On June 12th, MOA Overseas Forum “Towards advancing Creation of Healthy Communities worldwide” was held at MOA Healthy Life Network Gathering in Hakone. At the forum, Executive Director of the Sunrise Foundation Dr. Wallace Fukunaga from Hawaii and City Councilman of Sao Paulo Dr. Gilberto Natalini from Brazil participated and reported the process towards creating healthy communities in each area utilizing Okada Wellness Program as an Integrative Medicine practice.
After the forum, Dr. Natalini presented the commendation to MOA International President Mori representing the Sao Paulo City Council and the City of Sao Paulo.
Dr. Wallace Fukunaga, after graduating from Harvard University, he studied at the Princeton Theologocal Seminary and Pacific School of Religion and founded The Sunrise Foundation that seeks to empower and enable people to “rise up” to a new reality with wellness of the body, mind, spirit and community.
The vision of the foundation is, it places a strong emphasis on the spiritual, acknowledging that healing comes largely from a spiritual presence that is within each person and the universe. Also healing and wellness are best achieved when the community is healthy.
The main programs of the foundation include public forums, workshops, book studies and the annual “Journeys to Wellness” event. This year’s event on October 22nd 2016, will feature a panel on “Alternative Paths to Wellness that Work !” with the panelists dealing with native Hawaiian healing, electro-dermal screening and treatment, energy healing, and MOA’s Purifying Therapy, art therapy, nutrition and massage therapy. The latter will be offered by Norman Oshiro, executive director of MOA Hawaii.
Dr. Fukunaga mentioned about the MOA Wellness Program as “It reminds me of the Christian sacrament of baptism, in which the Holy Spirit uses water to cleanse, heal and empower humankind. I’m grateful for having discovered that Purifying Therapy likewise cleanses, heals and empowers with a universal energy given all of us and is everywhere. Therefore, I heartily recommended MOA to family members, friends, colleagues and neighbors.”
Looking ahead, three challenges face MOA and the Sunrise Foundation.
- Respond more creatively to the “elder boom” in America
We need creative strategies for enabling our elderly to live healthy, active and independent lives. One good example of Japanese culture is that they believe in the importance of learning from elders.
- Appeal to the younger generation
- Embolden our response to society
Dr. Gilberto Natalini studied at the prestigious Paulista University Medical School located in Sao Paulo. He is a licensed medical doctor specializing in digestive surgery and is currently serving as a City Council member of Sao Paulo. He met with Holy Pope in May to present the Honorable Citizen of Sao Paulo.
Dr. Natalini strongly sympathized when he learned about what MOA is working on to reach their goal of Creation of Healthy Communities based on Integrative Medicine and public assistance. He is advancing forward with our activities of health promotion and Creation of Healthy Communities.
(Below are his comments from the forum)
However, the city’s medical expenses, of about 4 billion dollars annually, are mainly used for advanced medical equipment and other expensive medicines and not so much for disease prevention or health promotion. For that reason, even though illnesses caused by daily lifestyles such as high blood pressure, diabetes, psychological stress and illness caused by environmental problems like tuberculosis are increasing, there’s not enough methods to prevent these illnesses. Other cancer such as malignant tumor is also increasing. I believe that the main cause of these illnesses come from pesticide.
I realized that we need to improve children’s diet, so I came up with an idea to provide organic foods in school lunches to 1.1 million children in Sao Paulo.
On the other hand, I’m also a member of the Volunteer Doctor Group. I have been conducting health consultation at the Catholic Church in my hometown of Cangaiba every Saturday for 40 years, and I have examined about 160,000 citizens.
Similar to modern medicine, this health consultation also has the idea of Integrative Medicine and uses herbs and alternative medicine such as homeopathy and accupuncture.
The health assessment at the Catholic Church, about 120 people come and I examine about 50 of them. Then I introduce them to Purifying Therapy as one of the Integrative Medicines.
I think Sao Paulo citizens are starting to understand Integrative Medicine through activities with MOA, such as health activities and enlightenment movement using media.
In Japan, I heard that the Liberal Democratic Party compiled a written report on Integrative Medicine. So we are thinking of providing more opportunities to conduct study sessions to learn about these materials and discuss the way to advance Integrative Medicine in Brazil.
In the City Council Hall, we prepared a practice course for nurses or those in nursing related jobs and other public citizens to teach about nursing methods for senior citizens. The course is still ongoing and we had about 2500 participants who attended the practice course up to this point.
I’m planning to recruit citizens and specialists who are interested in the Integrative Medicine to the Okada Health and Wellness Program monitor and hire instructors from MOA to conduct the MOA certification course. I believe that the critical conditions in Sao Paulo such as health problems, educational problems and environmental problems will be saved if we are all certified and work together as a team and wish for individual happiness and not for our own benefit.