by Halko Weiss
The therapist’s mindfulness is a present-moment enactment of the other Hakomi principles. Using Wilber’s model, the all-quadrant-all-level model, aspects of the unity principle acknowledge the social embeddedness of mindfulness, and place “the capacity for mindfulness into a broader conception of social, cognitive, and developmental processes” (Shaver et al., 2007, p. 265). Mindfulness also supports awareness of unity as the therapist remains conscious of her own breath, body, feelings, and thoughts, as well as those of the client. In this state, the therapist can gather significant information about how clients organize their experience (Feinstein, 1990). Mindfulness allows therapists to gather information on dispositions of their clients from all four of the quadrants in Wilber’s (1995) model.
Once limiting core beliefs become apparent, they can be changed (see Chapter 20) through mindful, compassionate attention to new possibilities and their accompanying barriers to change (Hayes & Feldman, 2004). Since the limiting core beliefs operate at a very deep level of the client’s organization, a small, core-level change can result in a large and lasting change in operant beliefs, feelings, habits, and behaviors—including increased compassion for self and others (Allen & Knight, 2005; Brown & Kasser, 2005; Beitel, Ferrer, & Cecero, 2005; Carson, Carson, Gil, & Baucom, 2004; Shapiro, Brown, & Biegel, 2007; Shapiro, Schwartz, & Bonner, 1998).
Mindfulness interacts with mind-body holism in many ways. Thich Nhat Hanh (1987) defines mindfulness as the state where mind and body become one. Being mindful, the therapist and client can pick up clues about the mind from the body’s posture, position, tension, movement, and habits. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the body functions as a royal road to the unconscious. In Hakomi, experiments in mindfulness evoke core patterns through triggering habitual reactions that can then be studied (see Chapter 16). The client thereby finds the psychic distance to have habitual reactions as opposed to simply being the reactions (Baumeister & Sommer 1997; Brown et al., 2007; Teasdale, Segal, & Williams, 1995). In Kegan’s (1982) terms, what was once subject now differentiates to become object, as the system is brought under observation.
In practical terms, working in mindfulness guides the therapist to introduce the idea of an internal observer and direct her client toward this style of self-observation. In the process, she monitors the client’s state of consciousness and contacts his experience in ways that support the internal observer. She carefully tracks whether the client becomes highly fused, blended, or identified with, let’s say, a feeling state, and has a number of ways to help the client back into a more observing state (see Chapter 14). This process can be understood as the coregulation of attention processes by an “external interactive regulator” (Schore, 1994; Weiss, 2008).
In addition to its function in studying and deepening therapeutically into the way we organize our experience, mindfulness functions in myriad ways outlined in the various chapters of this book and referenced in the bibliography on mindfulness and therapy found on the Hakomi Institute website (www.hakomiinstitute.com).
Though mindfulness is a natural, easily accessible state, it needs to be invited and supported in most people (Johanson, 2006). The most common barrier to mindfulness is fear associated with experiences of not feeling safe. This leads us to the Hakomi embrace of nonviolence.
Nonviolence
The fifth and last principle of Hakomi therapy—the one tied most closely to Lao-tzu and Taoism in general—is the principle of nonviolence, which is a variation on nondoing (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991; Sorajjakool, 2009). It is the foundational principle without which the process will not work. This is because to be mindful and turn our awareness inward toward felt, present experience in order to study the organization of our experience, we need to feel safe. There are “conceptual and empirical connections between mindfulness and security” (Shaver et al., 2007, p. 265). Boundaries must be clear and inviolate (Whitehead, 1994, 1995). If we think a therapist or someone else around us is not safe, is up to something, has a judgment or agenda to put over on us, we will resist automatically. We can’t keep one eye focused outward, figuratively or literally, and one eye inward. It is like being asked to fall asleep standing up. Lao-tzu is exquisitely clear about this:
Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn’t try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force, there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself. (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991, p. 42)
In Taoism, this is called the principle of mutual arising. For every force, there will be a counterforce. Porges’s (2001) polyvagal theory outlines how neurologically primed we are to scan for danger, and how inter- or intrapersonal social engagement is only possible through perceived safety. Of course, no therapist or therapy considers itself violent. But when it comes to the question of resistance—the experience therapists have of clients not moving along in the process of therapy—the Tao Te Ching poses a question:
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991, p. 40)
Most of us in the West cannot. We have been educated to do something, and as therapists, we are tempted to force things “for the client’s own good.” In many cases, we do so because we simply are not aware of other choices (Sorajjakool, 2001). In the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu offers alternatives:
To yield is to be preserved whole. To be bent is to become straight. . . . Do the Non-Ado. Strive for the effortless. . . . Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991, p. 43)
The suggestion here, whose worth is borne out in clinical practice, is that resistance be supported in the state in which it naturally arises. Paradoxically, the process can go forward by retreating and actually supporting defenses.
If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand. 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. . . . Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone. . . . The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads. . . . Thus the Sage supports all things in their natural state, but does not take any action. (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991, pp. 43, 46, 137)
What is crucial here is the attitude of therapists toward both their clients and themselves (Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006). Are we sane in Lao-tzu’s sense of accepting the world whole, or are we trying to re-create it, to make ourselves into someone we are not? Do we, in fact, respect and honor the organic, inner wisdom of ourselves, others, and nature itself? In the therapy context, do we understand resistance as a natural, organic expression of the system’s inner organization that is present for some good reason—whether that is immediately obvious or not—especially if the opposition appears to be counterproductive and self-defeating? Embodying this attitude is crucial for allowing mindfulness to promote affect regulation of negative emotional states (Broderick, 2005; Feldman, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001).
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991, p. 37)
When nonviolence, mindfulness, and compassion meet to create a healing space, a certain economy of therapy arises. There is a sense of ease as the unconscious takes the nondefensive opening to unfold, and both client and therapist effortlessly follow organic signals that lead into what needs healing and reorganization. Unnecessary confrontation and struggle yield, as defenses are respected for the organic wisdom they embody, and are supported as they arise (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991). This opens the possibility of curiously inquiring into the nature of the resistance (Johanson, 1988), rather than trying to push through it. Verbal and nonverbal taking-over techniques (see Chapter 16)—doing for someone what they are already doing for themselves—empower clients to study their experience more safely and mindfully while finding nothing in the therapist to resist (Kurtz, 1990a).
The
safe, mindful, nonresistant, seemingly lazy stance of the therapist does not lead to comfortable chitchat and a lack of issues to explore for the client. Paradoxically, the safety and nourishment fostered by nonviolence promotes the courage and support to access core organizing issues quite deeply and quickly (Fosha, 2000). Earlier psychodynamic theory cautioned against being overtly friendly, safe, or nourishing because gratifying patients might take away the psychic energy for them to project the transference of their unmet needs onto the therapist where they could be worked through (Wyss, 1973).
As suggested above, Hakomi sees transference through the lens of systems theory as dealing with the organization of experience (Baeyer, 2004; Stolorow et al., 1987). This is a strong view of transference that asserts it is present in all situations at all times. It cannot be hurt or changed by a therapist being either outwardly friendly or intentionally reserved. In this view, gratification, or more precisely, how clients are unable to be gratified, is seen in terms of what the client has organized out of his experience; what might be missing experiences he has yet to integrate. Again, to be organically self-organizing and self-correcting, all the parts must be incorporated and connected within the whole.
When compassion and nonviolence provide the necessary therapeutic context of perceived safety, it becomes possible in Hakomi therapy to invite a mindful state of consciousness where the precise kind of gratification the patient has ruled out can be introduced through an experiment in awareness (see Chapter 16). For instance, in the case of clients who manifest indicators that they are self-reliant—having organized out the possibility of support—various verbal and nonverbal experiments can be done that incorporate the message, “It is okay to let people support you.”
If the indicators have been properly read, these experiments in mindful, theoretically positive gratification would be expected to evoke spontaneous, automatic fears, anxieties, tensions, and such, that put up instantaneous barriers to the possibility of support. Thus, Hakomi therapists paradoxically function as safe, gentle, nonviolent provocateurs using the overtly secure, caring therapeutic relationship to help clients face their deepest fears. In the process, sessions can appear quite quiet, respectful, and contemplative. They can also manifest with considerable emotion and action. It is, of course, a clinical art to be able to keep clients within their windows of tolerance, keeping things neither too safe nor too overwhelming (Ogden et al., 2006), or on the learning edge between order and chaos (Kauffman, 1995).
In terms of systems theory, transformation occurs when clients, in this nonviolent setting, are enabled to organize into their experience some aspect of life (support, in the example above) that they have previously organized out (Johanson, 2015).
Nonviolence is an attitude of trust in the creation. It is a commitment not to interfere with the processes of life, but to celebrate their spontaneous, organic intelligence. Nonviolence promotes a respect for the subtle, almost imperceptible movements of mind, body, and spirit, and gives rise to a yielding or softness that follows and nourishes these movements rather than correcting or conquering them (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991).
Nonlinear Science
As suggested above, Bateson’s propositions and Hakomi principles place psychotherapy firmly within the realm of nonlinear science. Bateson was adamant about following scientific principles adequate to describing minds as opposed to material, physical systems. For instance, the concept of homeostasis, stability through constancy, which can well describe a thermostat that returns temperature to a given set point, has been applied inappropriately to the human body, individuals, families, and organizations, as Bertalanffy (1968) cautioned years ago. More recently, Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and Swanson have concurred that “when applied to the study of interacting systems such as a couple . . . the concept of homeostasis is highly inadequate” (2005, p. 166). A concept better able to accommodate the features of living organic systems is Sterling’s theory of “allostasis” or stability through change. The system is seen as making predictions to adjust parameters to best function in the situation at hand, as opposed to maintaining some mythical, normal set point—for instance, blood pressure fluctuates in an adaptive way depending on the next anticipated activity (Sterling, 2004). Morgan notes that interpersonal neurobiology sees the brain in an allostatic way “as an anticipatory machine” (2006, p. 15). As noted above, Prigogine’s concept of negentropy in the organic world of self-healing holons corrects and complements the concept of entropy in the physical world.
In general, we know our clients are not like machines, even information-processing ones, where one input will result in a predictable, deterministic output. Morgan suggests that understanding the brain and mind in terms of “linear thinking involving cause and effect is inadequate. The brain is the most complex structure known in the universe. The human being is way too complex for simple logic. We need to turn to complexity theory for a better understanding” (2006, p. 14). While Bateson (1979) talked of living organic systems, others term this science “the study of dynamic, synergetic, dissipative, nonlinear, self-organizing, or chaotic systems” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. 50). John Holland (1995), in line with the work of the Santa Fe Institute, uses the term “complex adaptive systems” (CAS; in Morowitz & Singer, 1995). Laszlo (2004) speaks of adaptive self-regulating systems, and Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) of dynamical systems.
Nowak and Vallacher agree that the brain is composed of
100 billion neurons, each of which influences and is influenced by approximately 1,000 other neurons. . . . The range of potential mental states is unimaginably large . . . [and] the same variable can . . . act as a “cause” one moment and an “effect” the next. This feedback process is at odds with traditional notions of causality that assume asymmetrical, one-directional relationships between cause and effect. (1998, pp. 3, 32)
Earlier theories of maturationism, environmentalism, or interactionism between genes and environment have proved inadequate to account for “problems of emergent order and complexity” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. xiii), namely how new structures, patterns, or core narratives arise. These older theories basically note the eventual outcome or product of where people end up, but “take no account of process . . . the route by which the organism moves from an earlier state to a more mature state” (p. xvi). To put it another way, development is much messier than our logical, reconstructive theories would have us believe.
As we turn up the magnification of our microscope, we see that our visions of linearity, uniformity, inevitable sequencing, and even irreversibility break down. What looks like a cohesive, orchestrated process from afar takes on the flavor of a more exploratory, opportunistic, syncretic, and function-driven process in its instantiation (Thelen & Smith, 2002).
Our most recent scientific inquiries argue that determinism, or predictive power, is an insufficient and inadequate guiding principle. “We never know, and never can know exactly what any holon will do tomorrow (we might know broad outlines and probabilities, based on past observations, but self-transcendent emergence always means, to some degree: surprise!)” (Wilber, 1995, p. 48).
The good news for psychotherapy is that nonlinear systems are adaptive. They demonstrate the capacity for self-transcendence, symmetry breaks, creativity, or emergent transformation into new wholes or holons with new forms of agency and communion (Clayton, 2004; Clayton & Davies, 2006; Emmeche et al., 1997; Wilber, 1995). The tricky part is that self-organizing systems begin with many parts with large degrees of initial freedom that may then be “compressed to produce more patterned behavior” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. 51). “In self-organization, the system selects or is attracted to one preferred configuration out of many possible states, but behavioral variability is an essential precursor” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. 55). Nonlinear means order out of chaos (Gleick, 1988; Krippner, 1994; Robertson & Combs, 1995).
Central to understanding chaos in Hakomi therapy is assuming a personality characterized by multiplicity (Rowan & C
ooper, 1999; Turner, 2008), or what Schwartz (1995) terms an inner ecology of parts. It is a common observation that a single client can manifest fear, a disposition to withdraw, an offer of help, the face of defensive anger, a dance of joy, and much more. Which might it be? Persons can also show variable forms of attachment in relation to different persons (Siegel, 1999). “The concept that a system can assume different collective states through the action of a quite nonspecific control parameter [external variables that influence behavior] is a powerful challenge to more accepted machine and computer metaphors of biological order” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. 62).
Which part-pattern of a client emerges depends on the interactions of her internal parts, and their perception of what is happening in the external world. Neurologically, the activation of one pattern normally corresponds to the inhibition of another, a process known as “soft-assembly” (Thelen & Smith, 2002, p. 60). What provide stability in a living organic system that balances the flexibility of variable soft-assembly possibilities are attractors. Laszlo (1987, p. 70) maintains that “the principal features of dynamic systems are the attractors; they characterize the long-run behavior of the systems.” Static attractors govern evolution when system states are relatively at rest; periodic attractors govern those systems that go through periodic repetitions of the same cycle; and chaotic attractors influence the organization of seemingly irregular, random, unpredictable systems (Barton, 1994; Gallistel, 1980; Nowak & Vallacher, 1998; Vallacher & Nowak, 1994b).
As Siegel notes, it is when the emotional responses associated with core narrative beliefs become ingrained patterns of neural firing that they come to function as attractor states, which “help the system organize itself and achieve stability. Attractor states lend a degree of continuity to the infinitely possible options for activation profiles” (1999, p. 218).