Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy

by Halko Weiss

  Character theories have long claimed a connection between certain patterns of physical embodiment and qualities of a person’s character. Some of these claims have been deterministic. Kurtz (Kurtz & Prestera, 1976) and other pioneers of body-oriented psychotherapy, such as Reich (1949), Lowen (1958, 1967, 1975), Pierrakos (1990), and Keleman (1986), for example, have provided more detailed investigations of the connections between externally identifiable bodily manifestations (tension, relaxation, motor impulses, facial mimicry, and changes in the vegetative nervous system) and subjective feelings, emotions, and attributed meaning. These pioneers’ works provide a greater understanding of the patterns involved in the complicated process of the formation of a person’s self-organization while simultaneously demonstrating how each person comes to have a personality that is uniquely her own. Their work also calls attention to the fact that the body is the means of expression for both the unconscious and conscious aspects of the personality. The body contains and expresses that which is not conscious, but which is of central organizing importance to a person.

  Gaining Access to the Beliefs

  Given this understanding of the embodied self—of human beings’ bodies revealing information not consciously available in the declarative mind—it seems reasonable to encourage the client to enlist his body in the quest to recover the fullness of his experience. As Marcel Proust so wonderfully portrayed in his novel Remembrance of Things Past, our conscious memories of certain events, people, or facts are only a very small part of the whole of the experiential memories storied in our bodies. As noted above, in addition to explicit memory (referred to as declarative memory because it is possible to formulate its contents into language), there is also implicit memory, where conditioned reflexes, learned interaction sequences and skills, and subliminal perceptions are stored (Grawe, 2004; Schacter & Scarry, 2000).

  The impossibility of a person concretely and consciously remembering things that happened in early childhood, that is, before developing the capability to use language, can also be understood from within this framework. In these contexts, there is no linguistic framework in which memories can be woven and put into relationship. The scientific community has come to a general agreement around the idea that, although these early experiences are not consciously remembered, information about these experiences, including the person’s relevant sensory-motor reactions to them, is stored in the implicit memory, and contributes substantially to the forming of core organizing beliefs and the organization of the self.

  The organization of one’s self-experience is based on subjective reactions from one’s subjective framework of core organizing beliefs. Further, each core belief makes sense when viewed within the context in which it was formed. (Neurolinguistic programming, developed by Bandler and Grinder in 1976 after they observed master therapists like Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir, is another approach to therapy based on this understanding.) This statement remains true for those patterns that have come to be consciously seen and experienced by the person in question as dysfunctional. It is important to remember that these reactions also were initially born in the service of meaningfully addressing the situational needs of a particular context. A symptom like chronic neck and shoulder tension, for example, can originate from a posture that the body takes on to protect a frequently hurt heart.

  The whole point of Hakomi’s mindful exploration of consciousness-raising experiments is to access the level of meaning, to understand the context for old patterns, and to explore and anchor new, alternative action patterns within the frame of these experiences. Inviting clients to slow down and mindfully attend to patterns of experience and action interrupts processes that would normally progress automatically. It creates the space to attend to and examine the client’s own spontaneous gestures, such as a typical posture or the flow of the breath at a certain moment. Other techniques that can be of aid during these experiments include exploring the impact of consciously amplifying or reducing an element of the experience, slowly repeating an experience, and asking clients to stay with their experiences longer. Hakomi experiments often evoke germane feelings and images, and will often result in gaining access to a pattern’s underlying original contexts, as well as the beliefs that developed out of these experiences, and a person’s corresponding protective mechanisms.

  Case Example

  A client, Tina, falls in love again and again with unattainable men, a pattern that brings her great suffering. She already “knows” that this probably has to do with the early loss of her dearly loved father, who died suddenly when she was 10 years old. Tina judges herself harshly and feels “stupid” for not being able to get out of this pattern. In addition, she suffers from neurodermatitis, the symptoms of which appear only on her hands.

  At first, she indignantly resists the suggestion of the therapist to turn her attention to her hands while pondering the words, “They are being particularly stupid now because of all the stress I’m under.” Then, however, despite lingering doubts, she lets herself engage in this exploration and notices that an experience that she ordinarily perceives as an itch, an experience that she typically responds to with scratching, is actually a kind of restlessness throughout her hands. While mindfully examining this, and doing some small experiments, memory images emerge in which Tina, as a young girl, is sitting behind her father on a motor scooter and holding onto him with her hands. She becomes very sad, sobs, and discovers that, in the end, her hands have been expressing the conflict between a longing to hold on and a previously unconscious decision to never again let herself get so involved with another person.

  Tina came to realize that she had organized herself and her life around the core belief, “I can’t rely on others. I can only depend on myself.” After coming to these realizations, she was able to slowly, carefully, and mindfully explore what it was like to reach out toward, touch, and, for a moment, to really hold the female therapist’s hands. Tina was able to experience firsthand how difficult this was for her, how vulnerable she felt, how much fear she had that the hand would leave again, and, through these experiences, came to develop a more conciliatory and accepting stance toward the pattern in which she was stuck. She began to take steps toward a new way of being.

  The difference between rational explanations of certain events and the experience of a sensory connection in one’s own body—an experience linked with feelings, pictures, and memories—is tremendous. The latter permits the client to look for new, small impulses that enable her to go beyond the previous limitations. Body, emotions, memories, and meaning patterns are closely interwoven with each other.

  For Kurtz, this is the point that makes change possible: If change is to take place, a person’s core beliefs must be engaged. If a person is to be genuinely open to new experience and able to let new experiences have an impact on her life, she must go through the process of reengaging with aspects of her experience that have previously been filtered out, and differentiate or change meanings that she has actively, though unconsciously, constructed in relation to these experiences.

  Tina’s belief that she couldn’t rely on others could, with some new experiences—not simply new insights—modulate into an alternative, more inclusive belief: “While some people cannot be relied upon, I can explore the possibility of trusting certain others.” With this belief, she would be enabled to approach others with a new openness and curiosity, and not just selectively attend to experiences that would reconfirm her previously unquestioned core beliefs.

  Core Organizing Beliefs and Recent Research

  Research on development and neurobiology has produced results that support the notion of connections between early experience and meaning making. Stern (1985) and Dornes (1993, 2000) observed infants and toddlers in interaction with their mothers and made note of the bidirectional nature of the relationship. From the very first minute of the mother-child relationship, “the competent infant” (Dornes, 1993) is an active contributor. Babies will turn away from people that e
ngage in behavior they find overstimulating. They will try to reconnect with their mother when noting that she has suddenly frozen her facial expressions (Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974).

  Differences between babies’ relational behaviors are found even at this early age—differences that are linked to the capacity of the relating person to accurately attune to and respond to the needs of the child. It seems that a fine-tuned synchronization is taking place between caregiver and child. Our understanding of the processes by which this occurs has greatly benefited from today’s comprehension of physiological data and computer-aided data analysis. Much of this data suggests that the formation of affective-motor patterns occurs quite early (Downing, 1996; Wehowsky, 2015). These patterns can be seen as the basis of representations that later come to be symbolized with prelinguistic and linguistic content, and can be conceptually brought into close connection with the concept of beliefs.

  Schemas, as defined by Piaget (1926), are frameworks that organize the developmental process and successful interactions with the environment. To simplify the point, one could say that schemas bring order to the incalculable flood of stimuli the organism is continually faced with in order to make meaningful interactions and learning possible, enabling us to prepare for the future with the benefit of past experience.

  In the language of complex adaptive systems (Waldrop, 1992), this phenomenon is referred to as anticipating the future (Holland, 1995). To the degree possible, experiences are organized into already existing schemas (assimilated). When existing schemas are no longer able to accurately incorporate the experience in question, an adaptation process at the level of the organizing frameworks becomes necessary (accommodation). This usually represents a differentiation. In other words, the schemas become more complex.

  What is new in this use of the concept of schemas is that it is used as a description for the recording of relationship patterns, and that this use provides an image of a hierarchically organized, developmental progression from early physical sensory and affective-motor reactions, to the first symbolizations of image, to cognitive-intellectual representations.

  An example of an early mother-child interaction that leads to an affective-motor pattern could be when the pleasurable sensation and feeling of satiation that result from breast-feeding come to be associated with the rhythm of muscular tension and release, the mirroring gaze of the mother, the sound of her voice, and the warm feeling and the tactile experience of being held. This sensual-physical experience of relating is stored in the so-called procedural memory long before the ability to symbolize through language is developed, and yet still serves to prepare the ground for the arranging and meaning making of future experiences, as well as the experience of the self.

  In this example, an infant who has had the positive experience of his mother turning toward him lovingly will tend to turn to his next interactions with his mother with positive expectations; whereas an infant who has received contradictory or rejecting signals will tend to withdraw into himself and either wait for positive signals or try to avoid the contact.

  Bowlby (1969, 1973) and Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978) have documented how early the attachment patterns of small children come to be formed by their experiences with the first persons to whom they relate. Early experiences serve to shape later ones by producing mental frameworks that lead a child to more readily notice those experiences that are compatible, to process these perceptions in similar ways, and to thereby strengthen already extant schemas (Schore, 1994).

  It is with the above in mind that body-oriented psychotherapy emphasizes the meaning of experiences stored in the memory of the body. These memories—which are not accessible through the explicit memory systems’ concrete recollections—usually have a highly significant influence on a person’s organization. Therapeutic techniques that encourage mindful attention to experiences within which a client can explore new possibilities across multiple modalities (for example, sensory, motor, mental, and so on), are much more effective than methods that appeal predominantly to the cognitive level. The superior impact of experience-oriented methods has been demonstrated through research (Grawe, 2002, 2004) and has come to be embraced by many therapeutic orientations.

  In keeping with the above, the Hakomi method targets experience in the present moment. Here in the now, old limiting beliefs can be discovered and new, freeing experiences can be incorporated and become the foundation for the transformation of beliefs (see Chapter 20). Mindful, curious turning of attention toward the processes of perception and experience strengthens and deepens experiential intensity. It makes room for the awareness of the relevant contents of the hierarchically ordered modalities of experience.

  The purpose of this is to become conscious of unconscious beliefs, and to gain access to the level of consciousness where meaning is created. Hakomi therapists are guided by this goal in everything they do, whether this means simply waiting and making room for the client whose process is becoming richer and deeper through his own work, or suggesting an experiment aimed at gaining access to meaning-making consciousness. Throughout this work, the therapist looks for indicators that may suggest the presence of core organizing beliefs that may be limiting the client. The therapist looks for these signs in his own reactions to the client as well as in the client’s presentation. Through this process of increasing mindfulness, clients are enabled to see how they have come to organize their experience, and to see how this organization makes sense based upon their life experiences.

  Gaining access to these underlying meanings also leaves the client with an unambiguous sense of subjective truth, or what Petzold (1977) refers to as the “vital evidence.” In these moments, the client often comes into contact with impulses that previously had to be suppressed or restrained in favor of habitual management strategies. The client can then become open to exploring these impulses, or to following suggestions of the therapist for doing experiments aimed at integrating new, more inclusive experiences.

  In the above-mentioned example of Tina, this experience was found in the moment when Tina was willing to move her hands toward the outstretched hands of the therapist, and let her hands touch those of the therapist without closing up internally. This experience helped her begin to accept the pain of losing her father for the first time and to recognize that it is good to connect—that she didn’t always have to protect herself from the threat of loss. Beyond that, she was also able to access concomitant beliefs about her own self-worth, and about the necessary degree of loyalty toward her father. She was able to do all this without resorting to intellectual speculation. Instead, these shifts were each intimately connected to her experience. These kinds of events are healing precisely because they enable the organization of self-experiences to form new schemas and alter existing beliefs, thereby simultaneously restructuring future being in the world. While a single connection of a client with his “missing experience” (Kurtz, 1990a) is not likely to dislodge a long-standing pattern, it brings new options and opportunities to life.

  Connection to Other Theoretical Concepts

  The psychodynamic view that the shape of a personality is largely based upon the influence of early experiences is directly mirrored in the implications of the concept of core organizing beliefs (Gabbard, 1994). Developmentally informed basic human needs (to be securely accepted, held, and fed; to have autonomy; to be valued and recognized) form the context for these beliefs. Core organizing beliefs are formed from a person’s experiences in relation to the environment’s response to his basic needs. It is these beliefs that lead to the creation of character strategies (see Chapter 8). Psychoanalytic object relations theory’s description of the process by which relationship structures become internalized (Horner, 1974; Winnicott 1965, 1971) has also contributed a great deal to the comprehension of the meaning of early interaction patterns, and provides theoretical insight into therapeutic relationships. In keeping with the psychoanalytic idea of transference, a client will form his relationsh
ip with a therapist based on his beliefs (Stolorow et al., 1987). The therapist will personally experience the impact of a client’s beliefs (Gill, 1983) and can draw attention to and invite the client to explore this (Feinstein, 1990).

  Case Example

  A client, Mark, almost never arrives on time for his appointments. While excusing his lateness, he often smiles. When invited to explore what is behind the smile, he recognizes that he becomes aware of his physical size in connection with the smile, and that he is glad about this. “I feel elated, victorious.” He also comes to realize that he feels like he is winning a power struggle every time he’s late—that being late is an expression of his decision to refuse to submit to any externally imposed rules. Further, he remembers how as a little boy, his big brothers and sisters did not have to follow the rules that he was expected to keep; that he had experienced this as humiliating, and he still experiences the observance of rules as humiliating. Only with this discovery was he able to open to the reality that rules do not apply only to little kids. They also serve to facilitate adults’ coexistence as well. Their observance does not always reflect submission, but may be instead an expression of mutual respect. His old belief, “Others think I’m little, but I won’t let this happen anymore,” was now able to move toward a new belief: “I am respected, and can also respect others.”

  The Hakomi concept of core beliefs, of convictions that organize our perception, experience, and behavior by processes of selection (we tend to perceive that which fits with our convictions and confirms them, as long as divergent information is not attached to an especially strong stimulus) is also almost identical to the schema as defined in cognitive psychology. However, an essential difference lies in the fact that in behavior therapy, cognitive schemas are understood mentally, whereas for body-oriented psychotherapies like the Hakomi method, the affect-motor schemas are of central importance. In other words, Hakomi focuses on unconscious patterns formed at the body-and-feeling levels that are represented mentally only under certain circumstances (Downing, 1996). Actually, third-wave cognitive-behavioral therapies are increasingly embracing this position (Hayes, Follette, & Linehan, 2004). In general, the process of becoming conscious—with the attendant possibility of broadening the client’s schemas—is a principal task of psychotherapy.