by Halko Weiss
This increased capacity for studying present experience in small doses of mindfulness may ultimately allow deeper and more prolonged experiences of mindful self-study to unfold. In this way, the client may become a more steady and spacious container for experience. This capacity is similar to the cultivation of a witnessing function, very much like that which emerges in traditional meditation training. Mindfulness then serves as a skillful bridge, connecting the gentle unfolding of awareness in psychotherapy with the spacious witnessing capacity of meditation.
When asked to describe the mind of enlightenment, Zen master Dogen replied, “Intimacy with all things.” It is this ability to meet each thing as it is, without manipulation and without the addition of judgment or bias, which the mirrorlike quality of mindfulness allows. Along with the more conventional, experimental sequence outlined by Ron Kurtz, there are also contemplative ways of coming to understand the organization of experience that emerge from Eastern wisdom traditions. Reflecting on the centrality of mindfulness in supporting the ability to be intimate with experience, the psychiatrist and Buddhist teacher Mark Epstein has said, “As psychotherapy and meditation begin to come together, it is this function of mindfulness that will prove pivotal, because mindfulness permits continual surrender into our direct experience, from which we have all become experts at keeping ourselves at bay” (1995, p. 147). Through the investigation of evoked experience in mindfulness, we learn about the ways in which we have become unconsciously expert at hiding in habit patterns. Cultivating this capacity is one function of meditation practice as well.
One of the oldest systems for understanding the organization of experience, and which actually forms the basis for the use of mindfulness in the Hakomi method, is the four foundations of mindfulness. These four foundations come from the Satipatthana Sutra, considered the core of the Buddha’s meditation teaching. In this teaching, the Buddha systematically outlines the ways in which we can come to understand the reality of conditioned existence by looking carefully and systematically at how ordinary experience comes into being. The four foundations are basically as follows:
1. Mindfulness of the body as the body, generally begun with a focus on the breath
2. Mindfulness of sensations or sense impressions—pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral
3. Mindfulness of feelings and states of mind, sometimes referred to as emotion-thought
4. Mindfulness of the objects of the mind itself, or the actual production of the mind states
The complete teachings associated with these four foundations are beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice it to say that basic meditation practices themselves greatly increase the subject’s ability to stay with and observe present experience. This ability supports the cultivation of the witness, a state of consciousness that can then be used to study the organization of all conditioned phenomena. In this way, people gain a perspective that is rare in the conventional world. They are allowed to actually witness themselves and their experience without getting lost in the storyline or the emotional undertow. They can begin to step outside the flow of the experience and yet witness the experience fully. They can cultivate the mind that is “intimate with all things.”
One example that helps to illustrate this shift in awareness from being entranced in ordinary experience to waking as the witness is being in a movie theater. Most everyone has had the experience of watching a movie, becoming totally engrossed in the story, and feeling strong emotions as they relate to the characters and their stories. This is similar to the automatic nature of everyday experience. When our internal rules are operating outside of our awareness, we are lost in what seems like a solid, seamless reality. Then suppose someone next to us in the movie theater asks for popcorn or interrupts our reverie to leave to go to the bathroom. We suddenly wake up to the fact that there is a light source in the back of the theater generating a flickering image on a flat surface in front of us, which we have been involved with as if it were real. The witness is that state of consciousness that wakes up from the trance and sees what is actually happening, without bias or judgment. It just observes without being identified with, or as, what is being seen. It also does not reject the experience. It just sees fully what is.
The four foundations of mindfulness help us unpack this solid sense of experience, just as the small experiments in mindfulness in the Hakomi method help us begin to free ourselves from the automatic patterns of conditioning. In the first foundation of mindfulness we enter into a simple intimacy with the body itself, using the observation of our breathing as a focus of awareness. In Hakomi, the body—its movements, gestures, and expressions—is a primary source of data that can reveal underlying habits of mind, core beliefs, or organizing principles for our construction of reality. Since the Hakomi method is a body-centered psychotherapy, this ability to stay with the body is a key skill and is supported in a number of the core exercises in the method.
The second foundation supports our ability to be aware of the flux of sensations in this body in which we find ourselves. This is a subtle lesson, in which we learn to pay careful attention to the ever-shifting bodily energies—positive, negative, or neutral. Here we may begin to notice unconscious habits in the way we experience ourselves. We might become aware of a habitual tendency to feel aversion or clinging, to move toward or away from experiences. We can notice patterns of numbness or deadness.
It is not until the third foundation that we become mindful of the way that these energies collect into actual feelings and thoughts. In the third foundation, we observe the arising of thoughts and feelings together and come to know their interdependent nature. We get to know their meaning, and we observe their impermanent nature, as we watch them come and go. It is here that we also begin to see the repetitive nature of some of our mental states, feelings, and beliefs. Core beliefs are found here, and our ability to witness them, bring them into consciousness, and disidentify as them brings us some freedom from the suffering they may cause.
In the fourth foundation, we learn to turn the mind back on itself and witness how the whole spectrum of consciousness, sensations, reactions, emotions, and thinking all arise and interact with each other. We meditate on mind objects, as they are called—the actual contents of our minds. The four foundations of mindfulness offer us a systematic, contemplative path to do exactly what the Hakomi method is designed to assist in its scientific, experimental manner—the careful study of the creation of the self; how it comes into being, sustains itself in habitual and automatic ways, and can be released and seen through. This is a path to basic sanity.
The Self in Buddhism and Psychotherapy
In both psychotherapy and meditation, the position of the self or the I seems to be central. What is this self that we are investigating? If mindfulness offers us the key to the path, and the core skills and principles of the Hakomi method provide the tools for this exploration, what do we actually discover? In an early essay, Jack Engler reflects on both the Western and Eastern approaches to understanding the self:
In both psychologies then, the sense of “I,” of personal unity and continuity, of being the same “self” in time, in place, and across stages of consciousness, is conceived as something which is not innate in personality, not inherent in our psychological or spiritual makeup, but is evolving developmentally out of our experience of objects and the kinds of interactions we have with them. In other words, the “self” is literally constructed out of our experience with the object world. . . . The self that is being is viewed in both psychologies is a representation, which is actually being constructed anew from moment to moment. . . . Both systems also agree that the self is not ordinarily experienced this way. (1986, p. 22)
This description reflects the same understanding of the self that emerges within the Hakomi method. All experience is organized and is a by-product of ways in which we have interacted with the environment and our histories. This organization tends to form habitual patterns that become automatic and which op
erate out of awareness. We construct the self, and this construction is ongoing and fluid. These transient patterns can be recognized and explored, bringing self-representations and constructions into consciousness.
In a reexamination of the earlier work mentioned above, Engler (2003) furthers our understanding of the capacities and self-structure that is required for deep exploration, whether through therapeutic investigation or meditation. Note the characteristics he describes in light of what the Hakomi method cultivates and supports explicitly for the client:
Some minimum degree of structuralization is certainly required: the capacity for moment-to-moment observation of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations; the ability to gradually attend to experience without censorship and selection; the capacity to tolerate aversive affect; some capacity to tolerate primary process material; the ability to suspend or mitigate self-judgment and maintain a benign attitude toward one’s experience; the capacity for moral discrimination and evaluation of one’s own behavior; and the capacity to mourn. . . . The more intensively mindfulness is practiced, the more important these capacities become and the more capacity is required. (p. 48)
This list could have been written to describe the capacities embodied by the mature Hakomi therapist working in loving presence. The list also reflects the capacities that are supported by the principles of the Hakomi method and which, then, become abilities available to clients in their psychological and spiritual work. These capacities undergird the unfolding of development that John Welwood skillfully describes as “making implicit felt meaning explicit. . . . When we can tap into and speak from a diffusely felt sense, rather than just pouring out our thoughts about it, this allows a fresh articulation of what is true for us, which was not accessible or expressible before” (2002, p. 90). This truth includes both the contents of our awareness and the space within which that awareness arises—our psychological sense of self, which is ongoing and steady, as well as the spacious mind in which we find no substantial or independent self as an object. With this ability to turn our awareness toward what is evoked, meet intimately what we encounter, and uncover meaning through this contact, we find freedom from the automatic, the habitual, and the unconscious.
Conclusion
In the Hakomi method, we intend to skillfully support self-discovery. We do this through the use of mindfulness and an experimental attitude, which encourages the client to attend to small moments of present experience without judgment or bias. In this process, we become increasingly skilled at noting indicators of what is automatic or habitual. Sometimes we act as scientists, observing with curiosity the patterns we uncover. Sometimes we act as contemplatives, deepening our capacity to attend to the unfolding of moment-to-moment experience. Through both the psychological and spiritual strands of the Hakomi method, we unravel the causes of suffering. Waking up and growing up move together with the release of what was unconscious, automatic, and habitual—and this release becomes a lifelong practice for our clients and ourselves.
CHAPTER 7
The Role of Core Organizing Beliefs in Hakomi Therapy
Anne Fischer
“CORE ORGANIZING BELIEFS” (Kurtz, 1990a) can be defined as the fundamental beliefs that structure a person’s experiences of himself in relation to the world and vice versa. A defining characteristic of these beliefs is that they are generally unconscious; people usually are not aware of the core beliefs they hold, how these beliefs have come into existence, or the role they play in organizing present experience. In Hakomi, a therapist’s role is to provide an environment that offers opportunities for clients to become aware of, reflect upon, and mindfully explore their core organizing beliefs, so that more nourishing life choices can be made.
Some examples of potential core organizing beliefs include these: “The world is a safe place,” “It is better not to trust anybody,” or “I’m only worth something when I’m doing something for someone else.” These kinds of beliefs organize perception, experience, thinking, and action, and contribute decisively to the formation of embodied personality. Kurtz differentiates between a person’s conscious and the unconscious awareness of her beliefs in this way:
There is always another, a deeper layer of organizing material, like core beliefs, of which the storyteller is unaware. This deeper layer is having a direct influence on the storyteller, the telling of it and on the relationship of the storyteller and the listeners. . . . In the effort to understand people and to help them change, it is crucial that we become aware of this layer of organizing material. (2000, p. 2)
Often, people become aware of their core beliefs only when they notice that others react to similar situations with different perceptions and behavior. A person who responds to new, unfamiliar situations with skepticism or feelings of vulnerability, for example, may come to notice that others remain grounded, or are even pleased with the opportunities and challenges provided by new situations. A person who consciously “knows” that elevators are safe comes to view his own fear as excessive, even if he cannot control the panic he feels when faced with riding in an elevator.
In interpersonal relationships, a person may recognize that her reactions seem to be uncontrollably out of proportion with the situations at hand—perhaps fearing the loss of a partner when differences in opinion or interests arise. In this case, the underlying belief could be: “I must comply with others in order to be loved.” A person with this belief and its accompanying fear may have trouble perceiving her own sensations and may encounter even greater difficulty in expressing her own opinions. Having to do so creates internal turmoil. The risk involved will seem enormous, even if the person’s partner appears unambiguously friendly and inviting.
These examples demonstrate why Hakomi therapy is centered on working with core beliefs. These beliefs can dramatically restrict people’s lives, limiting their perceived ability to express themselves, make good choices, and realize their potential. When willful effort is not enough to break out of stuck patterns, it is the experience of these kinds of limitations and impediments with their corresponding suffering that often leads people to seek therapeutic help.
Many people already have a clear idea of what needs to be changed. One person might formulate his goal straightforwardly: “I just need to have more confidence in myself.” Others might add that they recognize that there are actually good reasons for having better self-confidence: “I really don’t understand why I have such a low self-esteem. I’ve actually accomplished quite a bit in my life already.” This example reflects the recognition that a personality can contain multiple beliefs that are not necessarily congruent, as well as the recognition that there are different kinds of knowledge: the explicit, declarative knowledge of rational consciousness that works logically, expresses itself linguistically, and whose processes are primarily located in the neocortex of the left hemisphere of the brain; and procedural knowledge, knowledge that often becomes manifest in the form of emotions, and is primarily stored in the brain’s right hemisphere and the limbic system (Damasio, 1994, 2003; Lewis et al., 2000; Schacter, 1996).
Procedural knowledge refers to (now) automatically occurring patterns that have become unconscious, as well as to prelinguistic somatic and affective impressions that have formed themselves into frameworks (also known as schemas; see below) and always have been unconscious. An example of the power of this kind of framework can be found in an anorexic 15-year-old’s conviction that she needs to lose weight—regardless of any objective argument to the contrary—even given her intellectual understanding that she is running the risk of starving herself to death. She cannot perceive herself as anything other than too fat.
Beliefs and the Body
With the Hakomi method, Ron Kurtz developed a way to directly access core organizing beliefs through mindfulness and self-observation. Performing experiments in a mindful state provides clients with an opportunity to observe, examine, and dehabitualize their automatic tendencies, and to create connections between spontaneous behavior
patterns and their underlying meanings. At the same time, Kurtz has demonstrated how substantially the body is involved in this process, and placed an emphasis on attending to the inseparable unity of mind and body.
In keeping with this holistic view, Damasio (1999) states that the human mind and self-consciousness are not only expressed through the body, but also have their roots in the unconscious processes of the body. He refers to these processes as “somatic markers.” Just as emotional states become physically expressed—a person who is angry, for example, may wrinkle his forehead and tighten his jaw while his hormone levels change accordingly, his heart races, breathing changes, and so forth—enduring core beliefs and their corresponding internal reactions also become manifest on the bodily level in more lasting ways, reflected through the body’s gestures, movements, muscle tension, posture, or psychosomatic symptoms.
With this knowledge, it isn’t difficult to imagine typical categories or patterns of experience, as well as typical ways of expression and action—what Hakomi calls character strategies (see Chapters 8 and 23). Although each person develops his own distinctive style—with unique personality being informed by dispositions and temperament in relation to life experience—similar experiences as well as similar ways to process and respond to them will be found across people. Someone who is convinced that human relationships are about power, and that it is important not to be weak, for example, will be likely to have a slightly tense body, a posture expanded upward, and a breathing pattern that emphasizes the chest and upper body. This type of person may look intimidating, and will do his best not to let his eyes betray any longing that he may be experiencing.