Psychotherapy as Spiritual Practice 1
I'm grateful to be here. I've never spoken to an audience this
large before and, nervous though I am, I'm intrigued by the challenge.
I am the principle developer of a therapy called Hakomi. It is
a "body
centered" psychotherapy, meaning it's experiential and sometimes
physically active. It has another side: it is based upon a set of principles,
among them the use of mindfulness and the adherence to nonviolence.
As you may have noted, these principles are often associated with certain
spiritual disciplines, like Buddhism. In fact, Hakomi was once described
as "applied Buddhism", by an American Buddhist teacher, Marvin
Casper, who started the psychology department at Naropa Institute.
Here’s an outline of what I'd like to do: I would like to talk
about psychotherapy, especially Hakomi, as spiritual practice. What I
will discuss, however, is in no way limited to the Hakomi method, but
is applicable to all healing and, indeed, all human interaction. I also
want to talk a little bit about my personal journey with this and how
I came to think of psychotherapy as spiritual practice. Then I want to
do some experiential explorations with you. I want you to experience
something about the way this method is taught.
So, first something about training for this aspect of the work.
Sixty to seventy percent of the teaching of this work is through
experiential exercises. I am now ready to confess that I am an addict.
I'm addicted to quotations. I'm strongly affected by them and I like
to start my talks with a quote or two and sort of bounce off of them.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the nature of "full human-beingness" and
personhood in psychotherapy and I will begin with a longish quote
from a book called Human Change Process written by Michael
J. Mahoney: 
Studies of the psychotherapist's contribution to the therapeutic experience have begun to make it clear that the magnitude of that contribution is exceeded only by that attributable to the client. After their extensive review of the existing literature over a decade ago, Alan Bergan and Michael Lambert concluded that the largest variation in therapy is accounted for by pre-existing client factors such as motivation. Therapist personal factors account for the second largest proportion of change, with technique variables coming in a distant third. In four major research projects at the University of Pittsburgh, John Hopkins, the Veterans Administration and McGill, the therapeutic impact attributable to the psychotherapist was eight times greater than that associated with the treatment techniques.
"Therapist personal factors." Eight times as impactful as "treatment
techniques." Well, reading that woke me up a bit. I'd been teaching technique
and method almost 100% of the time. Not much about therapist personal factors.
I'd been talking about the healing relationship and the techniques that create
it, but I hadn't seen that it's the state of mind of the therapist that really
does the work. The techniques are best used as an extension of the therapist's
natural behavior and not just something like a screw driver that anyone can
pick up and use. In some way, it has to be a natural extension of the therapist's "personal
factors." Just to be Buddhist about it, I'll call that the therapist’s
state of mind.
So, what is there about the therapist that makes her or him such
an important variable? What is it that's eight times more important
than treatment techniques? We'll get some clues about this from the next
quote. It's from Chogyam Trungpa.
The basic work of health professionals in general and psychotherapists in particular is to become full human beings and to inspire full human beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives.
—Chogyam Trungpa, Full Human Beingness
The serious quote of Trungpa …did a lot to wake me up when I first
read it. It was a very different idea about what I believed my basic
work was. I had to consider: “Was I a full human being?” “Was I even
on the path to becoming one?” He was saying that my own spiritual growth
was what I needed to pursue, if I was going to help others. That's how
I read it. Later, I learned I could do both at once, pursue my spiritual
practice and work with people at the same time. I'm going to spend a
little bit of time going over how I learned that.
In my personal journey, I started out enamored and fascinated and
hypnotized by the techniques. I was amazed at what Fritz Perls was
doing. Then it was Reich and Lowen and John Perrakos. Then it was
Al Pesso. Then a whole slew of others and the whole idea of changing
people with these wonderful and exciting tools: awareness, experiments,
the hot seat, techniques for promoting emotional expression --
I loved them all. After a while, they became habitual and I started thinking
more about method, method being that set of rules which tell us
when to use which technique. I got very enamored of that for awhile and
out of that interest I created the Hakomi Method. Finally I began to
think about relationship, the relationship between the therapist and
the client. Now I'm going to throw another quote at you (which may or
may not give away something about my character pattern). It's a quote
from James Hillman on psychopathy.
"Descriptions of psychopathy or sociopathic personalities speak of their
inability to imagine the other. Psychopaths are well able to size up situations
and charm people. They perceive, assess and relate making use of any opportunity,
hence their successful manipulation of others. But the psychopath is far less
able to imagine the other beyond the fantasy of usefulness, the other as a
true interiority with his or her own needs, intentions and feelings."
When I discovered relationship, I began to understand something
about "the other as a true interiority". I call what we do
at this level of the work, developing the healing relationship. I'll
tell you a little bit about that. I believe very strongly in the power
of the unconscious mind. I agree with Jung about its enormous capabilities
and its connection to what John Nelson calls the "Spiritual
Ground". It seems to me that in order to work successfully, we have
to have the cooperation of the client's unconscious. And I asked,
how do we get the cooperation of the client's unconscious? How
do we earn that? There seem to be two factors that are most important.
To earn the cooperation of the unconscious, we need to demonstrate two
things. First, we need to demonstrate that we know what's going on; particularly
that we understand their interiority, their experience. We have
to demonstrate that we understand what the other has experienced or is
experiencing. That's first. Second, we have to demonstrate that we are
also compassionate, accepting of the person no matter what the experience
was. We must we be without judgment. If we can demonstrate those two
things, the unconscious will usually cooperate. Not that it will give
you anything you want, no. But, if you maintain your good behavior, it
will allow you to be part of the healing process. It will listen to you
and take you seriously. It will treat you with respect.
I use some techniques to bring the healing relationship into place.
It's not really the techniques that do it, it is the fact that I do know
something about what's going on and the fact that I am compassionate.
That's what really does it. You can't just look like you're compassionate.
That won't fool anybody's unconscious very long. You've got to really
be compassionate. And when you are and can demonstrate successfully that
you are, you'll get the cooperation of the unconscious. Then the work
will be relatively easy and much faster. The unconscious can unfold healing
in most remarkable ways.
When the setting is right (and the therapist is the setting and
eight times more powerful than the techniques he or she is using), then
the work goes well. If the therapist is not the right setting, the process
can take a long time.
That satisfied me for awhile, this work with the healing relationship.
In the most recent stage of this journey I came to realize that the work
I have to do to become a full human being involves creating the state
of mind, the right state of mind. Then all of this understanding and
compassion comes quite naturally, without effort. And the healing relationship
sets up without effort and the method and techniques work easily and
the process moves more quickly. So, I got to the place where I began
to think about the state of mind of the therapist.
Another quote, this one from Martin Buber, spoken in 1947 after
the Holocaust.
What do we expect when we're in despair and yet go to a man. Surely a presence by means of which we are told that nevertheless, there is meaning.
A presence! Buber calls it, “a presence.” One which conveys that
the suffering, the despair is not meaningless. Life is not meaningless.
Life, your very life, has meaning. And with meaning, life can go
on. I was in Jung's office in Zurich, last week. One of the things he said, "Patients
don't get cured, they just move on." (I think he said this. I've
never seen it written, but I've heard it quoted.) That sounds very
reasonable to me. They don't devote any more serious psychic energy
to something that once needed it. They understand it. They get
the meaning. They drop it and they move on. So I think that's part of
what Buber's saying here. Once we have the meaning, we can move on. Once
we understand, we can move on. We're not in shock any more, we're not
confused, troubled, lost. When understanding comes, you can move on.
And sometimes, we need something to help us do that. We need a presence.
I developed a workshop lately on presence, loving presence. It
focuses on how we create the loving presence state of mind. It looks
at the small habits of mind, the attitudes and understandings that allow
us to be loving presences. I want talk to about that and I want to do
some of the exercises from that workshop with you. On a very recent (last
two or three years) piece of my personal journey, I discovered something
very important about the particular process that leads to loving presence.
I was working in Germany doing a nine-day therapy group. One German
after another. Some Germans are very thorough; they give you all
the details. So I sort of lost contact. I couldn't follow the details
anymore. I was sitting there in front of one person, nearly exhausted
with trying to hold all those details and I slowly yielded to the
inevitable. I gave up. Being the kind of person I sometimes am,
I thought, well, I'll just look like I'm listening. They seem to
go on and on anyway. Maybe I'll recover later and think of something to
do. I certainly won't know what they said, but maybe I can still make something
happen. We'll see. This surrender was very serendipitous because,
as I let go of trying to understand, I suddenly saw a very special kind
of beauty in the person. I could only equate it with a masterpiece
of art. I realized I was looking at something as beautiful as a Cezanne
or Rembrandt. This thrilled me. I loved it. I just got wrapped
up in it. I was having a wonderful time, feeling so loving and interested.
(Though at that point it was just about what the client looked
like.) I suddenly thought, "My face must be a perfect
demonstration of loving presence. This would be a good time to ask the
client to look at me." I wanted the client to see me and know how
I felt. It came right out of creating the healing relationship.
I wanted to demonstrate that I am compassionate, that I'm present.
I felt exactly like that and I wanted the client to see me feeling
that way. So, I asked the client to open his eyes. (Hakomi clients back
then, when they got into their feelings, usually closed their eyes.)
When the client looked at me and saw what he saw, he started to
go deeper.
He saw my loving face and he started to open up more and feel more
intensely. He became very open and vulnerable. Well, that was just
as thrilling for me as seeing him as a masterpiece. So, I got more loving.
He went deeper. Loving. Deeper. Deeper. More loving. We were in
a reinforcement cycle. We were triggering each other and together, we
were creating exactly the right setting for a healing process. Whatever
else we said or did, this mutual reinforcement was driving it.
After that, it happened somewhat with each person I worked with.
It didn't always happen as strongly, but it would happen at least
a little and often. It happened enough so that the processes were
deep and important healings took place. I can't always do it. I
can't always get the love going. But I can feel it often enough
to remember to keep trying. I know that it's always a possibility and
that it is rather easy when it does work. Seeing beauty in the other
became my "therapeutic meditation".
It became my way of becoming a loving presence. Of course, it also
helps if you have techniques and methods you have learned and can
use. It wouldn't be a disaster if you didn't. The client's healing
could still go deep and have lasting effects, even if the therapist is
just being a loving presence and using no interventions at all. The work
is all the more powerful when technique and method are added to and supported
by that presence.
There are some other ways I've learned that also help establish
the cycle of loving presence and deep processing. One is seeing
the universal in the other. You're not just hearing this individual's
story. You're also hearing it as an example of the human condition. You're
hearing it almost like a myth -- it's all our story, yours, mine and
everybody's. It's the human story. That seems to evoke in me this loving
presence state of mind. So, I'm not working with just this mother and
her grief or love for her child. I'm working with all mothers and all
children. I feel it that way and I feel blessed to be part of it.
A second way involves remembering that we are all destined to be
enlightened and that much of this suffering which feels so real
to us is really based on a misunderstanding. We are not this self
which suffers so, we are something very different. We are in illusion
and we do not know that. We take it all too seriously. As Da Free
John has said, "Nothing
ultimate is at stake." Then our compassion is aroused because we
know the person suffering doesn't understand and is caught up in
self. It is unnecessary. It will be forgotten sometime. When I
see it this way, I feel very courageous and very tender towards
the other. Being courageous, I can express the tenderness I feel.
And finally, when I remember that love is what we're here for,
that our journey on this plane is about learning to love and that
love is all that will count when we tally up our days, I am able to be
the loving one and so happy that I can be that.
Thank you!
With permission, excerpts
from writings of Ron Kurtz
Copyrights 2007 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.