Yuko Hanakawa, PhD
I often say that AEDP raised me. I met Dr. Diana Fosha as a doctoral student at Adelphi University, and from that first encounter, I was all in — drawn into the transformative power of this work and never quite let go. Over the past two decades, my focus has deepened around body-mind connection, positive emotions, and the art of moment-to-moment tracking.
My contributions to the field include a chapter on moment-to-moment tracking in Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0 (2021), a clinical article on therapist-patient gratitude in the Transformance Journal (2011), and most recently, “Wired for Harmony: Cultural Neuroscience and AEDP® with Asian Clients” in Transformance (January 2026). I’ve also published extensively in Japanese, including my book Transforming Your Counseling Skills: A Practical Method to Heal Emotions (2020) and several professional papers and book chapters.
One of the causes closest to my heart is expanding ethnic and racial diversity in AEDP. I was one of the founding co-chairs of the Diversity Scholarship Committee — the forerunner of today’s DBEI Committee — and I went on to found AEDP for JAPAN, which offers certification courses in Japanese to therapists and counselors across Japan. I’ve overseen Japanese translations of key AEDP texts, including Dr. Diana Fosha’s The Transforming Power of Affect (2017), Ronald Frederick’s Living Like You Mean It (2022), and Natasha Prenn and Diana Fosha’s Supervision Essentials for AEDP (2024). The upcoming Japanese edition of AEDP 2.0 is a project I hold with particular tenderness.
I maintain a private practice in New York, where I work with adult individuals — with a special focus on bicultural and East Asian clients, people who move between worlds — cultural, emotional, or both — and who deserve a therapy that meets them there.
Location: Ossining, New York