by Halko Weiss
In the early 1970s, Ron moved to Albany, New York, to open a private practice and to teach and work at a 24-hour crisis center, called Refer Switchboard. Just like other large cities, Albany had its counterculture with all its trappings and a lot of therapy in the air.
As he kept experimenting and solidifying his style, Ron continued seeking his own inspirations, like weeks-long workshops with Moshe Feldenkrais and his student Ruthy Alon, seminars with Al Pesso, and many Rolfing sessions, as well as his own therapy. This is when body psychotherapy started to become a major new influence. His therapists were the bioenergetic analyst Ron Robbins and later John Pierrakos, one of the founders of bioenergetic analysis, trained by Wilhelm Reich.
Here again, Ron’s work aligned itself with a tradition that had its roots early in the century and held the body in high esteem as a cherished vessel of the self. Elsa Gindler, Wilhelm Reich, and others had taken a stand against the dominance the mind had been given since the Enlightenment. Often intuitively, some therapists had continued to nourish this tradition outside mainstream psychotherapy. They kept listening to the body as a source of truth, healing, and the foundations of self. It would take until the end of the century for the larger psychotherapeutic community to realize the fundamental importance of the body when infant research, neurobiology, trauma work, and other sciences began to challenge long-held mainstream assumptions.
In the 1970s, elements from bioenergetics, aspects of the Feldenkrais method, techniques from Pesso, and other inspirations from body therapy slowly started to show up in Ron’s work as they were modified by the defining power of mindfulness and Taoist philosophy. This mindful modification suggested, in contrast to bioenergetic exercises, for instance, that it is a good idea not to oppose powerful forces, but to go along with them and use them. Milton Erickson was one of the therapists who was a master of this strategy through what he called “utilization techniques,” and Ron became a great admirer of his creative and unique style of “going with the flow.”
These influences led to Ron’s unique contribution of taking-over techniques (Chapter 17) that paradoxically serve to help people release their defenses by actually supporting them verbally or nonverbally. Ron also gained experiential and intellectual clarity that this approach was more in line with information-processing models than the older hydraulic or energy ones. In his eyes, clients do not need to yell for 10 years in response to 40 years of frustration once they realize that what was frustrating them is no longer present.
Here we find the beginning of a new therapeutic concept and approach: interventions from bioenergetics, Gestalt, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, and other approaches designed to bring about change and directed toward a specific goal conceived by the therapist had to be rethought. Being directed by specific goals disrupts mindful observation and creates counter forces that make the process more violent and noisy when forces are mobilized to oppose other forces. Lao-tzu suggested as an alternative that one study forces for a long time until they are precisely understood for their functional wisdom (Johanson & Kurtz, 1991). As we see within this book, the general answer and approach that unfolded championed a systemic understanding of internal forces in the spirit of scientific research and experimental attitude (Chapter 11), and toward interventions that would combine an active approach by the therapist with a nonviolent attitude and style (Chapter 12).
The Albany years also brought a surprising change of life’s course for someone who was simply enjoying being a local therapist. Ron’s friendship with the physician and bioenergetic therapist Hector Prestera produced a book on character styles from the body psychotherapy tradition, called The Body Reveals, which turned out to be a huge success (Kurtz & Prestera, 1976).
This led to a life on the authors’ circuit, where Ron presented workshops on character structure and how to work with it all over the country and in Europe. He was invited to private practices, event centers, hospitals, and living rooms, traveling more and more and demonstrating a still quite intuitive way of connecting to fundamental layers of personality very quickly. Observing a person precisely, having him or her become mindful, creating an evocative experiment, and processing the ensuing experience worked extremely well and impressed the participants deeply, though it was their unanswered questions about the structure of the method that led to the mutual discovery process mentioned above that resulted in the birth of the Hakomi Institute.
Ron was also a gifted, charismatic, humorous speaker who could inspire an audience through a clear, insightful, relaxed way of presenting that evoked an informal, warm, safe sense of inclusion that transcended artificial divisions between therapists and clients. Consequently, he started to have an appreciative and interested following that continued to grow by word of mouth.
Ron’s interest and training in science created another thread that was developed over the years. Math and physics came easily to him, and he continued to nourish his understanding of complex, nonlinear living systems in particular (Chapter 5). Gregory Bateson’s groundbreaking final work, Mind and Nature, published in 1979, tied together an understanding of self-organization. Bateson proposed that when the parts within the whole of a system are connected and communicating, that the system is self-organizing, and self-correcting. This insight continued to evolve for Kurtz in the works of Erich Jantsch, Ken Wilber, Francesco Varela, Ilya Prigogine, the scientists at the Santa Fe Institute, and many others. It allowed for a psychological theory of human self-organization that reflects an intelligent and sensitive internal ecology integrated by communication between parts and shaped by internal models of reality (“beliefs,” Chapter 7) based on powerful emotional experiences and the implicitly remembered meanings that came with them, and that continue to influence the present. Such understanding was later to be supported by neuroscience research.
It is one of the characterizing traits of the last century that the rise of cybernetics and computer sciences made both the search for and the representation of complex systems possible. Von Neumann laid ground for this revolution only after World War II, a revolution that has allowed deeper and more realistic views of many objects of science. In psychology, the trend of moving away from causal thinking toward an understanding of complex and nonlinear systems is still struggling to take hold. Equipped with a keen sense of such important cultural momentum, Ron kept studying and integrating this new way of looking at life through the organic lens of self-organization with its emergent properties.
Here, mindfulness became a means not just of having an experience, but of studying the processes of self-organization as they happen from moment to moment in a way that led to the core organizers that created them. The power of an internal observer (suggested by Buddhist psychology) that holds a metalevel and does not become entangled and drawn into the trances of daily life (Wolinsky, 1991) became a hallmark of the evolving Hakomi method. This aspect marks an especially mature understanding of the power of mindfulness. It also reflects the appreciation of the psychological knowledge of the East, embodied by Ron’s guiding figures, such as Meher Baba and Swami Rama. Psychotherapy in the West, of course, is a little over 100 years old, and began by shunning thousands of years of human wisdom in favor of a limited view of objective and materialistic perspectives (Wilber, 1977, 1995).
The Hakomi Institute Growth and Development
In 1980, after a number of years of creative ferment involving many people in Boulder, Colorado—another meeting place of renowned teachers who inspired Ron, along with a whole generation (Ken Wilber, for instance, or Chogyam Trungpa)—Kurtz found himself in Putnam, Connecticut, with a number of young therapists who were intent on assisting him in organizing his way of working into a teachable method and founding an institute that would offer these teachings. Ron Kurtz was the founder and director, with Dyrian Benz, Jon Eisman, Greg Johanson, Pat Ogden, Phil Del Prince, Devi Records-Benz, and Halko Weiss as founding trainers.
The name “Hakomi” (hah-CO-me) was literally dreamed up by Kurtz’s stu
dent David Winter in the summer of 1980. At the time, the work was plainly titled “body-centered psychotherapy.” In the dream, Kurtz handed David a sheet of stationery with the words “Hakomi Institute” written on it. Trained in anthropology, David discovered it was a Hopi Indian word that meant “How do you stand in relation to these many realms?”—an ancient way of asking, “Who are you?” Since both meanings fit perfectly with helping people study how they organize input from various realms of experience, the name was adopted despite its unfamiliarity to English speakers.
The following years were years of composing and building. Curricula, books, articles, a professional journal, many workshops and training courses, business structures, and a growing number of trained therapists started to spread the method throughout the world.
The Hakomi Institute has since contributed to the field of counselor education through its pursuit of excellence as a training institute. Each time in-depth training is done, the trainers revise the curriculum based on what they see happening with the current students. What part of the theory or techniques are they not getting? What method seems to need a finer breakdown to make the parts explicit? What underlying assumption seems to be missing when the student employs a series of techniques? What questions are students still asking? What balance between theory, experiential learning, and practice needs to be struck? How is the relative emphasis on the personhood of the therapist going in relation to professional skill building? Though the international Hakomi faculty of trainers and teachers has grown to some 50 persons in three decades, there are yearly faculty meetings where such curriculum matters are discussed, and a common core of teachings is affirmed.
Since Kurtz did not come to psychotherapy through any one established school, many of the discoveries and processes of Hakomi (explained within this text) took on unique names, though there might be echoes or parallels in other approaches: riding the rapids, sensitivity cycle, accessing, taking over, burdened-enduring, tough-generous, cooperation of the unconscious, probes, tracking, contact, savoring, nourishment barrier, magical stranger, core organizing beliefs, and so forth. These terms have been retained through the years in recognition of Hakomi as a unique integrative approach, although complementary concepts from the wider field of psychotherapy are also referenced within the training context.
The Hakomi Institute began and continued as a training institute for clinical practitioners and for those who wanted to apply its principles in many fields. In the past 30-plus years, the Hakomi method has expanded rapidly. Workshops and training have been conducted throughout the United States and Europe, as well as Canada, Switzerland, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and Inner Mongolia. The Hakomi faculty expanded from the founding trainers to a worldwide faculty who promote and teach the method in their respective localities. In 1993, a professional code of ethics, years in the making, was formally adopted.
In the years following the original development of Hakomi as a teachable method, there were four major sources of inspiration and enrichment. The first is the emergence of additional core concepts. The early and mid-1980s were characterized by the excitement of the (now) senior faculty bringing the work into the world and receiving feedback and insights radiating from the application of the emerging method. Concepts such as the “child” that have since become defining features of Hakomi, were added to the curriculum. With support from the senior trainers, Ron formulated how the work changes when a client moves into the child state of consciousness along with the “magical stranger,” the name given to the role the therapist adopts in such instances (Chapter 18). Another development was jumping out of the system (Chapter 22), where the shift of focus from a lower logical level of conscious representation to a higher one became a hallmark of the method.
The second source was collaboration with Richard Schwartz. The guest of honor at the Hakomi International Conference of 1996 was Richard Schwartz (lovingly adopted into the Hakomi community as “Dick”). Dick came to four subsequent conferences and inspired our elaboration of the unity principle (Chapter 5), and systems thinking, since his method, internal family systems, was miles ahead of ours in its understanding of the systemic aspects of an inner ecology of parts in the psyche. He also helped make more explicit that the witnessing and compassionate aspects of mindfulness implied a larger self-state beyond historically conditioned ego states. His ingenious contributions deepened and refined the practice of our method, as he, in turn, absorbed some key features of Hakomi, such as mindfulness and the somatic perspective.
The third source of enrichment was discourse with groundbreaking scientific research. The 1990s and 2000s, now termed “the decades of the brain,” were filled with exciting and innovative findings in fields that are foundational to Hakomi therapy: mindfulness, neurobiology, attachment theory, trauma therapy, and infant research in particular. Seminal thinkers in these areas were invited to present at our conferences, and fertile exchanges and collaborative relationships were established with Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, Babette Rothschild, Diana Fosha, Stephen Porges, and Thomas Lewis, many of whom gave keynote addresses at our 16 Hakomi conferences.
These exchanges offered a way to understand the neurological underpinnings and relational dynamics responsible for the dramatic changes witnessed in our clients. It seemed that we had stumbled upon a method that actually did what the research suggested was needed in this current wave of psychotherapy. We now understood how effectively our methodology supports bilateral integration, emotion regulation, and earned secure attachment by going slowly, operating within the nonviolence principle, working with the internal observer, and using mindfulness to access and transform the implicit emotional learning that shapes the schemas and relational templates that carry forward across the life span (Cozolino, 2006).
The fourth source of inspiration is discernment of trauma. The 1990s also brought about the realization that trauma is a very specific kind of experience that needs special procedural attention. When working with regressive states in particular, it became obvious where some limits of our method lay, and how a different way of dealing with trauma was required. Through her alliance with Peter Levine, our senior trainer Pat Ogden became so deeply inspired by this perspective that she formed her own institute and created an approach to trauma, sensorimotor psychotherapy, that builds on Hakomi and is now one of the most respected treatments in the field. Our students today are trained to discern states of trauma and manage them differently than other developmental issues.
While the core Hakomi curriculum is still taught worldwide, individual training weaves in the particular interests faculty members have developed in such areas as movement therapy, internal family systems therapy, psychodrama, music therapy, oriental medicine, the Diamond Approach, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, and so on. Some faculty delved deeply enough into specific content areas that they developed separate or parallel training courses.
As mentioned above, Pat Ogden synthesized Hakomi with trauma therapy to the extent that she created a new approach that is one of the most cited in the field, sensorimotor psychotherapy (Ogden et al., 2006). It majors in using mindfulness in the service of bottom-up as opposed to top-down processing. Cedar Barstow (2005) created a relational approach to ethics that she termed “the right use of power,” which now has a guild that sponsors research, training, and books on the topic.
Jon Eisman’s (2010) exploration of self-states resulted in a self-contained approach he titled re-creation of the self, which can be taught alone or integrated with Hakomi. Morgan Holford and Susan McConnell developed a specialized Hakomi training for bodyworkers and Lorena Monda has done likewise for practitioners of oriental medicine. Amina Knowlan’s work on group development evolved into the Matrix Leadership Institute. Mukara Meredith developed Matrixworks training, a living systems approach to team building and creativity, now taught in major corporations including the Gap, Procter and Gamble, General Mills, and M
attel. Halko Weiss and Hakomi colleagues in Germany developed a very successful approach to teaching emotional intelligence to corporate executives in companies like Mercedes Benz and Munich Re. Weiss also developed a course called Hakomi Embodied and Aware Relationships Training (H.E.A.R.T.) that teaches a complex approach to conscious relationships. Maci Daye developed Passion & Presence, a course on mindful sexuality for couples in long-term relationships.
Rob Fisher’s specialization in couples work resulted in the publication of his 2002 book Experiential Psychotherapy With Couples: A Guide for the Creative Pragmatist. Halko Weiss published several books in German, among them two best-selling books on mindfulness, and a thousand-page Handbook on Body Psychotherapy, of which an American version is scheduled to be available in 2015 through North Atlantic Press. Lorena Monda (2000) integrated her background with Hakomi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Yvonne Agazarian, Gabrielle Roth, and oriental medicine, along with research on core transformation, into The Practice of Wholeness: Spiritual Transformation in Everyday Life and a specialized training. Richard A. Heckler brought Hakomi sensibilities and curiosity to researching and authoring two books, Waking Up Alive: The Descent, the Suicide Attempt, and the Return to Life, and Crossings: Everyday People, Unexpected Events, and Life-Affirming Change.
In 1992 Ron Kurtz resigned as director of the Hakomi Institute to form Ron Kurtz Trainings, headquartered in Ashland, Oregon. This enabled him to continue his inventive work of concentrating on the method itself, spontaneously and independently implementing changes as he envisioned them. Kurtz remained a senior trainer in the Hakomi Institute for many years, and remains an ongoing inspiration. Both organizations recognized each other’s teaching of Hakomi and certifications of therapists, teachers, and trainers. Before his death in 2011, Kurtz developed a shorter, simplified version of the Hakomi method (outlined in Chapter 3) that he hoped would not only inform professional mental health practitioners but also enhance mutual community, growth, and support for a wide variety of ordinary people. Hakomi Institute students were encouraged to train with him whenever they had the opportunity to benefit from his unique artistry, insight, and humor.