Barbara Joshin O'Hara

Joshin has practiced at The Village Zendo, with her life-partner Roshi Enkyo O'Hara for 20 years. A native of Ireland, she took jukai with Daido Loori with whom she studied for 10 years, 3 of them in residential training at Zen Mountain Monastery. She received Transmission in the White Plum lineage from Enkyo in 2006. Joshin is a pyschotherapist in private practice with a background in psychoanalysis, Diamond Heart work and more recently attachment-based, relational psychotherapy. She wonders to what extent the outward paraphernalia of religious commitment i.e. shaved head, special robes, Japanese names and other insignia of spiritual status might serve to heal issues of self-worth, affording a belated recognition to those of us who might have been denied it in our formative years.