A Brief Overview
Hakomi deals with the organization of experience. For people having experiences
— that’s you, me and everyone else — an experience just happens, full blown and
immediate. We see what we see without feeling or sensing how the
brain creates images.1 We see the shapes
and colors, we speak words and sentences, we make hundreds of movements with
our eyes, all without experiencing how our brains do these things. All experience
is the outcome of complex organizing processes of the brain, processes which
take place outside of consciousness.
For vision, there are fifty or so different centers in the brain that contribute
to the final visual experience.2 These
centers handle things like color, depth and sequence. Their functions become
obvious only when they cease to function normally. There are some unconscious
organizers that exert a very strong influence on our whole way of being. As Hakomi
therapists, these are the organizers we’re interested in. They are emotions,
beliefs, attitudes, early learning, adaptations and memories. We call these organizers core
material. Often, they are as inaccessible to the ordinary consciousness
as are the circuits in the brain that create vision.
However, using this method, some of them can be made conscious. The
method makes core material conscious. Some core material causes unnecessary
suffering and the method provides a way to reduce it. Some suffering
is unnecessary because the core material that organizes it, is no
longer applicable. Some beliefs, adaptations, etc. developed in early
life situations no longer pertain, but are still active. Though the
current situation has changed, the old adaptations are still automatically
applied. Outdated or not, they go on organizing experience, causing
problems and unnecessary suffering.3 So,
we work to bring core material into consciousness. Doing so offers
the person a chance to reduce that kind of suffering. Once
in consciousness, core material can be examined and revised and its
influence eliminated or greatly diminished. The way we do this is
unique.
We do something that no other therapy that I know of does. We do
“experiments” with clients while they are in a mindful state. These
experiments are brief and evocative. They are created on the basis
of what we have observed about the individual and they are designed
to evoke reactions that will lead directly to emotional release
and/or insight. And mindfulness is essential. When mindful, attention
is on the flow of moment-to-moment experience. The person in a
mindful state is letting things happen without trying to control
them. The quality of attention is very different from ordinary
attention. Attention is turned inward and
just observing. In that state of being, the usual mechanisms that
prevent certain thoughts and emotions are suspended. Evocative
interventions at such a times can produce strong, significant reactions.
Here’s an example. A person who habitually talks rapidly while
carefully watching his listener, may be being influenced by an
core belief that people do not have time for him. Speaking rapidly
is often an indicator of such a belief. One experiment the practitioner
could do—with the person in a mindful state—would be to say something
like this: “Please notice what happens when you hear me say, ‘I
have time for you.’”
That kind of statement could get a reaction, like the immediate
thought, “No one ever does!” Or, the reaction could be a sudden feeling of sadness. It
could be a memory of not being heard by a significant person. A
whole scene like that may appear. Not just the belief is made clear.
For the person noticing the reaction, the feelings and memories
that arise bring with them the knowledge that this issue is still
a source of emotional pain.
At this point in the process, there are things to do that will
ease the hurt and modify the core material and the behaviors it
is organizing. Getting
to this point is what experiments in a mindful state are designed
to accomplish.
Experiments in mindfulness aren’t done until several other
important things have happened. As a session begins, the practitioner
puts him- or herself into a loving state of being. Loving presence
is created by focusing on those qualities of the other person that
inspire and support it. It is a form of attention. As we practice
the method, over time this way of paying attention becomes habit.
With loving presence setting the general mood, the person usually
responds to it, either consciously or unconsciously, by feeling
safer and calmer. The practitioner then begins to gather a particular
kind of information. This information comes from observing the
person’s nonverbal behaviors, the kind of behaviors that are not
usually focused upon.
The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you,
but in what he cannot reveal to you. —Kahlil Gibran
The information needed for experiments is not normally gotten by
asking questions or from the conversation. It’s gotten by observing
behavior. At this early stage, the behaviors we’re especially looking
for are the signs of the person’s present experience. These signs are
found in posture, gestures, facial expressions and tones of voice, things
like a shrug of the shoulders or a slight redness starting in the nostrils.
Paying constant attention to these signs requires a kind of present awareness
that needs as much practice as loving presence.
Information like this allows the practitioner to let the person
know she is paying attention and is aware of what the person is
feeling. It allows the practitioner to respond to the person’s moods
and needs before they’re spoken about or even noticed by the person himself.
Knowing and responding to these things without having to ask about them
seems the very best way to establish intimacy and safety.
Once these are established—and it can happen within minutes—the
practitioner concentrates on looking and listening not just for
the signs of present experience, but for habitual nonverbal behaviors
that might be the external expressions of core material, like speaking
rapidly or a constant facial expression of disbelief. We call these kinds
of habits indicators.
Indicators are usually
nonconscious, meaning that they happen automatically and without conscious awareness. They
are the most fruitful subjects of experiments. Hakomi therapists are trained
extensively in “reading” nonverbal behaviors for such indicators.
When the practitioner finds an indicator to work with, she draws
the person’s attention to it and together they set up and do an
experiment designed to bring the nonconscious organizer of that
indicator into consciousness. With the person in mindfulness, the
practitioner does something designed to evoke a reaction. This
process brings the unconscious material organizing indicator closer
to or into consciousness. If the practitioner has chosen a good experiment and
it’s done carefully with the full cooperation of the person, then a telling reaction
results. The reaction itself is in consciousness because the person is in mindfulness. It
is telling, because it is immediate, experiential and its connection
to core material is suggested or totally obvious.
Experiments in mindfulness often evoke emotions. Emotions, when
they’re not interrupted, have the power to draw into consciousness,
the memories and other associations that make sense of them.4 Once
core material is in consciousness, the work becomes supporting
the expression of emotion, allowing time for the spontaneous integration
that usually follows and creating new, more realistic, and satisfying
experiences and habits around the revised material. This is easier
than it may sound.
To become good at this work, students and practitioners have some
important things to practice. We must learn to cultivate loving
presence. We must practice being loving. We must train our attention
to be continuously focused on the present moment. We must learn
to recognize indicators of core material. We must become good experimenters.
So, we have to learn to make good guesses about what the various
indicators indicate. And,
we have to create experiments that will test our guesses and bring
core material into consciousness. Finally, we have to be good at
helping people through the painful moments that arise after experiments
and to help them discover new and better ways to organize their
experiences.
ISBN-10: 1405160225, ISBN-13: 978-1405160223
2 Crick, F. & Koch, C. 1995. Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex? Nature 375: 121-23.
3 Of course, some suffering is normal and perhaps, necessary. Grief over a death might be an example.
4 For more about this, see Damasio, Antonio. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt.
With permission, excerpts
from writings of Ron Kurtz
Copyrights 2007 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.