Originally, developed by Ron Kurtz in the late 1970’s,
The Hakomi Method has developed in scope, detail and
teachability over the past 28 years. During this time,
many new advances have been integrated by Ron, the Hakomi
Trainers and numerous practitioners. Today, Hakomi is
taught and practiced successfully throughout the world.
Here in the Bay Area, with several professional trainings
and workshops per year, Hakomi has thrived for more than
20 years.
The Method itself combines venerable
operating principles with mindfulness and precise methodology
to create an extraordinarily effective path towards transformation.
The basis of the work is threefold:
Hakomi, an elder in the use of
mindfulness and the body, holds an especially strong
somatic orientation. Evoking focused self-awareness,
the client is supported in studying the ways in
which movement, gesture, voice, tensions, impulses
and so on both reflect psychological material and provide
direct access to core transformation.
At the heart of The Hakomi Method
is a set of time-honored principles which underlie all
aspects of the work. Navigating by these principles,
the practitioner approaches both the client and the process
with a sense of wholeness, respect, and humility. This framework then translates into
concrete clinical skills and thoughtfully designed interventions.
Equally important, holding the client in this perspective,
he or she may then be able to internalize these principles
as an ongoing source of inner guidance.
While each situation and piece of work is of course
unique, the Method offers a clearly described general
pattern of execution. This includes the following elements:
Establish Relationship
Create safety within relationship and within
the client
Elicit Mindfulness
Create Experiments
Reveal the held core material
State specific processing
Transformation of the limiting experience
Integration
Completion of the work
Establish Relationship
Great care is taken to establish an effective working
relationship, marked by safety, curiosity, warmth
and mutual engagement. Attending to the attachment
and relational styles of the client, the practitioner
creates an inviting atmosphere of respect and participation.
Such a bond allows the client to feel confident and
supported in turning inwards, to pursue the transformational
journey.
Create safety within relationship and within
the client
The first task, then, is to build respect and safety.
These essential qualities allow for cooperation with
the unconscious. In this way, both client and therapist
engage a powerful and willing ally in exploring core
material and how it shapes one’s experience. Safety
must be evoked within the relationship with the therapist
as well as evaluated and nurtured within the client.
Elicit Mindfulness
Once a solid working relationship is created, the therapist
establishes and utilizes a distinct state of consciousness
we call Mindfulness. Drawn from many different Buddhist
traditions and meditation practices, Hakomi employs
Mindfulness as a distinct state of mind in which
clients can slow down and observe carefully their
internal experience. Mindfulness in psychotherapy
is characterized by relaxed volition, a gentle and
sustained inward focus of attention, heightened sensitivity,
and the ability to notice and name the contents of
consciousness. The intention is not to detach from
what is noticed, but to let this witnessing function
provide a platform for internal, psychological preference.
The shift in perception provided by Mindfulness is
crucial in many stages of the Hakomi process as we
engage with a client’s innate capacities for self-discovery
and healing. Because the client’s habitual responses
are observed but not engaged, unconscious material
that arises can be studied, and new experiences can
emerge.
Create Experiments
The heart of the Method is the precise study of the
client's current experiences, to discover their origins
in the unconscious. These experiences may be naturally
occurring, or they may be deliberately and gently
evoked by having the client participate in carefully
designed "experiments”. For example, the client
may be invited to notice the effect of standing in
a certain way, or the internal impact of a relational
exchange. Both verbal and non-verbal, such experiments
arise from and are tailored to the theme of the session
and the client’s momentary experience. Hakomi experiments
often involve the experiences of the body, such as
gestures, small movements, changes in breathing,
posture and tension. The experiments always include
mindfulness, and thus provide a careful study of
the impact and meanings of the experience. Pursued
in this felt way, events and their causative core
material can be spotlighted, summoned, evaluated
and transformed.
Reveal the Held Core Material
Core material is comprised of memories, images, beliefs,
neural patterns and deeply held emotional dispositions.
Typically formed during childhood, this material
shapes the styles, habits, behaviors, perceptions
and attitudes, which define us as individuals. Our
responses to the major themes of life - safety, belonging,
support, power, freedom, responsibility, appreciation,
sexuality, spirituality, etc. - are all organized
by core material.
Some of these responses are expansive, pro-active
and creative, while others are more habituated, reactive
and fear-based. The Hakomi Method allows the client
to distinguish between the two, and to change willingly
the patterns that constrict his or her innate wholeness.
State specific processing
Human consciousness is an ongoing river, with various
specific states of consciousness providing distinct
currents to the flow. Hakomi attends deliberately
to recognizing, evoking, stabilizing and emerging
from such states. To do so requires the practitioner
to employ specific methods for different states:
1. We work with strong emotions and
bound up energy, releasing them gently and mindfully,
and helping the client discover the innate vitality
and wisdom within them.
2. We work with state specific memories.
That is, a session may include not just cognitively
recalled memories, but a present reimmersion in the
same state that was experienced while the memory was
being formed. Many such moments include the presence
of the child State of Consciousness. Often, clients
will simultaneously experience both their present day
mindful observer and the younger state of perception
and feeling that was present when psychological injury
took place. Hakomi assists the client in experiencing
and studying these pivotal childhood moments so that
the client feels safe, curious and ultimately resolved
and hopeful in the experience.
3. We also work with traumatic states of
consciousness. In differentiating the traumatic state
and understanding the explicit neurobiological underpinnings
of such activation, the client is guided into modulating
their arousal levels.
Transformation of the limiting experience
The deep, core explorations which Hakomi provides create
a more spacious and invigorated emotional climate
in which clients can begin to experiment with and
choose evolved beliefs and behaviors. At the core,
the Hakomi practitioner works to establish alternative
ways of being for the client, to supplant the limited,
habituated and outdated beliefs and behaviors established
years ago.
This is accomplished by providing the client with
a new experience, one that was missing or impossible
when injury happened. Such new experiences may be complex
or simple, but generally reflect unmet childhood learning
and relational needs: for example, being held, being
listened to, being allowed to explore, feeling protected
or supported, and so on.
Having such a new experience provides a template for
living differently. The encounter with the missing
experience creates a new, embodied perspective that
can shift the perceptual and thus behavioral reference
point for the client. The “old” story is updated, forgiven
or transformed. This new experience is a vital point
in the therapeutic process and provides motivation
for further change.
Integration
This phase of the work integrates newly discovered
truths and options with the client’s everyday life.
The work here is to stabilize and anchor any positive,
powerful new experiences, insights and discoveries.
Eventually, we help the client
to practice the new modes of organizing that they
adopt, and to integrate these modes into their daily
lives. In this phase, Hakomi works somatically to
integrate new insights and to anchor them in the
body. Similarly, the client is assisted in practicing
the new attitudes and behavior, so that they may
continue to use them as the basis for their lives. Living
differently is the only real measure of actual change,
and it is here, in fact — in the ability to transform
the new possibilities discovered in the office into
ongoing actualities in daily living — that real change
happens.
Completion of the work
The completion phase allows clients to emerge from
the intensity of self-focused inner work, and to
orient again towards the outside world. Impasses
and discoveries are reviewed, goals are referenced,
and future explorations are considered. Great care
is taken to be sure the client feels grounded and
ready to leave the nest of the process and to navigate
again through their next encounters.
