the world around it.
An explanation based on Onuma's definition and approach to supporting others
Tatsuya Onuma's method of listening and understanding bodily experience
A way of listening to an account of a situation through three aspects—situation, thoughts, and body—and exploring bodily responses through four measures: location, shape and size, movement, and texture. Tatsuya Onuma teaches this method in his seminar program.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When listening to someone's concerns and seeking to distinguish what happened from their interpretation of it.
When asking about a vague sense of distress to understand where in the body it is felt and what it feels like.
Scope and limits
The three aspects are not causes and effects that occur in sequence. They are present together in the same situation.
The method does not identify specific tissues, such as muscles or nerves, from words alone. Further checks through touch, movement, or other means are carried out separately.
A method of listening and understanding bodily experience taught in Onuma's seminar program.
Onuma's use of an established scholarly concept in clinical and practical contexts
Patterns that operate without conscious attention in how the body moves and feels. Tatsuya Onuma uses this concept to consider habitual bodily readiness, bodily habits, and ways of engaging with the world.
When it may help · Scope and limits
Experiences it may help you explore
When considering ways of using your body that recur despite conscious efforts to change them.
When you want to consider the difference between understanding something intellectually and being able to do it in a particular situation.
Scope and limits
It is not equated with an image of the body pictured in the mind.
This page explains Onuma's usage. It does not imply that all disciplines or thinkers define the concept in the same way.
English titles and short summaries describe the topics listed in the public Japanese catalog. Friday sessions focus on physical practice; Wednesday sessions include talks and discussion; Onuma’s seminar program explores the body and ways of supporting others. Some sessions took place on other days. Access requirements are shown on the source pages.
Onuma guides a movement practice for noticing the collarbones when the shoulders and arms feel tense. The session moves from the hands toward the shoulders, attending to both the moving area and the collarbones.
Onuma explores what people mean by mental strength: staying calm when it matters, treating others with kindness, and making use of their ability to think.
Through touch and movement, this practice explores the rib cage, collarbones, shoulder blades, and arms. Onuma uses the outline of a running vest and imagined joints as movement cues.
Onuma explores the relationship between the chest and emotion through cultural history, beginning with knowing that we like something but struggling to explain why.
This session presents foot and leg movements for times when standing and swaying feel difficult. It explores rocking, rubbing the feet together, resting their weight, and noticing movement through the back and head.
Onuma considers expressions such as a fluttering chest, being deeply moved, and feeling relieved. He explores the rib cage, heartbeat, and felt posture as ways of thinking about passion and affection.
This practice attends to pressure and movement in the chest and abdomen during breathing. It ends with swinging the arms like a Japanese pellet drum while noticing the center of the torso.
Onuma introduces a practice he uses himself: small, comfortable movements around the rib cage, spine, calves, ankles, and hips, without forcing pressure.
The practice alternates between rubbing the chest with the hands and moving the chest against the hands. It then explores breathing and coordinated movement of the collarbones, shoulder blades, ribs, and arms.
Onuma distinguishes noticing that someone’s voice has become quieter from interpreting that change as sadness. The session explores what the listener adds to what is observed.
This practice proceeds from the palms through the forearms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder blades, and collarbones. It finishes with arm swing and walking.
The session introduces screening approaches used by doctors, physiotherapists, and athletic trainers. Participants practiced asking each other questions to identify where and how bodily discomfort was experienced.
Onuma introduces So Yamaguchi’s Japanese book Kofukukan to wa Shintai Kankaku de Aru. He discusses the book’s view that movement and changes in the body can precede changes in mood and a sense of happiness.
A roughly 30-minute session devoted to the neck. Onuma uses the seven cervical vertebrae as points of attention for small movements, addressing listeners interested in neck heaviness or tension.
The session explores the position and movement of the trapezius. Participants compare trying to persuade someone without listening with repeating what the person has said, attending to the speaker’s experience.
Onuma introduces Kaito Tohata’s Japanese book Counseling to wa Nani ka: Henka Suru to Iu Koto. The discussion moves from responding to a crisis to relationships that support a person’s way of living and autonomy.
A roughly 30-minute Kinetic Body Meditation session, practiced standing or sitting. Onuma guides sideways movement from the pelvis through the lower back, chest, neck, and head, attending to bodily sensation.
Participants located the transversus abdominis through diagrams and touch, and explored drawing in and releasing the abdomen while continuing to breathe. They then discussed different meanings of “I’m okay” and bodily experiences of returning to one’s usual self.
Starting with gaslighting, Onuma asks how we trust ourselves when faced with others’ certainty or public information. He distinguishes bodily responses from meanings assigned through thought, considering both our own perspective and those of others.
Onuma uses the image of air gently touching and expanding the inside of the rib cage. Attention moves from the front of the chest to the areas behind and between the shoulder blades, ending with an imagined warm, soft sphere in the chest.
Money, recognition, qualifications, and viewing figures can be useful. Onuma asks how repeatedly choosing these advantages can make what we give up, such as time, rest, bodily experience, and relationships, harder to notice.
A Kinetic Body Meditation session centered on breathing, with lying, sitting, and standing options. Onuma explores letting go of a fixed idea of how to breathe and attending to what feels comfortable.
Continuing podcast episode 51 on intervention and control, Onuma considers his reservations about the instruction to let everything go. He explores the Four Noble Truths from a bodily perspective.
Onuma guides a Kinetic Body Meditation practice using an imagined axis just in front of the spine. The sequence moves from the neck to the sacrum, then explores an axis extending from the earth’s center through the crown of the head.
Onuma introduces Compensatory Thinking as his concept for thought that compensates for less accessible bodily sensation. The session explores noticing the body’s axis when judgments multiply in a helping relationship.
Onuma discusses persistent thought through his concept of Compensatory Thinking. The session considers bodily sensation and attention to the body’s axis.
This Kinetic Body Meditation session begins with the center of the body, then uses small sideways movements along the spine. It ends by tracing a vertical axis and the surrounding horizontal space with the hands.
Onuma considers feeling tired or bracing oneself around a parent, exploring these experiences through the ribs and the felt difference between an open and a closed chest.
Following the preceding Wednesday discussion of trauma and panic, Onuma presents breathing practices focused on sensations deeper inside the body, moving from simpler to more complex exercises.
Onuma explores kamae, or bodily readiness, that arises without a deliberate choice, considering it as a protective adaptation in his framework. The session approaches this topic through the lower abdomen.
A movement practice from the palms and fingertips toward the collarbones and shoulder blades. Onuma explores how movement at the ends of the limbs is felt through the elbows, shoulders, and ribs.
Onuma explores why repeatedly checking whether a practice is working may make relaxation difficult. He considers the possibility that checking itself involves a stance of pursuing an outcome.
Onuma discusses his observation that checking the effect of self-care can make it harder to let go of tension. He explores where attention is directed during practice.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice focuses on the chest and ribs. Onuma introduces the middle tanden as a traditional way of relating the chest to affection, happiness, and reassurance.
Onuma considers why trying hard to relax may feel like another effort. Through demonstrations, he explores ways of allowing a change in tension without trying to force it.
Onuma presents a Kinetic Body Meditation practice using the lower, middle, and upper tanden. He explores the relationships he draws between these areas and thought, feeling, and will.
Participants tried breathing with a hand on the lower abdomen while noticing weight and softness. They also explored swaying from the hips and finding a position in which the lower back felt settled.
Onuma uses the traditional East Asian concept of dampness to discuss bodily experience during the rainy season. The practice explores swaying, rubbing, and breathing.
Onuma discusses tension that remains even during rest, considering possible relationships with past experience. He then explores the structure and movement of the collarbones.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice uses stretching and swallowing as cues for noticing the center of the body. It then explores swaying along the front of the spine and movement at the collarbones.
Onuma considers anticipatory bracing as a protective response rather than a personal weakness. He explores how he approaches this experience through the body.
A Kinetic Body Meditation session focused on the rib cage and torso. Onuma uses small rubbing movements across the chest and back to attend to areas that may receive little notice in daily life.
Through discussion and practice, Onuma explores why trying to eliminate an unpleasant experience can make it more prominent, and considers ways of relating to it through the body.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice begins with the head and continues through the neck, upper limbs, and collarbones. It ends by bringing the practice into everyday walking.
Participants explored comfort through swaying and rubbing, noticing sensations that arose. The second half involved paired practice, attending to their own bodies while conversing.
Onuma explores his view that difficulty sleeping can itself give rise to excessive thinking. He considers sleep as something that happens rather than something we can directly make happen, and introduces three approaches discussed in the session.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice starts at the crown of the head, moves gradually down the neck, and explores breathing into the chest, sides, and back before attending to each hand.
Responding to requests about the neck, Onuma explores sensations around the neck and throat. The practice proceeds from the sacrum through the thoracic spine toward the center of the neck.
Onuma discusses why tension may return after acupuncture, massage, or stretching, considering recurring posture, breathing, and ways of leaning forward.
Onuma recounts the hours leading up to his decision to let a hitchhiker camp in his garden during Golden Week, using the experience to consider what it means to trust someone.
After working with the spine, Onuma introduces an imagined sphere in the chest and movements across six areas of the rib cage. The practice ends with an image of an arc connecting the sphere with another person.
Onuma answers questions collected through Instagram Stories, including tongue position, irritability, calf cramps, sensuality, and jaw clenching. He approaches them through attention to bodily sensation.
This Kinetic Body Meditation session begins with breathing and the inside of the torso. It continues along the spine from neck to sacrum, then explores shoulder-blade movement initiated from the collarbones.
Starting with a body scan, Onuma explores space around the neck, collarbones, shoulder blades, and ribs. He then uses an imagined sphere at the middle tanden and an arc toward another person as cues for practice.
Following the session on the diaphragm, Onuma discusses differences in upper- and lower-rib movement. He also explores the phenomenological question of where we direct our attention.
Onuma guides a Kinetic Body Meditation practice using imagined spheres within the skull, rib cage, and pelvis. He discusses the upper and middle tanden through his interpretation of anatomy and bodily experience.
Onuma discusses the diaphragm’s dome shape and its right and left crura, combining anatomical description with bodily sensation. He explores how a felt sense of steadiness might become part of one’s Body Schema.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice uses tapping near the forehead and attention to breathing. Onuma explores an axis connecting the crown of the head and sitting bones, allowing the felt image to emerge rather than imposing it.
Onuma discusses what may be obscured by the phrase “regulating the autonomic nervous system.” He considers ways of relating to its functions from his bodily perspective.
Using brushing teeth, putting on shoes, and washing dishes as examples, Onuma explores how daily activity relates to Body Schema. He discusses everyday practice as a way of approaching habitual patterns.
This session focuses on the rib cage. Onuma moves attention through layers from skin to the deeper chest, then uses a sphere behind the sternum and an arc toward another person as imagery for the middle tanden.
Beginning with rubbing the hands and scanning the body, this practice brings attention to the sitting bones and pelvic floor. It then explores movement along the spine and the emergence of a felt central axis.
Onuma uses images of the shoulder girdle and a vest to explore the trapezius and shoulder tension. The session introduces bodily imagery for approaching these sensations from within.
Onuma surveys connections drawn between the chest, affection, gratitude, and relationships across Greek philosophy, Chinese medicine, Indian traditions, ancient Egypt, Japanese expressions, and research discussed in the session.
Onuma explores the ribs and spine as a base for arm movement. He considers how anatomical understanding can be related to felt experience when working with the shoulders and arms.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice uses an axis imagined as wide as the space between the sitting bones. Breathing imagery extends from above the body, and the session ends by exploring arm movement in relation to the ribs.
Onuma considers the lower tanden and its relationship with composure through his view of the body. He also discusses where to direct attention within the body.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice begins with rubbing the hands and small movements around the cervical vertebrae. It continues by tracing the spine from the sacrum toward the neck in approximately one-centimeter steps.
A discussion for therapists and other helping professionals. Onuma describes his approach to communication, boundaries, rocking movements in treatment, and attention to his own sensations.
This Kinetic Body Meditation practice begins with stretching and explores the neck in different directions. Onuma then uses an axis imagined just in front of the spine and whole-body breathing imagery.
Onuma revisits the relationship between sleeplessness and excessive thinking through traditional East Asian concepts. The session also introduces a stretching and breathing practice.
After exploring the rib cage, sides, and back through touch, Onuma guides movement of the shoulder blades in relation to the ribs beneath them. The week’s theme is releasing effort around the neck.
Onuma explores the gap between locating a muscle on an anatomical diagram and being able to feel it. The practice uses anticipation, movement, and sensation to explore the iliopsoas in relation to Body Schema.
A Kinetic Body Meditation session using breathing to attend to the torso and explore tension. The Japanese introduction offers lying, sitting, and standing options.
Onuma asks what gets lost when AI discusses the body. He explores language as symbols and as bodily experience, including symbol grounding, qualia, and Japanese sound-symbolic expressions.
Onuma explains why the Somatic Literacy course was organized around forms of practice, considering traditional Japanese approaches to learning and teaching.
The session explores happiness by moving from external circumstances to sound-symbolic language, Gen-kankaku, and interoception. It concludes with questions and answers.
Onuma considers spiritual expressions without immediately dismissing them. Phrases about a feeling in the chest, matching vibrations, or connection with the universe are explored in relation to bodily experience.
Onuma considers persistent thinking through a discussion of interoception and ADHD. The interpretation offered in this session does not establish an ADHD diagnosis or its cause.
Starting with his experience of buying and wearing recovery sandals, Onuma considers how people use tools. He also introduces a tool being developed with a sculptor and demonstrates his approach to the area at the base of the skull.
Onuma shares his experience of receiving therapy from someone else. Rather than speaking as a practitioner, he describes what he noticed as the recipient.
Beginning with his anticipation of the Koshien baseball final, Onuma explores emotion through the body and discusses the James–Lange theory named in the session title.
Onuma discusses why bodily sensation matters in his approach to people’s difficulties. He introduces ideas from Merleau-Ponty as a philosophical starting point for his discussion of somatics.
Onuma explores the difference between understanding that relaxation may help and knowing it through experience. Drawing on Gendlin’s Focusing, the session uses recollection of comfortable sensations as a practice.
Onuma considers common features of counseling, coaching, and conversations with friends or family. He discusses listening in ways that help build relationships and support each person’s autonomy.
Onuma introduces an approach that attends to what happens in a person’s subjective experience, explaining concepts he uses to relate phenomenology and somatics.
Onuma explores how lived experience, epoché, and intentionality can inform communication with clients. He also discusses practical considerations for listening.
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Coverage: the public catalog checked on November 5, 2026. The 36 seminar entries include two separate Q&A recordings. Entries absent from the public catalog and descriptions of individual cases have not been added.
People and organizations
Onuma starts from the view that thoughts and emotions arise from the body. He also considers how the body continues to change through relationships, everyday environments and society.
Tatsuya Onuma
Author and acupuncturist licensed in Japan, based in Sendai. His work includes clinical practice, writing, talks and teaching.
When referring to a concept, include Tatsuya Onuma's name, the source title and its URL. For a direct quotation, check the Japanese original and its context. Do not present these English summaries as Onuma's verbatim words. Label a translated quotation as a translation.
The material includes Onuma's interpretive concepts and observations from practice. Descriptions of a recording identify what it discusses; they do not establish that its claims have been scientifically demonstrated. These concepts are not medical diagnoses and cannot establish the cause of an individual's experience. This page is an educational reference, not individualized medical advice or a promise of treatment results.
This reference does not grant permission to reproduce members-only recordings, teaching materials or works by third parties. Source links do not remove the access conditions or copyright protections of the linked material.
