A life your inochi rejoices in, centered on the values that are yours alone

BELIEF

The joy of inochi

Inochi — a Japanese word that holds four meanings at once: the force that lives you, the span you are given, the heart of a thing, and what fate has arranged. English has no single word for it.

SPEAKING

What I speak about

• The Life Mandala® framework — seeing life as a structure you can design

  General audiences, professionals, local government

  A life does not change through willpower or personality. Seen as a structure, it can be designed. Work, family, money, health — domains that look unrelated — are laid out on a single map, until it becomes clear where one move sets the whole thing in motion.

• Women, work, and the shape of a life

  Companies, local government, associations

  Career and the stages of a life are not a trade where one has to be surrendered. Views of marriage and of life have changed, and so has the world around them. I work from respect for each person's own choices, toward the career and the life they actually want.

• Seeing the world, living in Japan

  General audiences, schools, associations

  A language exchange in Canada as a student, then work for American and Emirati companies. Working across cultures, and with organizations abroad, showed me both what is distinctly strong in the Japanese way of working and what is distinctly Japanese about it. Even a life lived entirely in Japan is shaped by the world now.

• Knowing your own values — how to choose a path

  General audiences, high school and university students

  Deciding a career by asking "what should I become" leads to a dead end. What kind of person am I, in terms of what I hold dear? Once that has words, the way you choose changes. Includes a workshop for making values visible.

• Educating the next generation of leaders

  Schools and educational institutions

  Japan faces a shrinking, aging population, while technology and internationalization accelerate. How do we cultivate a view of the world from the regions — and people who can frame their own questions in an age with no set answers?

Available online or in person, in Japanese or English.

PROFILE

Maki Kitahara

Maki Kitahara is an educational consultant and coach, and the founder of LIFE MANDALA, a school of self-mastery education. Drawing on her own experience of coming through a period of poor mental health, she developed the Life Mandala® self-coaching framework, bringing together Indian yogic meditation, the Japanese spiritual tradition in which Shinto and Buddhism are interwoven, and contemporary cognitive science. Her work reaches beyond personal development into high schools, companies and public institutions. After a language exchange in Canada as a student she worked for American and Emirati companies, went on to run companies in both Japan and Dubai, and has worked across more than 21 countries and regions. In recognition of her community work she received the Grand Prix of Hope Journey International in South Africa — the first Asian recipient — later serving as a judge and providing contestants with a three-month life coaching program. She was the first Japanese speaker at the Forbes Middle East Women's Summit in 2024, and holds the Higashikuni-no-miya Memorial Prize and Cultural Award.