The Hakomi Method
Hakomi is a gentle yet powerful experiential psychotherapy that uses mindfulness and somatic interventions to support healing and growth. The Hakomi Method stands as a pioneering and holistic approach to psychotherapy, emphasizing mindfulness, the body’s central role in the psychotherapeutic journey, and principles of nonviolence. Ron Kurtz introduced it in the 1970s, ingeniously blending foundational concepts from both Eastern spirituality and Western psychology.
Core Principles of Hakomi:
- Mindfulness: This isn’t just meditation. In Hakomi, mindfulness is actively used as a tool for self-study, allowing individuals to explore how they process and organize their experiences.
- Nonviolence: More than just a principle, it’s an active commitment in Hakomi. The therapist ensures a safe, gentle environment, nurturing the client’s natural healing processes.
- Unity: It stresses the interconnectedness of all things, emphasizing that our personal experiences are influenced by a web of relationships and interactions.
- Organicity: A foundational belief that every individual has an inherent wisdom. Hakomi trusts in each person’s unique path of self-discovery and healing.
- Body-Mind Holism: While traditional therapies may focus predominantly on the mind, Hakomi recognizes the somatic dimension of our experience, that our bodies often hold the keys to our deepest emotions and memories.
The Hakomi Process:
In sessions, mindfulness and bodily awareness serve as the main avenues to unearth and understand unconscious beliefs, patterns, and memories that shape behaviors and responses. It’s a deeply experiential approach. The therapist facilitates a journey where clients actively delve into and study their personal experiences, leading to profound self-awareness and transformation.
Why Consider Hakomi?
- Efficiency: It has a unique ability to access core emotional material swiftly, sometimes faster than traditional talk therapies.
- Depth: The method encourages deep-rooted change rather than superficial shifts.
- Self-Discovery: Hakomi builds a heightened sense of self-awareness, helping individuals understand their patterns and reactions.
- Natural Growth: By emphasizing organic processes, it supports genuine, lasting transformation catered to each individual.
Hakomi teaches therapists to support the following aspects in therapy:
- Follow the flow of the client’s present experience
- Detect and adjust to the client’s unconscious needs
- Use mindfulness to evoke implicit memories and emotions
- Create little experiments, like “Probes” and “Taking over,” to access early formative experiences and resulting beliefs
- Discover and provide “missing experiences” crafted with and for the client
- Support integration of these experiences to promote core level transformation
If you are interested in experiencing a Hakomi session, please book a session through completing the following form below: