What is Hakomi?

Hakomi is a method of looking within to find core behaviours that drive your daily life. Core beliefs drive your decisions, core beliefs may be completely unknown to you. Mindfulness is the basis for Hakomi therapy. It is very useful to help you follow the natural inclination of your body, to direct you toward the solutions that you are looking for in your life. The body has a natural intelligence that always seeks to restore harmony and balance in life. Given the opportunity, a supportive environment, the body will naturally lead you to see the things in your life that you need to understand and help you organize and harmonize these issues into your life in a balanced way that leads to a greater sense of freedom.

With that in mind, mindfulness is a great tool, and meditation is the foundation of this work. It does not require that you meditate for hours a day, but rather that you spend a little time each day in a state of mindfulness and to turn your attention inside to see where you are in the moment. Meditation is a helpful tool to assist you in this process. There are several meditations that you can use here or here to help prepare yourself for this work, and I particularly love Insight Timer for their guided meditations.

The following description of Hakomi Therapy comes from the Hakomi Institute.

Hakomi helps people change “core material.” Core material is composed of memories, images, beliefs, neural patterns and deeply held emotional dispositions. It shapes the styles, habits, behaviors, perceptions and attitudes that define us as individuals. Typically, it exerts its influence unconsciously, by organizing our responses to the major themes of life: safety, belonging, support, power, freedom, control, responsibility, love, appreciation, sexuality, spirituality, etc. Some of this material supports our being who we wish to be, while some of it, learned in response to acute and chronic stress, continues to limit us. Hakomi allows the client to distinguish between the two, and to willingly change material that restricts his or her wholeness.

Hakomi is an experiential psychotherapy: Present, felt experience is used as an access route to core material; this unconscious material is elicited and surfaces experientially; and changes are integrated into the client’s immediate experience.

Hakomi is a body-centered, somatic psychotherapy: the body serves as a resource that reflects and stores formative memories and the core beliefs they have generated, and also provides significant access routes to core material.

The Hakomi Method follows a general outline: First, we establish an ever-present, attitude of gentle acceptance and care known as loving presence. This maximizes safety, respect and the cooperation of the unconscious. With a good working relationship established, we then help the client focus on and learn how core material shapes his or her experience. To permit this study, we establish and use a distinct state of consciousness called Mindfulness. Mindfulness 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. Its roots derive from Eastern meditation practice. Hakomi has pioneered the use of active, or dynamic mindfulness in psychotherapy: instead of using mindfulness meditation as simply an adjunct to therapy, virtually the entire Hakomi process in conducted in mindfulness. This facilitates Hakomi techniques in accessing unconscious material quite rapidly, but safely.

The heart of the Method works with the client’s present, felt experience, as it is presented spontaneously, or deliberately and gently evoked by having them experiment with habitual tension or movement patterns known as “indicators.” These emotional/cognitive patterns automatically keep deeper experience out of present awareness. The results are processed through different state-specific methods, including:

We work with strong emotions and bound energy, safely releasing them, and finding nourishment in that release
We work with the inner child and other specific self-states, often in the context of vividly re-experienced memories, frequently providing the “missing experience” for the child
We process core beliefs in mindfulness, not as intellectual problem-solving, but as direct dialogue with the unconscious

The basic method, then, is this:

To establish a relationship in which it is safe for the client to become self-aware
To use the Hakomi methodology to evoke experiences that lead to the discovery of organizing core material
To seek healing changes in the core material

All is in support of this primary process. Once discovered in this experiential manner, core material can be examined, processed, and transformed. Transformation begins when awareness is turned mindfully toward felt, present experience; unconscious material unfolds into consciousness; barriers are attended to; and new experiences are integrated that allow for the reorganization of core beliefs. These, in turn, allow for a greater range of mental, physical, and emotional coherence and behavior.

Finally, we help the client to integrate these new beliefs, modes and choices into everyday life. It is here – in the ability to transform new possibilities discovered in the office into on-going actualities of daily living – that real change happens.

Hakomi is effective and appropriate in many therapeutic situations, with individuals, couples, families, and groups. It integrates well with a variety of psychotherapeutic, counseling and healing modalities, and is successfully used by counselors, psychotherapists, social workers, pastoral counselors, expressive therapists, bodyworkers, group therapists, crisis counselors, and many other practitioners. It is effective for both brief and long-term therapy.

If this sounds like something that would be useful for you, then feel free to book an appointment through our clinic 902-701-4455.