The Shanti House Way

The method is based on the right of young people to choose to save their own lives. By choosing life, it helps them find the strength to overcome the past and strengthens them in their faith and power to move forward.
For teens who come to Shanti Homes after being abandoned by their parents, experienced severe violence and being sexually abused, the option that we offer them is something they have not yet encountered.
“… these youth take this choice daily and thus begins to build their inner strength.
With the choice comes responsibility, followed by independence. Over time they deeply understand the meaning of choice and learn that all the things that happen in their lives also depend on them and their wishes. They operate the world rather than the world push them over.”
(From the guidebook for therapists written by Mariuma)

This therapeutic method makes them active in the healing process and is based on choice and self-respect, on optimism and faith, compassion and patience, on self-love, acceptance of the other and devotion.

This method is a way of life that gives teens the tools to be their own healers in their present and future.

“Focus helps us define and give meaning to life, it sharpens concentration and thought, and adds to mental and physical health. This is the basic operating code for a person and it is also the compass.
The essence of life is movement. Liveliness cannot be static, fixed as death. The world revolves and moves in circles around the sun, the rivers flow, the leaves fall from the trees and grow again, the people meet and separate, go back and forth, and what sometimes seems repetitive is actually different, even if it looks similar.
Instead of getting stuck and become terrified in our place, we choose movement and flow, away from the deep pits from which they emerged so bravely”
(From the book “The Shanti House Way” written by Mariuma)

The Shanti House therapeutic method combines individual and group therapy. It gives the child the opportunity to share his difficulties, feelings and thoughts with the therapist, in a comprehending and comfortable space and thus provide him/her with specific tools for dealing with the challenges they face. Moreover, focused questions require him/her to become a partner in his/her therapeutic process.
With the understanding that sharing has power, group workshops are held by Mariuma, where youth can also share their difficulties with their peers, open up, and feel that they are not subject to criticism. Through this process, they also receive tools and reflections into the inner worlds of content that may exist within them (through their friends).

The principles of this structured therapeutic method, in which they learn how to listen deeply and non-judgmentally to themselves and find the ways and forces that will empower them, written by Mariuma in a book The Shanti House Way, published in 2015 together with a guidebook for therapists.