Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy

by Halko Weiss

  It is this capacity to directly observe experience, rather than simply engage in introspection or mental reflection, that makes mindfulness such a potent instrument in therapy.

  Present experience is the royal road to implicit memory. Implicit memory networks shape our present experience directly. Thus, by mindfully paying attention to present experience, we can reverse engineer our way to the underlying patterns themselves. As implicit memory networks are lit up, profound and unexpected information, insights, and new possibilities often come to the surface. The emergence of these potent and often unexpected new experiences is a distinctive feature of Hakomi therapy.

  Since Hakomi therapists pay disciplined attention to when the unconscious is using a mindful thread of inquiry to lead to what Perls called “unfinished business”—as opposed to simply allowing everything that enters consciousness to float by like a cloud, the method is more precisely considered “mindfulness of the mind,” as suggested by Nyanaponika:

  [Use] your own state of mind as meditation’s subject. Such meditation reveals and heals. . . . The sadness (or whatever has caused the pain) can be used as a means of liberation from torment and suffering, like using a thorn to remove a thorn (1972, p. 61)

  Opening to one’s experiential realm through mindfulness enables the processing of formative experiences. By our shepherding of the client’s attention, we deepen into experience (Chapter 15) so that regressive states are accessed—taking care to keep the observer present so that there is no danger of malign regression. Then the therapist, with the help of the mindful client, looks for and introduces new experiences previously organized out as too threatening, to help integrate a fuller organicity to the system (Chapters 18–20)—what is also termed “memory reconsolidation” (Cozolino, 2010). This whole process, from the beginning of accessing to the integration of transformative missing experiences, is wrapped in mindfulness, without which it would be impossible.

  Assisted Self-Study: Mindfulness in the Therapeutic Relationship

  Unlike traditional mindfulness practice, employing Hakomi’s mindfulness of the mind is a kind of collaborative meditation that Kurtz has described as “assisted self-study.” The use of mindfulness in relationship enables access to otherwise uncharted territory, partly because the therapist, through providing safety and loving presence, has an opportunity to actively, though nonviolently, influence the focus of a client’s awareness. Left to its own devices, a person’s experience tends to organize itself along habitual lines. From a therapeutic point of view, this process yields little or no new information and may result in interminable therapy without some active, collaborative (Duncan, 2010), organically informed intervention.

  Even prolonged classic meditation practice has its limitations. As Zen teacher Joko Beck has warned, the meditation cushion can become a parking lot. Critical aspects of experience remain unconscious, in a dissociative process John Welwood (2002) has called “spiritual bypassing.” Experienced meditators are not immune from such blind spots. Buddhist meditation teacher Jack Kornfield observed, “there were major areas in my life, such as loneliness, intimate relationships, work, childhood wounds, and patterns of fear, that even very deep meditation didn’t touch” (1998, p. 38). Therapists can help people remain mindful of how their unconscious is leading them deeply into core organizers that need attention when difficult or chaotic material arises. In his book A Path With Heart, Kornfield (1993) recommends Hakomi texts and methods when one’s ability to progress with classic meditation is compromised by unconscious emotional barriers.

  Regulation of Attention Processes

  Through inviting the client’s attention processes toward a calm, open, and compassionate attitude, the therapist models an expansive consciousness, repeatedly acknowledging the reality of various parts of the client as they arise, but never losing sight of the bigger picture.

  The regulation of the bigger picture in terms of attention processes is a fundamental task for the Hakomi therapist. It requires that the therapist track the client’s state of consciousness from moment to moment, specifically to distinguish between reactive, habitual, and automatic (identified) reactions versus those where the internal observer (mindfulness) is present.

  Becoming mindful is not always easy. Some people need quite a bit of help to learn how to witness to their own experience. Even experienced meditators may unwittingly move away from painful or difficult psychological experiences. Hakomi therapists, therefore, function to actively shepherd consciousness by gently disrupting and redirecting automatic patterns of experience in favor of felt, present experience. We study when our clients are in the grip of automatic behavior or outdated maps of reality, watching for when they are being reactive, rather than mindful or responsive.

  Being reactive shows up in terms of clients identifying with a part or self-state of the ego. They act and talk as if they are sadness. They are anger. They are fused, blended, or hijacked by a part of their inner multiplicity (Goleman, 1996; Schwartz, 1995). This is different from being present to one’s experience and able to notice and report on it without losing contact with it: “I notice sensations around my mouth and neck, and they have the quality of sadness . . . no, more like grief.” Or, “I notice the muscles in my arms and stomach tensing up, and wanting to strike out. And there is a sense of unfairness coming up, and memories of a second grade teacher that are not quite clear.” These reports reveal the person is in a mindful self-state that exhibits the ability to be present to spontaneous experience, but distant enough to be able to bring awareness and curiosity—qualities of mindfulness along with compassion and wisdom. As with training a muscle, the more often clients access these qualities of what can be termed the essential self (the more the neural nets are strengthened through usage) helps clients more easily find their way back to it. It is also a supportive form of resourcing to help clients into this larger self-state as soon as possible in the process so that more stressful ego states are not unnecessarily empowered and reinforced (Eisman, 2006; Fosha, 2009b; Schwartz, 1995). Over time, the essential self or mindful aspect of consciousness becomes more central as historical wounds weaken their influence on present-moment experiencing.

  Typically, the process will begin with helping clients to slow down and redirecting the focus of their attention toward present experience. When the client is not mindful, the therapist’s job is to intervene in ways that coax forward the client’s internal observer and essential self-qualities. While the initial phase of the therapy allows clients to tell their stories, the therapeutic phase moves into the depth area of core narrative beliefs or filters that characterize the storyteller. When deepening into core material, therapists particularly learn to track for indicators—the external, unconscious mannerisms that give us clues about the client’s core material (Chapter 3)—including gestures, posture, quality of concentration, gaze, patterns of tension, tone of voice, and so forth. By tracking these cues, it is possible to direct the client’s attention to those points in the process where the therapist sees evidence of limiting, formative experiences.

  Significant emotional memories are often activated when people become mindful. These patterns, encoded in implicit memory, take longer to light up than their better-known cousins, verbal or explicit memories, with which we are more familiar. For this reason, when we invite a client to mindfully stay with an experience, it may initially seem as though nothing new is emerging. At this stage, we may need to encourage our clients to linger beyond a point where they would not otherwise do so. If we persist in this way, after what may take up to several minutes, we can expect to see them undergo a distinct shift in their state of consciousness, as they settle into a mindful state, with their attention focused in the here and now. The emergency emerges, as Perls used to say, as the normally unconscious disposition toward increased wholeness leads the client deeper into core material, as the safe and mindful state of the therapeutic bubble is stabilized.

  A foundational job for the Hakomi therapist is
closely tracking and responding to the client in the service of stabilizing this process. This is crucial, because even if one starts with a focus on present experience, the client’s attention can rapidly become occupied with associated thoughts that lead away from embodied experience. This can be particularly true for someone who highly values verbal understanding, as Daniel Stern describes:

  Often when the (psychodynamically well-trained) patient starts to tell about a present moment, as soon as he comes upon a sensation, feeling, image, or word that leads to an associative pathway, he is likely to take that path. This means the exploration of the experienced-as-lived gets interrupted by associative work that leads away from the original present moment. (2004, p. 138)

  This tendency can short-circuit the deepening of focused attention. The Hakomi therapist can counteract this, if an object seems connected to limiting beliefs, through actively regulating the client’s attention, using the technique of staying with and deepening of focused attention (see Chapter 15).

  Once mindfulness is stabilized, the client’s process tends to unfurl itself. This unfolding is supported by spaciousness on the part of the therapist. In fact, being unobtrusive is part of the art of Hakomi: “when the client is dealing with something new and surprising, and usually emotional, the client needs time to think and feel. This is the time when being silent is the most helpful thing a therapist can do” (Kurtz, 2006, p. 5).

  Conclusion

  The healing qualities of a mindful state of consciousness have been understood for millennia within Eastern wisdom traditions. Today, mindfulness seems destined to occupy a permanent place of importance in Western psychology as well. The growing interest in its use in therapy may also herald the emergence of a more unified model of psychotherapy, suggests Christopher Germer: “Mindfulness might become a construct that draws clinical theory, research, and practice closer together, and helps integrate the private and professional lives of therapists” (Germer et al., 2005, p. 11).

  Aside from its therapeutic value for clients, the practice of mindfulness produces tangible benefits for therapists. “Meditating therapists often report feeling more ‘present,’ relaxed, and receptive with their patients if they meditate earlier in the day” (Germer et al., 2005, p. 18). There are many ways to integrate mindfulness into therapeutic work. “The meditating therapist can relate mindfully to his or her patients within any theoretical frame of reference, including psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, family systems, or narrative psychotherapy” (p. 18). This is a core skill for therapists since working so closely with many different clients tends to evoke many parts in the therapist that serve as valuable countertransference information, but will derail the therapy if the therapist becomes fused or blended with them. Thus, in Hakomi, the mindfulness of the therapist is not simply desirable, but is a fundamental ingredient in the therapeutic process. The emphasis on nonjudging awareness of present experience by both therapist and client informs every aspect of the Hakomi method.

  Perhaps this is the distinctive contribution of the Hakomi approach—the use of mindfulness as the very foundation and main tool of the therapeutic encounter, as opposed to an adjunct activity.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Experimental Attitude in Hakomi Therapy: Curiosity in Action

  Maci Daye

  HUMAN BEINGS ARE hardwired to explore. Our dogged pursuit of knowledge is fueled by the biological imperative to make sense of ourselves and our world (Johanson, 1988). In psychology, for example, researchers assiduously test theories regarding human behavior, while clinicians wrestle with the vexing question: Can people change, and, if so, how? Ron Kurtz devoted his life to answering this question by conducting experiments in the therapy office instead of the lab. A scientist by trade, Kurtz imported an experimental attitude into his exploration of human change processes. Accordingly, Hakomi involves observing behavior, making guesses about underlying processes, and conducting live experiments to discover a person’s most deeply held, limiting beliefs about life. The assumption is that these core organizers of experience may hold repetitive, self-defeating behaviors or experiences in place. Change occurs when core organizers are made conscious and transformed. Kurtz explains:

  The essential process is to create the conditions that will bring normally inaccessible, unconscious beliefs and habits into consciousness, beliefs and habits that are inaccurate in some significant way that causes unnecessary suffering. For example, an unconscious belief that one is not attractive or worthy. Ordinary people operate on the basis of unconscious beliefs like these. These beliefs act to maintain habits that keep the beliefs alive. Experiments done with the client in mindfulness are what we use to bring those beliefs into consciousness and to evoke the memories and experiences associated with them. (2003, p. 5)

  Making Guesses

  While scientists are trained to remain objective and emotionally distant from their subjects, Hakomi therapists get up close and personal. They track nuances in affect and behavior, then try these on to determine which unconscious beliefs are likely causing the client to act this way. During sessions, Hakomi therapists ask themselves:

  1. What stands out in the client’s presentation?

  2. How does he or she sit and speak?

  3. What facial expressions, gestures, and other movements keep reappearing?

  The therapist then wonders:

  4. What need is being met by this behavior? (That is, what is this person trying to get or keep away by acting this way?)

  5. What life stance or attitude is reflected physically, in the shape and movement of the person’s body?

  6. What life experiences would engender this attitude? (That is, what didn’t this person get enough of as a child? What developmental processes were likely interrupted?)

  This process of making precise observations and speculating on the formative events that gave rise to the client’s manner is hardly a detached endeavor. Rather, it is an attempt to join with the client by sensing what she is likely experiencing on the inside. This empathy both strengthens the client-therapist alliance and informs the therapeutic strategy.

  Entering a person’s inner world requires an open mind but, more importantly, an open heart that is free of condemnation. It also requires some literacy with the indicators of unconscious processes, since the unconscious communicates through voice tone, facial expression, gestures, and sensations rather than through words (Kurtz, 2002b). Yet “every person broadcasts information about his inner world. . . . If a listener quiets his neocortical chatter . . . he will catch sight of what the other sees inside that personal world, start to sense what it feels like to live there” (Lewis et al., 2000, p. 169).

  Types of Experiments and Therapeutic Rationale

  There are well over 30 standard Hakomi experiments, although some of the best experiments are created on the spot. (For a more detailed discussion of the kinds of experiments used in Hakomi therapy, see Chapter 16.) In general, verbal experiments involve offering a potentially nourishing statement (“You’re a good person”) to the client to see if it is accepted or rejected, as well as taking-over inner voices that serve to keep such statements out (“Yeah, right!”). The therapist may also externalize ruminating thoughts or differing aspects of an internal conflict that create noise in the client’s system.

  Physical experiments involve making adjustments to the client’s posture, shaping the body to represent an attitude or belief, having the client repeat a spontaneous gesture, or taking over a blocked impulse. For example, the therapist may elongate the client’s arms in a gesture of reaching out, or hold them back, in effect, taking over whatever mechanism is blocking expression of the impulse. The therapist may also apply pressure to some part of the body, mimicking any tension reported there. This allows the client to study underlying processes more directly, since bodily tension often serves to keep feelings and memories out of awareness.

  Regardless of which experiment is used, the intention is to access core material—emotionally
charged memories stored in the implicit (emotional, intuitive) memory system of the client’s unconscious (Kurtz, 2002b). Specifically, the therapist helps the client become mindful and begins the experiment by asking, “What happens when . . . ?” The experiment is conducted and the client reports on her automatic reactions. Implicit memories and their resultant beliefs presumably condition these reactions. Once these beliefs are brought to light, new experiences are offered that expand limiting, historical ones. According to William James, “Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined—it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover” (1890, p. 127). Olendzki states, “Meditation has much in common with the scientific enterprise of empirical observation. One is simply regarding as objectively as possible the data of passing phenomenological experience, using the apparatus of direct introspective awareness rather than the microscope or telescope” (2005, p. 244).

  Implicit Processes

  According to Germer, “Cognitive Psychology is undergoing a ‘second cognitive revolution’: a new understanding that much of what we think, feel, and do is the consequence of unconscious, ‘implicit’ processes” (2005, p. 21). For example, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) cite numerous studies indicating that mood states and higher-order processes, such as planning and judging, occur automatically in response to unconscious cues. This is because consciousness, like memory, is a limited-capacity system. It can only attend to one cognitive process at a time. For economy, biologically adaptive shortcuts have evolved to conserve our brainpower. Rather than consciously determining our responses to events, an unconscious appraisal and response process is set in motion by a single visual, auditory, or somatic cue. (Computer buffs will recognize the similarity to a macro, which allows frequently used or repetitive sequences of keystrokes to be performed automatically through the prompt of a single function key.)