Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy
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Hakomi
Mindfulness-Centered
Somatic Psychotherapy
A Comprehensive Guide to
Theory and Practice
Halko Weiss, Greg Johanson, and Lorena Monda
EDITORS
W. W. Norton & Company
New York • London
A NORTON PROFESSIONAL BOOK
To Ronald S. Kurtz
(1934–2011)
Originator of Hakomi therapy
Hakomi (Hah-co-me)
A Hopi Indian word meaning, “How do you stand
in relation to these many realms?”
Contents
Foreword
RICHARD C. SCHWARTZ
Acknowledgments
SECTION I. OVERVIEW
Chapter 1: Introduction
MACI DAYE
A Hakomi Case Illustration: Psychotherapy Beyond Conversation—the Psychodynamic Use of Mindfulness and the Body
ROB FISHER
Chapter 2: Characteristics of Hakomi
HALKO WEISS
Chapter 3: The Essential Method
RON KURTZ
SECTION II. THEORY
Chapter 4: The Central Role of the Body in Hakomi Psychotherapy
MARILYN MORGAN
Chapter 5: Hakomi Principles and a Systems Approach to Psychotherapy
GREG JOHANSON
Chapter 6: Assisted Self-Study: Unfolding the Organization of Experience
T. FLINT SPARKS
Chapter 7: The Role of Core Organizing Beliefs in Hakomi Therapy
ANNE FISCHER
Chapter 8: Hakomi Character Theory
JON EISMAN
SECTION III. METHODOLOGY AND THERAPEUTIC STRATEGY
Chapter 9: The Therapeutic Relationship in Hakomi Therapy
JULIE MURPHY
Chapter 10: Mindfulness as a Psychotherapeutic Tool
JOHN PERRIN
Chapter 11: The Experimental Attitude in Hakomi Therapy: Curiosity in Action
MACI DAYE
Chapter 12: Following and Leading
CAROL LADAS GASKIN AND DAVID COLE
Chapter 13: Ethics: Right Use of Power
CEDAR BARSTOW
SECTION IV. TECHNIQUE AND INTERVENTION
Chapter 14: The Skills of Tracking and Contact
DONNA MARTIN
Chapter 15: Accessing and Deepening
CAROL LADAS GASKIN, DAVID COLE, AND JON EISMAN
Chapter 16: Experiments in Mindfulness
SHAI LAVIE
Chapter 17: Exploring the Barriers: Hakomi Perspectives on Working
With Resistance and Defense
JACI HULL
Chapter 18: Child States and Therapeutic Regression
MARILYN MORGAN
Chapter 19: Working Through Core Beliefs
MANUELA MISCHKE REEDS
Chapter 20: Transformation
HALKO WEISS
Chapter 21: The Flow of the Process
MAYA SHAW GALE
Chapter 22: Jumping Out of the System
ROB FISHER
Chapter 23: Hakomi Character-Informed Interventions
LORENA MONDA AND JON EISMAN
Chapter 24: Mindfulness and Trauma States
MANUELA MISCHKE REEDS
Chapter 25: Strengths and Limitations of the Hakomi Method:
Indications and Contraindications for Clients With
Significant Clinical Disorders
UTA GÜNTHER
Appendix 1. Glossary of Hakomi Therapy Terms
CEDAR BARSTOW AND GREG JOHANSON
Appendix 2. Praxis: Annotated Case Illustrations
KAREN A. BAIKIE, PHIL DEL PRINCE, AND GREG JOHANSON
Appendix 3: Hakomi in Context: The Large Picture in History and Research
HALKO WEISS AND GREG JOHANSON
References
Contributors
Index
Foreword
Richard C. Schwartz
RON KURTZ LIVED 77 years and spent the second half of his life developing and teaching what he came to call Hakomi. He was a brilliant theorist, integrator, and clinician with whom I collaborated and exchanged ideas for many years. I am so glad that this book follows closely after his death. So many psychotherapies have faded away after the charismatic leader died. This book will help ensure that Hakomi will continue to thrive—continue to touch and heal so many lives—especially because the book is so well referenced with the mainline psychological literature.
Somewhere around 1992, Greg Johanson came up to me during a workshop I was doing on the model of psychotherapy I developed called internal family systems (IFS) and asked excitedly if I’d ever heard of Hakomi. I said, “Isn’t that some kind of sushi dish?” Greg introduced me to Ron and, through Ron, I met much of the Hakomi community. I was blown away. At the time, I was an academic and as such, very intellectual and concerned about appearing professional. Sitting in on Hakomi conferences and training sessions, I found myself surrounded by lovely people of all stripes (psychotherapists, bodyworkers, dance-movement therapists, and psychodramatists, as well as many nontherapists) who looked to me like they were constantly dancing, emoting, hugging, and “probing” each other.
While my science-oriented skeptical parts were on guard, I couldn’t deny the power of the work and the way it both paralleled and complemented the path I was on. Decades before mindfulness became the rage that it is now in psychotherapy, Hakomi therapists were helping clients into a mindful state to observe their inner reactions to various stimuli, and then following the trail of emotion or belief that came up in those experiments to find and release core, often unconscious, beliefs. In addition, they highly valued a quality of therapeutic relationship they called “loving presence” that they practiced so that clients would feel safe and held. Through this process, they were helping clients access what I call the exiled parts of themselves—vulnerable, young, hurt parts that I was trying to get to in a different way. Once getting to an exile, they helped a client remain in that emotional part even when it looked like he or she was experiencing a scary regression or abreaction. Then, through experiencing the loving presence of the therapist or other group members, the part’s beliefs would be released.
This collaborative period greatly enriched both the theory and technique of IFS and, I’d like to think, Ron and other Hakomi therapists were helped to appreciate systemic aspects of the world of inner parts they were exploring and the power of what I call the client’s Self as a primary healer.
As one swims in the currents of psychotherapy’s mainstream, one still rarely hears Hakomi mentioned, despite the fact that it has flourished outside that mainstream, with training courses around the world and a plethora of Hakomi-inspired books and thematic variations. With psychotherapy’s increased appreciation of mindfulness, emotion, the body, the loving presence of the therapist, and trauma, the field has been moving closer to where Hakomi (and IFS) has been for decades. I hope this book will help Ron and the Hakomi community get the credit they deserve. I know that it will provide Hakomi with a needed body of collected wisdom and technique that will ground this remarkable approach for years to come, at the same time that it introduces the work to the larger professional psychotherapeutic community.
Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered
Somatic Psychotherapy
Section I
Overview
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Maci Daye
MINDFULNESS HAS GONE viral. Open any psychotherapy journal or conference brochure and you will likely find something with “mindfulness” in the title. So pervasive is this trend that an issue of
Psychotherapy Networker magazine was dedicated to the “mindfulness explosion.” It’s hard to remember when the term “mindfulness” entered the vernacular of psychotherapy, but in recent years it has spread to every therapeutic modality, many of which now allege to be “mindfulness-based,” simply to establish land rights on this fruitful turf. But, in 1980, when the Hakomi Institute was formed, only Buddhists and forward-thinking physicians training in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress reduction knew the term.
Now, with enough publications on the subject to fill a virtual warehouse, one wonders, “What more can be said?” While many authors cite growing evidence that a regular mindfulness practice can regulate emotions, increase happiness, and inoculate against stress, few describe how mindfulness can promote deep characterological transformation. As pioneers in the use of mindfulness in psychodynamic therapy, Hakomi therapists do just that.
Hakomi is a form of guided self-study that uses mindfulness to access the memory system where our most fundamental, wide-reaching beliefs are implicitly encoded. These beliefs, which lie below the level of conscious choosing, condition our perceptions and responses to all aspects of life. New research suggests that we can reshape our neural hardware and shift these organizers of experience through the function of attention. This book will show you how.
Hakomi began with one man’s vision, found its name in another man’s dream (see Appendix 3) and was refined and expanded upon by a cadre of passionate pilgrims who set forth on a journey that has spanned five continents and three decades. Thousands of practitioners now make their living using Hakomi, as trainers and therapists, so why isn’t our approach better known?
Like many indigenous teachings, Hakomi has been transmitted to clients and practitioners who are drawn to our purported willingness to welcome rather than reject the qualities that make us most human: vulnerability, uncertainty, contradiction, and pain. Our guiding mantra—pause and study, rather than fix—is a balm for road-weary seekers of healing and personal growth, who have attempted to eliminate rather than befriend their troublesome parts.
It sounds counterintuitive, but Carl Rogers once said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” He was echoing Lao-tzu, who some 2,600 years earlier wrote in more poetic terms: “If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given. This is called the subtle perception of the way things are.”
Hakomi integrates the perennial wisdom of Buddhism and Taoism with modern scientific findings on how the brain changes itself through experience rather than reflection. It also balances the aware and compassionate qualities of larger self-states with the realities of the historically conditioned ego. Simply put, our knowledge often outpaces our readiness to put this knowledge into practice, and our self-acceptance can be obscured by feelings of unworthiness.
Hakomi is at once idealistic in its belief that humans have the capacity to be aware of themselves and, therefore, less bound by their automatic reactions; and simultaneously realistic, in that we accept that it takes time and a particular attitude and state of consciousness to do so. This attitude requires going beyond judgment, toward understanding and integration, since the “war on self” is clearly not working. Instead of polarizing against the parts of the self that seem to sabotage our happiness, we may need to befriend all parts, especially the most difficult and intractable.
The first step is to slow down and turn inward in a calm and curious way. Admittedly, step one may be a hurdle for those of us who function at Mach speed or prefer to turn away from or, worse, eliminate the parts of ourselves that give us trouble. What’s more, our species has never been great at relaxing into and embracing discomfort. Our preference for anesthetizing ourselves via distraction, or sidestepping rather than encountering difficult experience, is legendary.
Second, we must suspend attachment to what we think we already know, choosing instead to learn from the pregnant mystery of the not-yet-named aspects of our felt experience. This requires exploring the many realms of our existence instead of granting favor to cognition. For too long, under the sway of our Cartesian heritage, we have attempted to know ourselves by splitting wholes into parts, focusing more on our thoughts than our feelings and bodies. However, as Rob Fisher asserts in the section that follows, “People are adept at using words to dissemble, but the body is far more direct in communicating our inner states to those who are willing to listen.”
Fortunately, the tides are beginning to turn: As we move into what might be termed the age of integration, many people are beginning to appreciate that the part can only be informed by the whole. This integrative ontology is the crux of Hakomi, whose principles of mind-body holism and unity acknowledge our multiply determined selves and the larger context within which they relate.
Consistent with our integrative approach, this book is a symphony of voices rather than a solo composition. Since differentiation promotes integration, several members of the Hakomi faculty have coauthored this book. Some writers have chosen to explore the tail, others the trunk of the Hakomi method, each trying to provide as good an understanding as words on a page can give of the felt sense of this experiential approach.
We began soliciting submissions in 2005, and then bit our knuckles as more books on mindfulness and psychotherapy hit the shelves. To quiet our anxiety, we reminded ourselves that to know oneself requires slowing down and trusting the intrinsic readiness to move forward. Now, after nearly 10 years of reflective writing about thirty-plus years of clinical and training experience, we are ready to move Hakomi into the forefront of the mindfulness explosion, by showcasing our considerable expertise on core-level change. Toward this end, we offer readers a guide to our unique mindfulness-centered, somatic approach with plentiful references to the mainline literature in psychology and counseling.
Specifically, this volume provides:
1. An understanding of how the perennial wisdom traditions and the sciences of complexity can help clinicians establish the requisite conditions for deep transformation and characterological change.
2. A view of human change processes that embraces the coexistence of contradictory impulses both to maintain a stable and coherent core and to grow to higher levels of complexity.
3. A way to join with our clients’ organic impulses to heal, by working nonviolently with their barriers to change, and by gently integrating new potentialities into their everyday lives.
4. A rationale and specific guidelines for integrating the body in psychotherapy, including instances of trauma.
5. An understanding of how the early learning system stores memories subcortically, and a detailed process to transform a person’s relationship to these preconscious memories.
6. Guiding principles that increase trust in each person’s internal blueprint for growing and becoming that also shape the personhood of the therapist to be a compassionate and healing instrument of change.
For those who want to jump in and learn the technique, we direct you to Section IV, which outlines our basic skills and therapeutic process (Chapters 14–24). For those who prefer to read about the overarching principles and theoretical underpinnings of the method, go to Sections II and III (Chapters 4–13). For the social scientists, who like to know what historical developments shaped the method, go to Appendix 3. To get a glimpse of the Hakomi method in clinical practice, view the section that follows: “Psychotherapy Beyond Conversation: The Psychodynamic Use of Mindfulness and the Body,” as well as Appendix 2.
As there is no substitute for direct experience, we invite you to participate in a workshop if what you read here interests you. To access a worldwide calendar of Hakomi events, go to the Hakomi Institute website (www.hakomiinstitute.com or www.hakomi.org).
A Hakomi Case Illustration: Psychotherapy Beyond Conversation—the Psychodynamic Use of Mindfulness and the Body
Rob Fisher
As I opened the door to my office for our first appointment, Jane said a curt hello before I could greet her, and walked in ahead of me.1 There was a soldierly rigidness to her walk that immediately left me feeling a bit shut out. She greeted my smile with a slight scowl as she told me, without preamble, what had brought her to therapy. She was tired, she said, of being so alone in her life.
“Even when I’m with my husband, I’m alone,” she said. She had tried talk therapies and appreciated the insight she’d gained, but said, “I just keep doing the same things I’ve always done to push people away from me.”
Successful in her career as a physician in a small town, 57-year-old Jane found herself returning to her house in the evenings to watch TV alone while her husband tinkered in the garage. She routinely rebuffed kindly overtures of support from others without really knowing why—which enabled her to say, truthfully, that she got “very little help from anyone.” For instance, before dinner was finished, she would jump up from the table and wash the dishes, feeling resentful while preempting her husband from helping her. Of the implicit, but ironclad, rules that dominated her somatic and emotional life, however, she was almost entirely unconscious.
She spoke with an air of independence, and I had the distinct impression that she suspected that I would only be marginally useful to her, if at all. Her straight posture, stiff carriage, and severe mouth communicated—more than her words could—that she was struggling to rely only on herself.
As typically happens with clients in a first session, taking in Jane’s verbal pace, posture, and facial expression, I found myself formulating some initial questions about the formative experiences and inner templates that shaped her approach to life and her habit of removing herself from contact. What must her world be like that she walked with such purpose and didn’t respond to my smile? What had happened to her that made it a good idea for her to be so tough?