Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy

by Halko Weiss

  Though religion remained important in the life of the country, it too was going through a notable period of change. Attending a congregation was a common American expectation in the 1950s, but the 1960s morphed into a period termed post-Puritan and post-Protestant. Conservative elements in the church came to consider themselves under fire by the culture (Ahlstrom, 1972). Into this mix came increasing interest in Eastern spiritualities, new religious movements, and cults (Melton & Moore, 1982). Sociologist Robert Wuthnow (1998) notes that there was a movement away from a spirituality of place (neighborhood, denominational congregations) to a spirituality of seeking, which historian Robert Fuller (2001) argues mapped into an enhanced interest in the historic tradition of those who identified themselves as spiritual but not religious.

  In Western ethics, the teaching and influence of old schools of thought were found wanting due to many of the events listed above. Authoritative ethics drawn from traditional texts accepted by faith, regular ethics based on rules or principles known by reason, and consequential ethics known by cost-benefit calculations all became suspect as postmodern criticisms arose that exposed underlying relativities and power dynamics that served the political and economic power interests of vested groups (Rosenau, 1992). Tipton (1982) researched the emergence of a new form of expressive ethics that valued the quality of personal feelings and situations known through intuition. The new answer to the ethical question “What should I do?” came from asking, “What is happening?” and then responding with the most suitable act. An act was right because it constituted the most fitting response to a highly specific situation, with the most appropriate or honest expression of one’s self. The cardinal virtues of persons considered morally creditable became sensitivity of feeling and intuition of the needed situational response. Resolution of disagreements came through exchanging discrepant intuitions within ongoing relationships until greater empathy, understanding, and consensus emerged (Barstow, 2005). This approach fit well with the emerging influence of feminist ethics emphasizing relationships as opposed to rules (Gilligan, 1982).

  The popular media raised critiques of conventional positions through books, movies, songs, clothes, and lifestyles that glorified the emergence of the youth culture, complicated notions of “bad guys,” showed aspects of life previously kept in the shadows, and supported values of open sexuality, passion, concreteness, and existential immediacy. Antiestablishment heroes and heroines, violence, and more became standard fare in movies and later in television (Johanson, 2010a; Reich, 1970).

  Leaders in education, as holders of the tradition, were discredited as having little to say and little of importance to actually do in relation to the crises all around them. The inherited faith in the American Dream meme (Johanson, 1999b)—that America was part of a divinely ordered millennial movement making sure progress toward perfecting the individual, nation, and world—was weakened and thrown into doubt (McLoughlin, 1978; Wuthnow, 2006). The door had been opened to exploring new alternatives.

  The door was kept open through the promise of small groups and support outside the family, and a desire for a unified sense of life stemming from the painful split between a meaningful sense of purpose and a seemingly valueless science and industry that structured the compartmentalization of life and the breakdown of community (Naylor, Willimon, & Oesterberg, 1996). Largely ignored religious fundamentalists (Ammerman, 1993), as well as New Agers of many stripes, sought to weave a larger unity (Ellwood, 1979). Wuthnow notes that the overall thrust of the 1960s was to make individuals work hard to figure out their own lives. There was a new freedom to exercise choice in an open marketplace of ideas and lifestyles where “freedom of choice meant exposing oneself to alternative experiences” (Wuthnow, 1998, p. 83). Overall, in almost every field there was a heightened sense of exploring and experimenting that contrasted with the 1950s’ sense of wanting to have order, stability, and economic opportunity following the chaos and devastation of the world wars (Halberstam, 1993).

  In Europe, things followed a similar course. After two devastating world wars that consumed almost all cultural resources in many parts of the world, the forces of cultural and political change in the 1960s attempted to give expression and voice to the emerging popular undercurrent. With France at the forefront, the movement was predominantly political at first (the social revolution of 1968). Along with what was happening in America, it became known as the counterculture movement. Even though its political branch, charged by another catastrophe, the Vietnam War, was set to become a powerful force, it was its “soft” face that would forever change the ways of people’s lives in the West. To understand its spirit, it is important to realize how authoritarian the social structure had been for centuries, politically, culturally, and spiritually. Feudalistic stratification of European societies had left the individual bereft of much personal expression.

  It is also important to note that the spirit of the 1960s described here brought alive a popular undercurrent that had shown its vitality early in the 20th century in central Europe when the “reform movement” tried to shake off the confines of an authoritarian era that didn’t attend to basic human and social needs (Marlock & Weiss, 2006; Marlock & Weiss, with Young & Soth, 2015). At that time, a great number of new approaches to communal living, health, body awareness, and personal spirituality had taken hold among the young and well educated. In this climate, Elsa Gindler and Wilhelm Reich, two defining pioneers of body psychotherapy, had each inspired a lineage of schools that are still defining avant-garde resources for many health professionals today.

  The popular undercurrent we are describing here was given graphic, exaggerated expression in the 1998 Hollywood movie Pleasantville, in which two teenagers of the 1990s miraculously end up in the 1950s as they are watching a TV series from that time. They become members of a lovingly caricatured family and small-town community mirroring “perfect” America when it was still untouched by the extravagant chaotic 1960s. Director Gary Ross illuminates the leap of 40 years from middle-class conformity and uncritical acceptance of standard values to more individuality and personal meanings by initially setting that time in black and white. As the protagonists come alive sexually, emotionally, and mentally with more open possibilities and mysteries before them, color slowly finds its way to the screen.

  What gave color to the counterculture as described above was emotionally expressive music, alternate ways of living and relating, sexual and spiritual freedom, personal growth, and personal ethics. The liberation from perceived bonds of orthodoxy was often naive, excessive, and indulgent—for instance, when it came to drugs. Nevertheless a group of social value systems advanced like feminism, ecological awareness, the primacy of love, the freedom to explore one’s potential, critical self-reflection, and a philosophical attitude to life that could be called postmodern—meaning the embracing of multiple perspectives—and much more flexibility in meeting life’s choices. It indeed shook individuals free to be responsible for their own life and deeds. Scholar Timothy Miller called those swept up in this incoherent and multifaceted movement seekers of meaning and value.

  While the media was giving excessive attention to the more sensational manifestations of this phenomenon, like drug consumption and promiscuity, the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist) was creating a more serious and intellectually rigorous base that reflected the substantial shift in consciousness outlined here. An expanding consciousness emerged that Wilber would call “centauric,” since it was more clearly a mind-body sensibility, as opposed to the limited rationality of the modern period. It called upon individuals to become aware of their own nature as self-directed organisms, calling forth internal knowledge and consciousness to make personal ethical choices.

  While contemporary trends in philosophy were mirroring such developments (structuralism, deconstructionism, postmodernism), those issues were not meant to be kept as mental exercises by the flower-power generation. The new undercurrent of consciousness encouraged real moment-to-moment personal experi
ence. As opposed to Hegelian philosophy, whose idealism was thought to be abstract, general, dispassionate, and objective, this forming new awareness of the Zeitgeist was fundamentally existential in terms of favoring the concrete, the definite, and the passionate where persons as opposed to gods (Absolute Spirit) were considered responsible for their own actions (Johanson, 2010a). One’s life or “Existence” was not a given or a state, but a ceaseless striving toward actualization, that is, an act.

  Living, let’s say, in San Francisco in the 1960s meant being exposed to a torrent of impressions reflecting the changing times. Books, music, art, lifestyles, and the search for ever-more “far-out” experiences invited young people to look at life differently. Among the many experiences available were a number of spiritual and “therapeutic” practices: meditation, Gestalt therapy, dance, encounter groups, and many more. Here, the apprentice would embark on a journey of being in the present and becoming aware of herself. Therapy was not only for the ones that were suffering anymore, but also for everyone who wished to grow and expand their consciousness. It attracted the attention of a meaningful segment of the counterculture that, in turn, influenced the mainline culture over time.

  Hakomi’s History

  Halko Weiss and Greg Johanson

  Into the cultural milieu of the 1960s, stepped Ron Kurtz, with a background in physics, mathematics, electronics, and Eastern wisdom traditions. Ron completed doctoral work in experimental psychology at Indiana University Bloomington with Estes before becoming interested in psychotherapy. Rather than studying in a traditional psychology school, he consulted a variety of master therapists and evaluated and integrated methods on a pragmatic, eclectic basis through the lens of living systems theory.

  Likewise, students and future faculty attracted to his early workshops were those post-1960s practitioners disgruntled with status quo psychology and its poor outcomes, primed to be attracted to a way of working that honored both contemporary science and ancient wisdom studies, whether it was in accord with standard protocols or not.

  In those early days, experiencing Kurtz’s workshops was magical in many ways: The work was alive and experiential, artistic and poetic, as well as scientifically precise. Changing states of consciousness intensified present-moment awareness in a way that transcended tedious talk or emotional acting out. The slowing down and expectant waiting as practiced in the work potentiated experiments in awareness that allowed persons to study how they organized habitually and automatically around various inputs. Verbal and nonverbal experiments were devised, often from bodily clues, to present precisely the opposite of what a client’s normally unconscious core organizers believed and employed to control both their perception and response. Thus, barriers to organizing in something previously organized out, like support or intimacy, were evoked and made available for further exploration, often with astonishing speed and grace (Johanson, 2015; Stolorow et al., 1987).

  Since experiments were normally set up in a theoretically positive, nourishing form, therapeutic strictures against gratifying were transformed into helping clients study how gratification was defended against. Paradoxically, slowing down, trusting organic wisdom, not pushing for a particular result, supporting defenses as they arose, and encouraging curiosity (Johanson, 1988) and savoring (Kurtz, 1990a; Sundararajan, 2008) moved people along in their process further and faster. A compassionate, nonjudging presence and acute tracking and contacting of present-moment experience, combined with a humor that affirmed one’s creative capacities functioned to unlock the cooperation of the unconscious and foster a spontaneous unfolding (Stream, 1994). There was a fresh, nonviolent easiness to the work that pointed to a new paradigm—change without force—a process that helped people go where they wanted to go at the deepest levels (Kurtz, 1990a).

  How all this went together in a theoretically coherent way was not immediately clear. A number of those who ended up becoming founding trainers of what later became the Hakomi Institute recognized that Kurtz was doing something remarkably effective and right. But when asked how he knew what to do, he was not totally clear, as he was working quite spontaneously, drawing on multiple sources. It was obvious that there were influences from Gestalt, bioenergetics, Pesso Boyden system psychomotor (PBSP), Feldenkrais, NLP, Buddhist and Taoist sources, complex linear systems thinking, and more, but the integration was unique. The work could be characterized as psychodynamic because it worked with core organizers that affect transference, or as a form of cognitive therapy, since it accessed and expanded core organizing beliefs, which meant it was also a way of doing narrative therapy. It was humanistic in its embrace of human potentials; transpersonal in its use of a witnessing state of consciousness. It could work through dreams like Jungians, relational material like psychoanalysts, and through the body like many body-centered methods. But it could not be fully understood or taught under any one of these umbrellas.

  It was about this time that Bandler and Grinder (1975) published their books, The Structure of Magic, that were written after studying master psychotherapists to ascertain if there was any underlying structure to the seeming magic they performed that could be passed on to others. Likewise, we invited Ron to study himself as we also studied him to see if there was any underlying structure we could identify that would help us learn or teach to others. After a number of years of analyzing Ron’s talks and verbatim sessions, such a linear structure was discovered, along with underlying principles, and an identifiable method that could be passed on to others. It was at that point that the Hakomi Institute was founded and in 1980 began to offer workshops and training worldwide.

  The principles, theory, and techniques of the Hakomi method that were discovered and refined form the bulk of this volume. The linear structure Kurtz developed, which consists of establishing the therapeutic relationship (creating the conditions for mindful exploration), accessing (inviting mindfulness), deepening (sustaining mindfulness), processing (mindfully experimenting with transformation through taking in new options), and integration-completion homework (while transitioning back to ordinary consciousness), represents the first therapeutic method to use mindfulness of the mind as the main therapeutic tool throughout a session. It remains the only one today, though there are some that closely approximate it (Ecker & Hulley, 1996), many that integrate aspects of mindfulness (Bobrow, 2010; Germer, 2009; Germer et al., 2005; Hayes, 2005), a number that use mindfulness practice as an adjunct for therapy (Roberts, 2009), and a wealth of those who experiment with teaching mindfulness practice while dealing with a great number of conditions (Johanson, 2009c; R. Siegel, 2010).

  Ron Kurtz’s Evolution

  After finishing graduate work in experimental psychology and having worked as a technical writer in electronics (he had minored in physics), Kurtz was one of those people diving into the exciting melting pot of ideas and experiences in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. Already familiar with psychotherapy, he joined the crowd of those who would go to workshops and read books, soak up experiences, and then immediately turn around to try their hand at teaching their newly won knowledge to others. At that time, no degrees or licensure were required to do or teach psychotherapy, which, again, had been co-opted by many for the more general cause of personal growth and transformation. If someone could inspire a group through brilliance and effectiveness, he or she could also be accepted as a teacher.

  Gestalt therapy was the big thing at the time. Ron’s friend Stella Resnick, a clinical psychologist teaching at San Jose State University, whom he had known from his Indiana days, took him under her wing and led “sensitivity groups” with him that were infused with her knowledge about Gestalt therapy processes. Much of what Ron learned at that time, and that still influences the form and spirit of Hakomi work, is based on those first years as he developed his approach.

  Through Charlotte Selver and Fritz Perls, the Gindler tradition had survived the war decades and resurfaced with intensity. The work was about being in the moment and being aware. Eastern thought ha
d entered this tradition early in the century during a time of great receptivity for the East (see Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha). And here it was again, now with new teachers like Shunryu Suzuki, who also ended up in San Francisco. The present-centeredness of humanistic psychology with its emphasis on experiential elements, emotions in particular, was a powerful assault on classical psychoanalytic approaches that had relied heavily on mental processing, reasoning, and insight. The wake-up cry was, “Lose your mind and come to your senses! Don’t talk about experiences—have them!”

  Because Gestalt was an obvious heir to psychoanalysis—as it builds on a psychodynamic understanding of self-organization— Freud, Jung, and Reich were also to be found on a seeker’s bookshelf.

  Ron’s great excitement had started with his experiences at a workshop with Will Schutz (1969), one of the godfathers of group encounters, also steeped in the appreciation of moment-to-moment experience, and other workshops that were part of a colorful marketplace of experimental offerings. His exposure to Gestalt had solidified and substantiated his own style. Now he won a teaching job at San Francisco State University that he interpreted as an invitation to open the door to the world of experience for his students.

  Buddhism was also leaving its mark on the period. A Vipassana retreat had introduced Ron to mindfulness, which he put to use when teaching at San Francisco State. It was a means for him to help people to “really be in” their experience. With his own long familiarity with his body from doing yoga, Ron had a talent and penchant for translating mindfulness into practical exercises. While the true meaning of what mindfulness has to offer was certainly not yet fully grasped and reflected, it started to set the tone of Ron’s style of working: slow, in-the-moment, with detailed attention to internal events and acceptance toward all phenomena perceived inside as reality by the one exploring.