Hakomi

What is Hakomi?

With therapeutic training in a modality called Hakomi, I offer sessions explicitly informed by it. Hakomi is an approach that relies heavily on awareness of what is happening in your body and mind.

It differs from traditional therapy in that you’re not coming in and just talking about whatever is on your mind, but instead focusing inward and tracking what is happening as we work with what is up for you.

As we work, I will use various techniques to help you notice and focus your attention on particular aspects of your experience that help us understand deeply held core beliefs that often remain outside of conscious awareness.

You may have heard of other body-focused therapies, such as Somatic Experiencing or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which use bodily awareness as a means of processing and moving through trauma. Hakomi is similar to these in many ways, but the focus is on using mindful awareness to guide self-exploration rather than trauma processing.

Hakomi helps us access the inaccessible.

Folding awareness of the body and its connection to the mind allows us to quickly access and transform intense patterns of thought and behavior that often remain inaccessible to plain old talk therapy.

The reasons Hakomi works are complicated, but it boils down to the fact that your nervous system extends throughout your entire body, and by cultivating awareness of what’s happening in your body to particular topics, you’re using your whole body’s awareness rather than just the parts of your brain responsible for language.

This body awareness gives enhanced access to the memories and experiences that shape how you approach yourself and the world. That access allows one to examine those approaches and see where old, adverse experiences continue to shape your life.

In this state of deep awareness, we can provide the missing experiences together, eliminating the usually unconscious reasons to keep doing things that don’t work for you.

What do sessions look like?

These sessions generally start with a short check-in, followed by dropping into a state of mindfulness – a state of quiet self-observation, sometimes facilitated by focus on a point of concentration such as the breath. In that state, you track and report emotions, bodily sensations and tensions, and the character of thoughts that arise.

I will help facilitate your awareness by reflecting on what I see happening in your body and various techniques designed to help you deepen into this material.

As we start to encounter the core beliefs that shape our actions and reactions in the world, we get to see why we needed those beliefs in the first place and to provide the types of missing experiences that create the possibility of doing things differently as we advance.

“Is this right for me?”

Hakomi’s approach is not for everyone. It requires minimal skill with mindfulness, and it often works well for people who have cultivated a regular meditation practice, though it is unnecessary.

It also tends to go quite deep relatively fast, and so you must be able to tolerate a potentially intense level of experience.

However, this approach can provide a fast track for those with the skill and an interest in making profound changes. This interest often comes from – but not always – those who have had previous experience in therapy and are looking for a way to translate self-insight into real change.

If you want to know if Hakomi is for you, contact me today for more information.