by Halko Weiss
We also encourage working collaboratively (Duncan, 2010). By participating as a team, we support ripening without forcing. We might ask, for instance, “Does it seem like you have shared enough of your story, so that now is a good time to become mindful of the anxiety that’s up?” We wait respectfully for the right moment to offer a probe or nourishment. “Is this a good place where we can do an experiment in mindfulness that studies what the anxiety does when it is offered hope?”
By following present-moment experience—that which is presently organized and contains impulses to reorganize or transform—we convey to the client that we trust his own process. By naming what is here and now, we are following, and at the same time encouraging the client to follow her own inner state. “Some emotion arises, huh. . . [?]” “So, your head straightens a bit when you say that. . . [?]” “Some part of you is not so sure. . . [?]” (The [?] is a symbol for a shift in the therapist’s voice that suggests the client might want to be curious about this instance of present-moment experience, and explore it more fully while the therapist simply overhears what is going on.) When we say these things as therapists, we are following our own curiosity, but are most interested in engaging the client’s curiosity (Johanson, 1988). To paraphrase Winnicott (1971): It does not really matter how much therapists know, as long as they can keep it to themselves.
Hakomi is assisted self-study. The whole process involves trust in the client’s search for wholeness (Monda, 2000). It depends on our ability as a therapist to be willing to not be the one who knows, but to unfailingly befriend whatever arises. “Oh, some kind of ocean air smell comes up. . . [?]” Emerging insight comes from this region of not knowing. “Stay with the smell. Let’s see if it leads us anywhere.” By bringing friendly attention, loving presence, and acceptance, we are freed of an agenda, which then allows us to follow our intuition (Marks-Tarlow, 2012). We don’t have to be right. “Oh, so someone is not pushing you. It is more like they are calling to you. . . [?]”
At times in Hakomi, we find that we must retreat from the leading of our intuition. For example, the therapist may offer a contact statement that is not accurate, or a probe that goes nowhere. When this occurs, she does not press onward; she drops back and saves the session from the pitfalls of so-called client resistance. We track when our leading is wrong, contact that truth, and get back on track by following once again. “Uh, huh. It is not sadness so much as grief. Good. Let’s let the grief have its voice.”
We are following and contacting the body’s messages, its living experience of embodiment (Barratt, 2010), which gives us ongoing, immediate feedback about whether we are in a creative, mindful space or not. When there are strong emotions, we assist the client by inviting him to stay with his feelings long enough to explore and discover their meaning. “How about we listen more to the anger, and get clearer about what wrong it feels such a need to make right?” We follow spontaneous unfolding and expression, always with the intent to assist the client in self-discovery of unconscious beliefs and memories. “Notice that your shoulders come up as you anticipate the interview with your boss.”
One of the keys to following is knowing when to be silent. As Kurtz often said, there are several instances when silence is essential. When a client is integrating something unexpected that has just emerged in consciousness, we are attentive and quiet, letting the client discover and integrate on her own. When a contact statement has just been made, we wait and notice the client’s response in silence, not pushing for any hurried reply. When we offer a probe, we are silent and respectful of the client’s timing, which could be more slow or more hasty. By being silent, unhurried, and present, we create an environment that is safe and attuned, which communicates our trust that significant unfolding is happening. The client’s adaptive unconscious is leading. Silence allows the client to feel attended to, but not interrupted. It allows the therapist time to take in where the process is going. When the process is unfolding, we follow.
Leading
Power is the capacity to have influence. It is the ability to act on behalf of one’s self and for others. The challenge of right use of power and influence is one of the most profound and important we face in our professions, in our cultures, and in our personal growth.
CEDAR BARSTOW, Right Use of Power, 2005
Lao-tzu affirms the paradox that the sage stays ahead of events by following them. This detachment from self-concern from the self-interest of being regarded a leader allows the sage the freedom to be at one with what is happening.
GREG JOHANSON AND RON KURTZ, Grace Unfolding, 1991
Even though listening fully and following constitute an essential aspect of Hakomi that provides the broadest context for its practice, leadership has an important role in each session. It is often necessary as opposed to discouraged or devalued. The use of the word “leading,” however, is qualified because it is not leading in the traditional Western sense.
In the practice of Hakomi, the intent of taking the lead is not to change the direction or the outcome of the client’s ongoing process, but to ensure that it is a mindful, experimental process, not at the mercy of fear-based, unconscious organizers. Thus, taking charge or leading in Hakomi often has to do with managing states of consciousness. When signs of hyper- or hypoactivation are tracked, the therapist takes the lead in bringing the client back within the boundaries of his window of tolerance (Ogden et al., 2006; see Chapter 24). Nor is leading used to impose an agenda upon the content of the session. In this regard, one might call leading in Hakomi a kind of leading within following. It is, therefore, not the kind of leading in which one goes on ahead of the other to light or guide the way. We recognize that, like our clients, we do not really know what lies ahead or where the process should be going.
However, the therapist has an ongoing sensitivity to whether the client’s awareness is turned inward toward present, felt experience, and whether the words used resonate with the truth of the embodied experience. If the words seem distant from the experience, the therapist leads the client back into the bodily present moment. “How do you experience this jealousy in your arms?” If the client is deeply immersed in her experience that seems to be circling, the therapist can lure the client toward meaning. “What would that impulse to reach say if it could use words?” If words and experience seem to reverberate with alive resonance, the therapist allows the process to unfold organically (Johanson, 1996).
Leading is the exercise of specific skills that are acquired through training and rehearsal. With practice, they become both automatic and adaptable. The Hakomi approach to leading is comparable to how jazz improvisation is created. One can think of the client playing the solo instrument and beginning the piece or leading with a theme. The therapist listens closely to sense its essence and direction before joining and supporting the soloist’s statement. Each time the supporting therapist plays a note or phrase, his intention is to acknowledge, deepen, or develop the possibilities introduced by the soloist. Neither musician knows exactly what is going to happen, but they trust that the music will find its form and the various tensions that are produced will come to a satisfactory and nourishing resolution.
The skills used to lead in Hakomi can be described according to their intention (Cole & Ladas-Gaskin, 2007). Some intentions are realized through the combination of a number of skills. For example, the intention of building relationship with the client is realized through loving presence, tracking, contact statements, and acknowledgments. While some of these skills are more passive than others, they all lead the process within the context of gaining the cooperation of the unconscious that establishes the safety and trust to follow deep impulses toward healing. Actively encouraging the presence of the larger or compassionate witness of the client does not change the essential course of the therapy, but makes it markedly more clear and efficient. The signals of organic wisdom that need to be followed become more apparent, and a process for doing so is fostered.
Leading Within Follow
ing
What follows are some brief examples of skills that lead and influence the therapeutic process within the context of following deep movements toward transformation. They are used within the ongoing tension of knowing and not knowing—keeping in mind the intentions mentioned above and the stage of the therapeutic process within a session or course of therapy.
Building Relationship
We don’t know exactly what the client needs from us in the therapeutic relationship. We do know it needs to be based on the truth of present-moment experience, so we often lead by contacting that. “So, a little shy, a little cautious. . .[?]”
Evoking and Modeling Mindfulness
We don’t know how much a person needs to talk about his story in ordinary consciousness to feel safe. We do know we normally need to lead the process toward a mindful, exploratory consciousness, since this is not where inexperienced clients have a habit of going. “Why don’t we hang out with this sense of cautiousness, and maybe it will tell us more about itself.”
Slowing the Process Down
We have no idea what is at the root of the cautiousness in the above example, but we do know we need to stay out of the hurried pace of ordinary consciousness to discover it. “We could both make some guesses about where the sense of caution comes from, but why don’t we just slow things down and allow it to have its own voice? Maybe we can start by exploring how you experience the caution in your body. . .[?]”
Helping the Client Attend to the Present Moment
We don’t know what will gather around this thread of caution, but direct the client to the present-moment experience that is now organized around caution in the service of deepening into its meaning. “So, there is a slight tensing of the arms when you allow the caution to be present. . .[?]” The more experienced a client is with the process, the shorter the therapist’s intervention needs to be. “Ah, some tensing in the arms. . . [?]”
Calling Attention to Something That Has Been Out of Awareness
While we could guess at the meaning behind something like caution, we do know that the way clients manage their experience of such things is habitual or chronic—which means mostly out of their awareness—so we take the lead in contacting those nonverbal, unconscious indicators of management. “And your head turns to the right as you tense. . .[?]”
Deepening the Client’s Experience of the Present Moment
While we respect our clients’ internal wisdom in leading us where it wants to go, we know that the tendency is for clients to come out of a fruitful, mindful state to report their findings, instead of allowing their experience to deepen. Once they begin a mindful exploration (accessing), we act to help them maintain their mindful state (deepening). Sometimes this can be extensive and directive. “See if you can name your experience without having to come out of it to tell me about it. . . [?] What other sensations, thoughts, feelings, muscle tensions, attitudes, or whatever, do you notice gathering around the arms tensing and head turning?” Again, with more experienced clients, we could simply say, “Stay with that” or “Notice anything else.”
Accessing Unconscious Material
While we as therapists follow organic signals from the client to where they lead us, we know that most clients who live in a busy, full world are not sensitive to the importance of seemingly insignificant signals, and so we often lead in calling attention to their possible importance. “Oh, some kind of musty smell comes up. . . [?] Can we just stay with that for a moment?”
Accessing and Exploring Memories
We have no idea what a musty smell connotes for the client, but we know that core organizers of present experience often have historical roots in formative memories frozen in time. This is a tricky place, because the therapist must not suggest any particular memories, but needs to open the way to discovering them. Perhaps questions like, “Is it a familiar smell? Can we allow the smell to bring us back in time to a place where it was first important somehow? Is it an old musty, or something-wet-drying-out musty, or . . . ?”
Helping the Client Find Meaning
When the unconscious offers a spontaneous memory to follow, there is a clinical choice between leading through being what Kurtz called a “magical stranger”—who shows up in the memory and relates to the child as a compassionate, understanding adult who was not there originally—or asking the client’s larger self to relate helpfully to the younger part. Magical stranger: “Oh, you are three years old and your older brother keeps fooling you, and scaring you by inviting you to look at new things that turn out to be scary snakes, or something that looks like a rat that turns out to be a guinea pig, and then he makes fun of you.” Larger or organic self: “Notice what is going on with this younger you? Or maybe have him tell you what is most painful about his situation.”
Comforting and Providing Nourishment
Once the pain of the formative memory is clear, and the younger part’s strategy for dealing with it becomes more obvious, the needed antidote or missing experience usually becomes clearer. The therapist can lead through introducing it, though always without attachment, with an exquisite tracking of whether the person is in accordance, and with an immediate willingness to be corrected. Magical stranger: “So, you really learned how to be cautious about being fooled in new situations, and got very careful about taking invitations from people. You were a very smart little boy who learned how to not trust everybody and let them take advantage of you. And now that you are not back there being suspicious of your brother every day, I can tell you that it is a bigger world out there. Some people will try to trick you sometimes, and it is good to know how to be cautious and protect yourself. But some people are very nice and just want to share nice things with you that will make you happier. So, we have to learn how to look twice at people to check out whether they can be trusted or not.” Larger or organic self: “So what wisdom and truth can you offer this three-year-old you who needs to know the difference between mean older brothers and people who just want to share?”
Integrating the Processes That Engage the Client in the Larger World
Since everyone has a multiplicity of parts that compose a delicate, inner ecology (Schwartz, 1995), it is never clear how the parts worked with in a session will play out in the client’s larger world. It is clear that in the therapy, a skill or defense is never taken away from anyone, but new possibilities previously organized out are added in to make a more complete, more organic system (Johanson, 2015). The therapist can lead in exploring a life-world integration in a number of ways. One might be to suggest, “How about picking one of the troubling examples you have mentioned—your girlfriend wanting you to explore new things in dancing or yoga, or your boss wanting you to try new things—and notice how you organize around those possibilities now. . . [?]”
In each of these endeavors, the therapist takes the lead or does something to influence the client’s consciousness and experience of the process as it unfolds in the present moment. With such a long list of skills to employ, one might imagine a rather busy process, but that is not necessarily so. For example, building relationship might take place through the use of curious, compassionate tracking—which conveys a profound sense of attunement. When performed with skill, it is experienced as being listened to fully and deeply, with connection and understanding that goes beyond listening to words alone. While this is going on, the therapist, through her safe and spacious manner, influences the client in the direction of slowing down. As that slowing down occurs, there will be space for mindfulness and a deeper consciousness of the present moment.
At the same time that contact statements are encouraging mindfulness, trust, and relationship, they also draw attention to present-moment experience and lead the client deeper. With almost every well-made contact statement—for example, “sad now. . .[?]”—there is a pronounced shift in the client’s process; the amiable chatter pauses, the client checks his experience, and then replies, “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do sense a sadness here.”
Thus with a well-chosen word or two, the process is led deeper. This might be followed with an acknowledgment by the therapist in just the right empathetic and accepting voice: “I see your sadness now.” Once again, the experience that was about to be glossed over, lost, or dismissed by the client’s narrative or story line is held in awareness long enough to deepen.
We could also call this deepening a form of accessing (see Chapter 15). Contact statements and acknowledgments have accessed an unconscious feeling and brought it forth into conscious awareness. Simultaneously, the acknowledgment has reached out to assure the client that he has been heard in a deep way and that he is not alone. The therapist might also have noticed the sadness and asserted a more active form of leading. This might require that the therapist intervene in the narrative to suggest an experiment. She might help the client to become mindful and use a theoretically nourishing offering (a verbal or nonverbal probe). An example might be, “Your feelings are safe here.” Such a “little experiment in mindfulness” can help the process deepen, access the barriers to such a notion, or be nourishing.
Going for meaning also does not need to be a busy activity. Sometimes we just sit and let the client find the meaning without helping or getting in the way. We might describe this as “leading by being still.” While we sit, we hold a definite intention and we watch for little signs that the client is working and the process is moving. If we see it bog down and notice worried lines between our client’s brows, we might contact it; for example, “hard work, eh. . . . [?]” Again, it takes merely a word or two. At other times, we might evoke the meaning by asking the client, “What does that sadness say?” or “What kind of sadness is that?” or “What does that sadness remember or imagine?” There are many evocative phrases like this that are designed to direct the client’s attention toward some sort of meaning. The meaning can be found as words, an association, an image, or a memory. The meaning of a feeling is not necessarily a verbal formulation. Memories, images, and felt-sense experiences contain meanings, and within them one may find the words or the personalized, generalized belief, or the unconscious anticipatory structure (Kurtz, 2006) that determines patterns of constraint and suffering in present time.