by Halko Weiss
nonviolence: One of the principles of the work that respects the wisdom of living organic systems to know what they need. A way of working that favors going with the flow, accepting what is, paying attention to the way things “want” to go, supporting rather than confronting defenses, and providing a safe setting in which clients will feel free to explore what is most important from their own perspective.
ordinary consciousness: Normal, everyday, outwardly oriented, goal-directed, narrowly focused awareness ruled by habits and routines in space and time that is appropriate and useful for many tasks.
organicity: One of the principles, the assumption that organic living systems have a “mind” of their own with the capacity to be self-organizing, self-directing, and self-correcting when all the parts are communicating within the whole. Hakomi therapy assumes and nurtures these capacities as central to growing, healing, and transformation processes.
organization of experience: The creative way in which the mind or imagination filters, structures, or transforms the givens of reality in implicit memory to control conscious and unconscious experience and expression in the individual.
principles: The basic, foundational assumptions of Hakomi therapy concerning living systems in general and therapy in particular, taken from contemporary philosophy of science and ancient spiritual traditions. They are unity, organicity, mind-body holism, mindfulness, and nonviolence. What makes any particular method or technique Hakomi is whether it participates in and reflects the principles.
probe: A verbal or nonverbal experiment in mindfulness in which clients are invited to witness whatever spontaneously arises in them in response to potentially nourishing words or actions. The usual form for a probe is, “What do you experience when I say these words . . . [pause] . . . [the words said]?” or “What do you become aware of when I do [or you do] this action . . . [pause] . . . [the action]?” Whatever report issues from the probe then becomes the next part of the deepening thread that is mindfully processed.
process: The general stages Hakomi therapy sessions normally progress through—establishing safety through contact and loving presence, mindfulness, accessing, deepening, processing, transforming around new beliefs, integrating, and completing.
processing: Inviting mindfulness through accessing and maintaining mindfulness through deepening leads to the stage of processing where core material is mindfully discovered, more inclusive core beliefs are experimented with, and barriers to such new transformations are dealt with.
riding the rapids: A state of consciousness characterized by a diminishing of mindfulness, uncontrollable emotional release, spontaneous movements and tensions, and waves of memory and feeling often combined with the use of tension and posture to control the flow of feeling.
self-states: When a person’s seat of consciousness is characterized by the grounded bare awareness, compassion, and wisdom of deep mindfulness, he or she can be said to rest or reside in a different neural net than the historically conditioned ego and its multiplicity of parts. This is a state that theorists such as Almaas, Eisman, Monda, Schwartz, and others recommend as healing or whole in itself, and optimal for the healing of wounded ego states.
sensitivity cycle: Stages in the continuing flow of increasingly efficient functioning. Clarity leads to the possibility of effective action, which sets up the possibility of organic satisfaction and nourishment, which may lead to relaxation of tensions mobilized around the original need, and the chance for greater clarity about what the next need may be that the system is ready to orient toward.
taking over: A Hakomi technique in which the therapist takes over or does something as precisely as possible that the client is already doing for himself or herself. Taking over can be physical (taking over the holding in of shoulders), verbal (taking over voices clients hear inside themselves saying things such as, “Don’t let others get close”), active (taking over the holding back of an angry punch), or passive (taking over a reaching movement with the arms). The technique is normally an experiment done while inviting mindfulness in the client except during riding the rapids when it is simply used to support spontaneous behavior.
tracking: The therapist pays close attention to spontaneous or habitual physical signs and changes that may reflect present feeling or meaning in the client at each stage of the process.
transformation: In terms of working with the client’s transference or organization of experience, transformation is said to occur when the client can organize in some currently realistic aspect of life that he or she has heretofore organized out due to some painful developmental wounding. Nothing is removed from the client’s present organization, but new possibilities are added in, thus enhancing the organicity of the person’s system while widening his or her perception and expectation of what is possible.
unity: The most inclusive of all the principles that maintains that everything exists within a complex web of interdependent relationships with everything else and that there is a force in life, often called negentropy, that strives to bring about greater wholeness and harmony from component parts and disorganization.
window of tolerance: A concept from the trauma work of sensorimotor psychotherapy that refers to keeping the activation of a client’s nervous system within a workable range between hyper- and hypoactivation that precludes the client from dissociating or becoming retraumatized.
witness: That part of mindful consciousness that can simply stand back and observe inner experience without being blended or fused with it. It allows what was once subject to become object and permits growth toward increased complexity.
APPENDIX 2
Praxis: Annotated Case Illustrations
Karen A. Baikie, Phil Del Prince, and Greg Johanson
Missing Experience
Karen A. Baikie
Cheryl is a 43-year-old single female. She has never married. She was the firstborn child in her family. When Cheryl was 22 months old, her four-month-old sister died of sudden infant death syndrome. The family was grief stricken, and from what we can ascertain, Cheryl was left alone as her parents grieved. She feels that she carries the family’s grief and is always sad. About 18 months later, another daughter, Sharon, was born. Five years ago, there was a family rift between Sharon and Cheryl. Despite Cheryl’s efforts to repair the relationship with her sister, Sharon refuses to speak to her. Cheryl still sees her parents, as does Sharon, but the parents do not speak of one daughter to the other. Cheryl carries enormous grief over the loss of her relationship with Sharon, as well as intense grief over the loss of her relationship with her two young nephews. This is particularly painful for Cheryl as she has no children of her own.
We have been working on Cheryl’s grief in therapy. Cheryl cries for her lost relationships as well as her “lost life” all the time, but the grief never seems to end. We have observed that as Cheryl begins to touch her sadness, she quickly pulls herself out of it by either going into mental processes or by taking a big breath and interrupting the natural flow of tears. She also feels very alone in her sadness and in her life. Some of her core limiting beliefs include: “It’s my fault”; “I’m not good enough”; “I’m all alone”; and “Nobody cares about me.” In this session, we find a way to take over the internal voices and physical tension that cut Cheryl off from her feelings. The therapist also provides a missing experience for Cheryl—that of having someone present as she fully experiences her sadness. This enables Cheryl to experience a satisfying, completed grief process for the very first time.
Crossing the Nourishment Barrier
During the week Cheryl had an experience in which she felt exactly the same feeling of deep sadness she felt when she used to walk away from Sharon’s house. She would cry all the way to the car. The current experience triggered the belief that no one cared about her. In the session, we explore the sadness and the pattern in which she pulls herself out of the sadness as soon as she touches it by going into thinking. We track the voices that block her sadness eac
h time it hurts too much. She notices that each time she begins to feel sad, she hears words that take her out of the feeling. Cheryl is by now very familiar with mindfulness and Hakomi experiments, so we experiment with Cheryl saying, “It’s really sad—no one’s here for me,” and the therapist taking over the voices that respond, “That’s just how it is. . . . You’ve got to get used to it. . . . You haven’t got this yet. . . . You’ll never get this.” This enables her to begin to stay with the sadness longer. She begins to feel how very sad it was and how deeply alone she felt as a child.
CLIENT: It’s really sad. No one’s there for me [tears]. [Hakomi therapists are trained to hear these absolute statements as limiting core beliefs. Presumably the client’s neural attractors, or core organizers, are filtering out experiences to the contrary, since life usually offers some opportunities for connection.]
THERAPIST: Yeah. It is really sad. [Nonetheless, the therapist contacts the client’s felt sense of sadness, rather than pointing out exceptions or enjoining Cheryl to look on the bright side.]
C: It’s just me.
T: It’s just very alone, huh? Really alone? [In the early part of a Hakomi session, the focus is on establishing a strong therapeutic alliance. Because the client is embedded in a perspective that she is alone, the therapist contacts her words very precisely, in effect, demonstrating, “I’m with you and I get what your experience is like.”]
C: I have to keep it that way. It’s just me. [Child part emerging. The client has started to speak in a higher pitch and sounds more absolute, indicating that she is entering the child state of consciousness.]
T: There’s just you, and you’re only little, and there’s nobody there. [Inflections of the magical stranger. As the magical stranger, the therapist takes on the quality of a curious and compassionate adult ally who understands and cares about the child’s experience. She uses the present tense to help Cheryl stay in the regressed state.]
C: [Big breath.] And I have to be strong and be alone and no one would want to be with me. [Wave of tears, but at the same time trying to pull back from feelings.]
T: Part of you believes that you have to be strong? [The therapist acknowledges that Cheryl has both a young part that feels lonely and very sad, and another part that is trying to be grown up and strong. She hypothesizes that being strong is an adaptive strategy to cope with being alone.]
C: I’m trying . . . [big breath] . . . maybe I don’t have to be.
T: So what tells you that? . . . That maybe you don’t have to be strong. [The statement “Maybe I don’t have to be” indicates that Cheryl is aware that there may be an alternative to her default strategy of being strong. The therapist invites Cheryl to notice how she is getting this information on the inside. This marks an important phase of the work, when the client begins to notice how the solution she devised when she was little made sense back then but is now preventing her from having the support she longs for.]
C: But then what would happen?
T: Part of you is scared about what would happen if you hadn’t been strong?
C: Then I’d just be nothing. [The client has now uncovered the fear that keeps the strategy in place: If she stopped being strong, she wouldn’t matter. If the therapist had asked, “Why do you have to be strong?” Cheryl would likely have offered a more conceptual answer. Likewise, by encouraging Cheryl to notice what is telling her “maybe you don’t have to be strong,” the therapist is following Cheryl’s intrinsic hunch that there might be a more satisfying alternative to “being strong and alone.” If the therapist had tried to persuade Cheryl to accept that possibility before the unconscious fear was made conscious, she would have initiated a subtle power struggle between herself and the part of Cheryl that needs to matter.]
T: It’s the kind of strength that makes you feel like you matter, huh? [The therapist’s positive and compassionate tone lets Cheryl’s strong part know that the therapist understands and respects its intentions. It also helps Cheryl understand herself better.]
C: I know that I just had to be strong. And just be alone.
T: So what if I was to do that part for you? Is that okay? [Therapist extends the verbal taking-over experiment to take over this voice too. Cheryl understands this kind of experiment well, so she sets herself up mindfully. The therapist, after preparing, says] . . . You have to be strong.
C: I don’t want to be.
T: You have to be strong. You have to be on your own.
C: I don’t want to be. [The therapist is using a verbal taking-over experiment in which she is replicating the words the strong part uses to maintain its dominant position in the client’s inner ecology. With this function supported by the therapist, the client is free to experience and give voice to her protest position.]
T: Stay with the energy of that voice for a moment. [After a small pause, the therapist repeats the taken-over words] . . . You have to be strong. You have to be on your own.
C: It’s not fair.
T: [Changes tone of voice.] No, it’s not fair. . . . See if you can feel that “no” inside you, the sense that it’s not fair. [By asking the client to stay with the “no,” the therapist is helping Cheryl feel the aspects of her experience that are habitually eclipsed by the strong part.]
C: I feel like I’ll burst. Really tired around my neck.
T: A lot of holding, huh? [The client is becoming aware of how much tension she carries in her neck in an effort to be strong and to avoid being in contact with the part that doesn’t want to be.]
C: It’s unfair, but, oh well.
T: So now the “unfair” collapses, huh? [The client shrugs off the growing awareness that she has made an unfair deal with herself.]
C: Then it goes back to all that, you know, “Deal with it.” [Living systems maintain coherence by establishing automatic and rigid responses to new possibilities. As the client starts to unhinge from her strategy, other internal parts convince her that she has to deal with it whether it is fair or not. Notice that the therapist is not talking the client out of her experience. Instead, she is helping Cheryl view and map her system from the inside. The therapist trusts that as the client brings more consciousness to her self-organization, she is making the once automatic and unconscious habit to “be strong,” conscious and voluntary. This increases the likelihood that the client will eventually avail herself of other, more satisfying options when it is safe and appropriate to do so.]
T: [Therapist speaks more directly to the child part.] I understand that it was very hard to be angry when everyone around you was sad. Because it was unfair and you were angry about that. [An acknowledgment with the inflection of the magical stranger, and continuing as the magical stranger.]
C: [Crumpling face. Big distress.]
T: . . . Yeah . . . just too much.
C: [Shaking head.] I just never got a look in.
T: Yeah, you never got a look in. There wasn’t space for you. Nobody was there for you. That kind of made you mad? [The therapist is offering the child experiences of care and understanding that were needed but unavailable when the client was little. This is the kind of missing experience Hakomi therapists offer to redress developmental injuries.]
C: [More tears.] I don’t want to be on my own [child voice].
T: You don’t want to be strong on your own anymore? [The therapist is helping the client see that it is not just being alone that is too much, but also being strong as a compensatory strategy.]
C: [Big tears.] I can’t be strong anymore. It’s just pushing at me everywhere.
T: You’re feeling pressure, pushing. . . . How are you feeling that inside? [The therapist is continuing to help the client create a somatic map of the pressure she holds to keep her needs from pressing into consciousness.]
C: Across here [forehead] and here [throat] and across here [back of neck and shoulders]. I just clench up.
T: So there’s tightening in your body. Where is it the strongest? [The accessing question “Where is it the stronges
t?” directs the client’s awareness to her present, felt experience and is another way Hakomi therapists manage consciousness. The answer will also help the therapist determine how best to take over the tension later.]
C: Up here [top of neck].
T: Is it all right if I come around and just try something? [As Cheryl nods, the therapist comes around to side, and slowly and cautiously takes over tension and pressure with a hand on the back of Cheryl’s neck. Then, as she is holding Cheryl’s tension, the therapist adds the words] You have to be strong. You have to do it on your own. [The therapist replicates the client’s self-management strategy by using her hand to create pressure on the back of the client’s neck.]
C: [Body collapses. With the therapist standing in as a surrogate manager, the client is safe enough to encounter the collapse underneath her compensated strength.]
T: It’s kind of like it’s all collapsing, huh?
C: [Nods.] There isn’t anybody.
T: [Slowly, with pauses that allow the spaciousness for the words to sink in] . . . It’s too much for a little girl to be so strong. . . . It’s too much to do it on your own when you are only little. . . . You’re mad about that. . . . Nobody was there for you. [The therapist guesses the client is circling back to the theme of being alone, of having no support and of having to always be strong.]
C: No, they weren’t.
T: No, they weren’t. And it’s not fair. [The therapist is giving permission for the client to know the full truth of her experience, which supports the unburdening of the grief and anger she has carried all these years.]