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Hakomi Method
A Brief Overview
By Ron Kurtz

Most of our actions and thoughts are habitual. That is they are not planned or
deliberate. We may have some goal in mind, like driving to work. Once we start, our
habits will do better than 90% of what it takes to get there. And while we’re driving,
we can be listening to music, talking on a cell phone, or just having a long
conversation in our minds with someone, either rehearsing what we’re going to say,
or redoing something we did or did not say, yesterday. When you think about all the
things we do without thinking or planning, you may wonder who’s in charge, really.

Let’s take some especially important habits, the ones that strongly influence the
choices we make. These habits involve beliefs (habitual thoughts) and convictions,
which are thoughts that have strong feelings associated with them. We all have
convictions about who we are and what kind of situation living is; and how much we
can trust people in general and what we can expect from people, life and ourselves.
We all have convictions about what’s true and real and valuable. We act these out
habitually, without questioning them, often without even knowing what they are.

Most of these habits were learned the same way we learned to speak within the
language and grammar of our native tongue: we did it by imitation and through
interacting with others. We established these habits without using critical thought to
examine them. We tried things out and kept what worked, long before we had the
maturity to understand what we were doing.
Some of these habits are not useful anymore. We’re not the child who needed them.
Our situation has changed radically. Still, they persist. Habits this deep are part of
our way of being in the world. And that in turn has a stabilizing effect on what kind
of world we create for ourselves. Habitual convictions create stable systems of
living for the people who carry them where and when such stability is possible.

As clients, to change some of these old, deep habits, we first need to know what
they are. We need to examine them and understand them. Then we need to try
something different. All of that requires real courage, intelligent support and an
emotionally safe setting. The therapist (1) creates a calm, caring relationship in
which we do the work we have to do; (2) helps us understand who we are at those
deep levels; (3) provides a way to initiate new actions which are based on more
realistic beliefs and lead to more nourishing experiences. That’s what this method is
designed to do.

As therapists, we have important things to practice. We must practice being loving.

We train our minds to be continuously present. We learn to cultivate a state of mind
called loving presence. We also learn to recognize the external signs of the client’s
present experience and long-term, deep beliefs, especially the non-verbal, habitual
expressions of those beliefs. We use these skills to help clients discover who they
are. We also have some unique methods. One is a practice called mindfulness. In
mindfulness one simply notices the changes in one’s experience, without
interfering. Clients learn to be in that state of mind for brief periods. While they are
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in that state, we do “little experiments” that are designed to evoke reactions which
help clients become aware of their deep beliefs. The experiments are always
voluntary, safe and offer positive, emotionally nourishing ideas and/or actions. The
effect is to bring into awareness any resistance to what’s offered. In mindfulness,
clients easily notice any resistance.

An example: let’s say a client has a physical habit of always (or almost always)
looking at the therapist with a skeptical tilt of the head and a sideways glance of the
eyes. Hakomi therapists would more than likely read those habits as signs of a
belief that people can’t be trusted. To test that idea, the therapist would first ask
the client to become mindful. (This would be a client who already knows how to do
that and feels safe enough and curious enough to do it. And it would be after
therapist and client have established a good working relationship.) Then the
therapist would say, in a soft, neutral voice, something like, “You can trust me.” Or,
“I won’t hurt you.” In reaction to that, the client might notice a spontaneous thought
like, “No I can’t!” Or, to the second statement, “Yes, you will!” Or, the client may
not have thoughts at all, he or she may simply feel fear. Or, he or she may have a
memory of betrayal by a significant person. Awareness of reactions like these begin
to bring awareness, clarity and understanding. This is how the method makes the
unconscious, conscious. This is how the freedom to change begins.

Once these reactions come into consciousness, we work to have them stated clearly
in words. This part of the process is called, going for meaning. We want clients to
examine these memories with their conceptual minds. Deep beliefs and habits are
emotionally based and often very out of date. Just examining them in consciousness
can start the process of changing them. Often, our little experiments trigger painful
emotions, sometimes very strong ones. When these arise, we offer comfort, by
doing something like offering a hand or sitting close by. When clients can accept
this kind of physical comfort, they relax and can manage the feelings they’re having
more easily. As a result, without effort, they have insights. In this way, we provide
the emotional support that very likely was missing in those early situations that
created the client’s core issues.

The first experiment doesn’t always evoke strong emotions or deep beliefs. Usually,
the first few experiments just help the client and therapist gain some insight.
Eventually (which can be as short as a few minutes or as long as a few sessions) the
process leads to an experiment that triggers a powerful reaction, one that reveals
deep issues and/or evokes strong emotions. Again, we offer emotional support. At
this stage we’re looking for relief and understanding for the client. We want to help
clients find meaning in it all.

By doing this, we have already begun creating an experience that was missing in
the original situations. The emotional support and the understanding that loving,
intelligent adults can provide weren’t there. Something painful, frightening or
demeaning was there instead. Because of the beliefs and habits that resulted,
certain nourishing experiences have never been possible. If the early situations
created a habit of mistrust, being comfortable in an intimate situation will be
impossible. Trust is a missing experience. After all that becomes clear for the client,
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new experiences become possible. Old ways of being and ideas can be challenged.
We offer clients a chance to experience what has been missing all their lives. When
they do it is life changing. A new world opens up. It has been said1 “each act of
knowing brings forth a world.” This is surely what happens in at this point in the
therapy process.

After that, the client needs support to continue exercising the new beliefs and
building the new habits. The client also needs to practice the new nourishing
behaviors in his or her everyday world. The client needs both therapeutic and
everyday support for that, until these new behaviors become habits themselves and
drift once more out of consciousness. At that point, the job is done.

Our Psychic Life

Here is an excerpt from an article by Jacob Needleman called Psychiatry and the
Sacred, in the book Awakening the Heart, John Welwood, editor.

Beneath the fragile sense of personal identity, the individual is actually an

innumerable swarm of disconnected impulses, thoughts, reactions, opinions, and
sensations, which are triggered into activity by causes of which he is totally
unaware. Yet, at each moment, the individual identifies himself with whichever of
this swarm of impulses and reactions happens to be active, automatically affirming
each as “himself,” and then taking a stand either for or against this “self,”
depending on the particular pressures that the social environment has brought to
bear upon him since his childhood.

The [sacred] traditions identify this affirming-and-denying process as the real

source of human misery and the chief obstacle to the development of man’s
inherent possibilities. Through this affirmation and denial, a form is constructed
around each of the passing impulses originating in the different parts of the human
organism. And this continuous, unconscious affirmation of identity traps a definite
amount of precious psychic energy in a kind of encysting process that is as much
chemical-biological as it is psychological. The very nerves and muscles of the body
are called to defend and support the affirmation of “I” around each of the countless
groups of impulses and reactions as they are activated.

Several years ago, when I was moderating a seminar of psychiatrists and clinicians,
the real dimensions of this affirmation process were brought home in a very simple
and powerful way. We were discussing the use of hypnosis in therapy. At some
point during the discussion, one of the participants began to speak in a manner that
riveted everyone’s attention. He was a psychoanalyst, the oldest and most
respected member present.

“Only once in my life,” he said, “did I ever use hypnosis with a patient. It was in the
Second World War, when I was in the Swiss Army. There was this poor soldier in
front of me, and for some reason I decided to test whether or not he would be
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susceptible to posthypnotic suggestion. I easily brought him into a trance, and

simply by way of experiment, I suggested to him, that after he awoke he would
stamp his foot three times whenever I snapped my fingers. All perfectly standard
procedure. After I brought him out of the trance state and we spoke for a while, I
dismissed him, and just as he was leaving the room I snapped my fingers. He
immediately responded and stamped his foot according to the suggestion. ‘Wait a
minute,’ I shouted. ‘Tell me, why did you stamp your foot?’ His face suddenly turned
beet red. ‘Damn it all,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something in my shoe.’ ”

The speaker slowly puffed on his pipe and his face became extremely serious. The
rest of us could not understand why he seemed to be making so much of this well-
known phenomenon of posthypnotic fabrication. But he maintained his silence,
staring somberly down the length of his pipe. No one else said a word -- it was
obvious that he was trying to formulate something he took to be quite important.
Then, with his face suddenly as open as a child’s, he looked up at me, and said: “Do
you think the whole of our psychic life is like that?”

Introduction to the Practice of Loving Presence

by Ron Kurtz and Donna Martin

Nothing we could ever do or work on or accomplish or achieve in life is worth as

much as making our relationships more loving and kind… no task is so demanding,
so difficult, so significant, so valuable as the task of being loving with the people in
our lives.

“Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” (Robert
Frost)

Loving presence is easy to recognize. Imagine a happy and contented mother

looking at the sweet face of her peaceful newborn baby. She is calm, loving, and
attentive. Unhurried and undistracted, the two of them seem to be outside of time…
simply being rather than doing. And, gently held within a field of love and life’s
wisdom, they are as present with each other as any two persons could be.

When someone offers loving presence in relationship, it has a very powerful effect
on another. Possibly without even noticing it, the other feels safer, feels heard,
appreciated, and even understood. When that happens, healing has already begun.

Loving presence is a state of being. It is pleasant, good for one’s health, rewarding
in and of itself. It’s a state in which one is open-hearted and well intentioned. In its
purest form, it is spiritually nourishing and sensitive to subtle energies. It is also the
best state to be in when offering someone emotional support.

By emotional support, we mean support for the processes that create and sustain a
healthy, happy emotional life. One look around will tell you that this is desperately
needed. A healthy emotional life requires a safe place to express and someone
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loving to bear witness. It requires the release of old emotional hurts and an opening
for new paths to pleasure and joy.

Loving presence and emotional support are big parts of relating to each other. In all
areas of life, whether personal and professional, their presence or absence is
significant. We have all experienced the difference. Loving presence is not only easy
to recognize, it is easy to teach. We have taught it to thousands of people around
the world in the past ten years. It is taught experientially using a sequence of
simple steps.

As the sequence of exercises unfolds, we first become aware, in a gentle way, of

some of our habitual agendas around relationship. We then learn to relax our
attachments to these agendas.

This relaxation brings an opportunity to establish a whole new sensitivity to others.

As we do this, we begin to experience a pleasant, relaxed, present-centered, open-
hearted state of mind. Finally, we practice relating to each other from this state.
We use mindfulness to discover and study our habits. Mindfulness is a state of
consciousness in which we turn our attention to the flow of our experience, with the
added and unusual condition that we have no intention to control what happens. For
most of us, this is not our usual state of consciousness.

In mindfulness, we are not just reacting. We are also noticing our reactions. We are
participating as observers of our own behavior. We are at least one step removed
from anything that seems to happen by itself in our experience.

The Hakomi Method of psychotherapy uses evoked experiences in mindfulness to

study and understand our beliefs and habits, how we unconsciously organize our
experience. We use a little experiment to evoke an experience. The first thing that
happens is that we get mindful... just quietly noticing whatever happens inside us in
the moment. That way we can discover our automatic knee jerk reactions and just
study where they are coming from. This method is used to study the habits and
attitudes that organize our experiences. Habits reflect our images, assumptions,
and beliefs about the kind of world we live in and who we are within it. Since most
of what we do and feel and think is habitual, these habits are very connected with
our idea of who we are.

Mindfulness is also a traditional method of spiritual practice. There is a basic

freedom that comes from relaxing our attachments to who we think we are and how
things should be. There is a lightness of being, a peacefulness, a kind of
spaciousness that makes room for humor and compassion.

This spacious mind is about celebrating mystery and humour and a way of being
that goes beyond the limits of the ordinary ego. One aspect of this spaciousness is
the ability to see things with a wide-angle lens and from many different angles.
Acting without controlling. Not being attached to particular outcomes. Being
sensitive and open. Lowering the noise of internal chatter and the preconceived
ideas that generally interfere with clarity, insight, and intuition, as well as with true
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acceptance and understanding. From mindfulness, to spaciousness, we begin to see

more clearly, and to open to new possibilities of how to be nourished, to feed the
soul. This kind of non-ego centered nourishment fills us up and radiates out as
loving presence, providing the ground and context for healing to unfold
spontaneously.

These are the steps we move through to cultivate the practice of loving presence:
mindfulness, self-study, relaxation and spaciousness, seeing clearly (perceptual
wisdom), non-egocentric nourishment, and loving presence.

Loving presence in Psychotherapy

Loving presence is a state of mind that the therapist practices. It was named by the
creator of the Hakomi Method, Ron Kurtz, and is taught in the Hakomi trainings as a
basic state of mind for the therapeutic relationship. In this state of mind, the
therapist’s perception and understanding are greatly enhanced. In loving presence,
a high priority is given to being present and compassionate. All other task-oriented
agendas are minimized. With loving presence, the first priority is to find something
in the other person (the client in this case) to feel loving about. It is not difficult,
when it’s a priority. However, when the therapist is busy looking for what’s wrong
with the client or for problems to solve, it can be difficult to develop or sustain.
Inspiration and loving feelings are cultivated by focusing on aspects of the person
that reveal his/her basic humanity, with all its grandeur and vulnerabilities. Because
clients respond to the therapist’s state of mind, either consciously or unconsciously,
when that state is loving presence, the client feels safe, trusting and understood.
When the therapist is present and compassionate in a way the client can easily
recognize, defenses relax and the therapist gains the cooperation of the client’s
unconscious. The positive effects of that are immense.

The creation of a healing relationship grounded in loving presence involves

understanding and implementing the following six ideas:
1. The context in which emotional healing takes place plays a very significant part
in that healing. The most important aspect of that context is the wisdom,
compassion and quality of attention of the people involved.
2. When offering emotional support, what is most important is being present,
caring, and, paradoxically, having the intention to search for inspiration in
something about the other person. This inspiration becomes so nourishing that it
sustains the attitude of loving presence. Giving priority to being inspired and
nourished by the other may seem like a radical idea. Such habitual agendas as
analyzing advising, interpreting, reframing, problem - solving, and asking
questions, usually take priority. For loving presence, we want to avoid being
preoccupied with such agendas. Rather we focus on being inspired and
translating this inspiration into compassion, patience, understanding and
constant, loving attention.
3. If we are to drop our habitual agendas, we must first be aware of what they are.
And it is crucial that this awareness be as unbiased as possible. For that,
mindfulness is essential. We use mindfulness to study the perceptions, ideas,
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attitudes, beliefs, images, and memories that sustain our habitual agendas. The
whole process starts with self-study.
4. Self-knowledge eventually brings freedom of choice. Once habitual agendas are
made conscious, we can relax them move into loving presence. This step
involves creating an open, relaxed state which we call spacious mind.
5. Spaciousness is an opening. Because it is not preoccupied, it allows more
receiving. Being open, perceptions and understandings deepen. In this intimate
connection we can receive the spiritual nourishment we need to sustain loving
presence. Spaciousness allows inspiration to happen.
6. Out of this growing intimacy, a cycle of reinforcement emerges. The outer signs
of loving presence (calm, loving eyes, relaxed posture, steady attention) are
seen and felt by the other. Recognizing this and sensing perhaps that this
moment is special, the person opens to deeper places within. This opening
further inspires and nourishes the listener(s). Each person inspires the other.
Loving presence inspires emotional healing. Healing inspires loving presence.
Each sustains the other, one moving towards healing, the other towards caring
and compassion.

These are the stages in the practice of loving presence:

 mindfulness and self-study,
 relaxation and spaciousness,
perceptual wisdom and sensitivity,
 inspiration and non-egocentric nourishment,
 and the practice of loving presence which is allowing ourselves to express –
verbally and nonverbally - this state of loving presence in our responses to others.

The basic idea of this whole approach called the Practice of Loving Presence is that
it is possible to set up a specific pattern of interaction between two or more people
(members of a community or support group, for example) which enhances the
probability of peaceful healing relationships, as well as creative and successful
interactions. The creation of this pattern involves understanding and implementing
the following ideas:
When one person (or a group) sets the context for someone's healing, the most
important aspect of that context is the state of mind of the person or persons
creating it. The state of mind that creates the best context for people to feel safe,
accepted, welcomed, appreciated, and whole, is loving presence.

In loving presence we are attentive, with no other agenda than to see and take in
spiritual (non-egocentric) and emotional nourishment from some beautiful,
touching, or inspiring aspect of the person who is unfolding in our presence.

To many, especially therapists and helping professionals, this can be a radical idea:
giving priority to the taking of this kind of nourishment by the therapist over any
other outcome. It would seem that the first priority would be to provide emotional
support for the client. That is an important goal. What we are proposing is: that goal
can best be met if the therapist can feel inspired by something about the client. It
could be the client’s courage, depth of feeling, innocence or anything that makes
one feel appreciative or compassionate or joyful.
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The challenge is to drop egocentric pursuits. Fixing people, solving their problems,
having answers to their questions, saving them or changing them can all be ways to
feel safer, smarted or better than the client, to be the savior or whatever. Such
egocentric pursuits do not generate the same feeling of connection and safety that
loving presence does. The first priority is simply to be inspired in one way or
another by simply being present with the other person. Then, turn that inspiration
into patience, compassion and loving attention for the other.

When you are taking in this kind of nourishment it creates a loving, compassionate
state, which is seen and felt by the person you’re with.

In this way, a reinforcement cycle is established, in which you inspire each other,
and a flow of loving presence and healing is established. With this as context, the
possibility of healing (or just an emotionally satisfying relationship) is greatly
enhanced.

Be what you are: intelligence and love in action.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Here are a Few Guidelines to Remember for the Practice of Loving Presence:
 be yourself and trust that you are enough;
 let it come simply and naturally;
 keep letting go of unnecessary tension or efforting;
 keep looking for, finding and enjoying non-egocentric pleasure and nourishment
in being with others;
 letting yourself enjoy this nourishment and allow it to show in your face and
demeanor;
do not expect yourself to be constantly in loving presence; just keep coming back
to it.

Stewardship
By Ron Kurtz

I’m going to talk about the process as one of stewarding a healing process. But first,
a longish quote by Martha Herbert on two contrasting worldviews or systems of
belief.

Here’s Dr. Herbert:1

In what follows I will schematize some opposing worldviews that can shape science,
and sketch their divergent implications. The first worldview I will call a control-
oriented disconnected belief system. The second I will call a stewardship oriented
connected belief system.
Underlying much of the scientific enterprise has been a set of beliefs: that we can
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control nature through science, that this is desirable and good, and that this control
will end human suffering. This belief system also tends to include negative
assumptions about nature. Nature is limited, dumb. Human engineering is superior
to nature's. In order to progress it is necessary to transcend nature.
Negative assumptions about nature include negative assumptions about our own
nature, both our psychological nature, and the nature of our bodies. "Human
nature" is nasty, selfish, greedy and lustful. Natural impulses are anti-social, and
civilization requires that they be reined in and controlled. The body is distasteful, a
source of pain, appetite, sex, sickness, suffering and death. The body's pleasures
are sinful and dangerous, and must be reined in and controlled; the body's pains
should be fixed and escaped.
A schematic of a spiritual belief system consistent with this control-oriented
approach to nature is of a remote deity, not rooted in body or place, with
transcendence or escape as a spiritual goal, and with discipline of body and mind
imposed by external authority
An opposing belief system holds that we can play a role of nurturance and
stewardship toward nature, but that control is an impossible, misguided goal. The
goal of minimizing (not eliminating) suffering is approached in these terms through
a balanced integration of technical, cultural, economic, community and spiritual
approaches.
From this point of view nature is fascinating in its intricacy, and complexity. Eager
curiosity is balanced with humility about the limits of what we know compared to
what exists and may yet surprise us. Nature is respectfully queried for lessons
arising from the complexity of matter, of planetary structure, and of the long
evolution of organisms and ecosystems. Characterizing how interventions will
ramify throughout a system is an intrinsic part of scientific inquiry and technical
planning.
Human beings are seen as having inherent drives toward love, cooperation,
curiosity, creativity and conviviality. Rage, impatience, self-centeredness and greed
are seen as borne of fear, isolation, danger, humiliation and deprivation whose
opposites, love, genuine connection, safety, respect and heartfelt generosity, can in
principle minimize these defensive reactions.
The human body and mind are understood to have great potential for physical,
mental and spiritual development. Every individual has the intrinsic capacity to
cultivate these potentials to the extent that effort is applied, with high refinement
and subtlety rewarding sustained commitment. Curiosity about the body, how it
moves, how it senses, how it feels in the many senses of that word, is encouraged
and incorporated into cumulative cultural practices. Sexuality, one of the body's
many capacities, is sacred but not taboo.
A schematic of a spiritual practice consistent with the stewardship approach would
ground spiritual practice in human relationship, bodily experience and
connectedness with nature and would create cooperative modes of interacting.
While these two opposing belief systems are ends of a spectrum, and while
fascinating and even perverse combinations of elements of both perspectives can
be found, the stark opposition of vantage points can help pose questions.2

Two belief systems. Two worldviews. One about control. One about stewardship.
Both with related assumptions and elaborate implications for the way we live and
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work in this world. Implications about who we are and how we relate to one another
and the environment. I’d like to talk about it in relation to the method.3

One of the great lessons of Taoist philosophy is this: Nature works best, without
interference from anyone. “Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” In science
today, there’s a lot of talk about self-organizing systems. You could say, Spring
comes and the grass self-organizes by itself. A little redundant and not very good as
poetry, either. But, the message is clear: there are forces at work that do not need
our control. The brain, it has been estimated, utilizes 2 billion bits of information per
second, only two thousand of which are used by the conscious mind. Point: “The
heart has reasons…” There’s a lot going on without our control. Some other, much
greater intelligence is organizing all that. Imagine you had to control all the
chemical reactions taking place in your body and all the nervous processing taking
place in your brain. Not even possible to imagine. Just one example of nature
working best without interference.
The healing processes, the way body and mind repair damage, also works best with
a minimum of outside control. Nourishment and rest work well for the body. Much
the same works for the mind. Let’s consider:

Pierre Janet,4 the great psychologist, believed that psychological illness was
brought about this way: At a point in time when a person is emotionally vulnerable,
an upsetting incident can overwhelm the mind. The person does not have the
resources to integrate the event in a way that makes sense and can be
incorporated into their knowledge of the world. The event is somehow contained
and the integration process fails to happen, leaving the person with an
encapsulated emotional event, buried in the unconscious. Although this buried
event remains outside of consciousness and unintegrated, it created an irritation of
a sort and effects the person’s mental states and behavior. Among the effects are
the development of implicit beliefs, unconscious rules for behavior and habits that
keep the unintegrated material from reaching consciousness.

There are two stages to the method of helping a person to integrate and heal: first,
we must bring the unconscious event into consciousness; second, we must support
the integration process. For the first part, which the person has habitually worked to
prevent, we must have permission and cooperation. Of course there are ways to
overwhelm the defenses and bring such events into consciousness, but these ways
are almost dangerous; they can either re-create a traumatic episode or strengthen
the habits that block the memory of the event.

A forceful approach automatically elicits resistance and a great expenditure of

energy. Control is neither sensible nor efficient for healing. Think of a cut finger! Or
growing roses. Yes we can support these processes, but controlling them is not
even possible. Not to mention the pain attempting to control them causes. But the
process can be stewarded. The evocation of the unconscious event, in this method,
is done with the conscious knowledge and permission of the person. An
“experiment” is set up which is designed to evoke the emotions, images, memories
and/or thoughts about the event. Creating and implementing such experiments
requires a great deal of skill. A well done experiment will almost always evoke
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material that will start a process that brings unconscious material into
consciousness.

Very often emotions, painful and sometimes intense, will be evoked by an

experiment. When that happens, we’re into the second stage of the process,
stewardship. The emotional process is a spontaneous one that is the beginning of
and an essential part of the healing process. This phase is about nourishment,
containment, comforting and integration. The grass doesn’t actually grow by itself,
it needs good soil, a little rain and sunshine.

I have done enough supervisions to see clearly which students are operating, at
least in part, by a control, disconnected belief system. To relax out of that and
follow the unfolding process and to feel connected to and compassionate for the
client is one of the primary goals for the way I do supervision. It’s done by tracking
what’s happening within the client and what wants to happen and then, supporting
that.5

1 Martha Herbert, Incomplete Science, The Body, and Indwelling Spirit. The whole
paper is available
at: http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?2636
2 There’s more about this quote in the short section entitled Martha w/ Comments.
3 The Hakomi Method of Mindfulness Based Assisted Self-Study
4 A good book to read is The Symptom Path to Enlightenment by Ernst Rossi.
5 See my short paper, Silence and Following

An Interview with Ron Kurtz

- Donna Martin

The USABP (United States Association of Body Psychotherapists) has awarded their
lifetime achievement award to Ron Kurtz who created the Hakomi Method. Hakomi
began as body-centered psychotherapy (a term that Kurtz coined in his book of that
title), meaning primarily that the practitioner pays attention first to nonverbal
indicators rather than to the content of a client’s story.

The essence of the Hakomi Method has always been, and continues to be, simple
experiments in a state of mindfulness to reveal how someone’s experience is
organized. A tradition in Buddhism and some other spiritual practices, mindfulness
is a way of paying attention to present experience, without interfering with or
controlling what happens.

Kurtz talks about the need in psychotherapy to access what has been referred to as
the “adaptive unconscious”--those underlying.implicit ideas, attitudes and beliefs
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that organize our experience, especially our experience of unnecessary suffering.

These implicit beliefs are outside awareness and so we cannot talk easily about
them, at least in ordinary consciousness.

Rather, these implicit beliefs are revealed in how we express ourselves, in our
posture and gestures, in habitual behaviors, in our ways of perceiving and making
meaning of events. The Hakomi method involves the evocation of a reaction that,
when studied in mindfulness, points toward a “missing experience”--some kind of
emotionally nourishing experience that the person is missing out on because of how
he or she is organizing experience.

Strongly influenced by Gestalt, with its focus on present experience, and by

Bioenergetics, with its focus on the mind-body connection, Hakomi as a method also
evolved from Kurtz’s interest in Taoism, yoga, and Buddhism. Other major
influences have included research in neuroscience and such books as Wilson’s
Strangers to Ourselves, Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain, Llinas’ “I” of the
Vortex, Daniel Siegel’s The Mindful Brain and Chris Frith’s Making Up the Mind.

While some writers believe it is impossible to access the adaptive unconscious,

Hakomi has discovered a way to use mindfulness, and several simple experiments,
to assist clients to quickly become conscious of the most basic attitudes and habits
that cause what Buddhists call unnecessary suffering. Years ago, during a
demonstration of Kurtz’s work at Naropa University, the head of Buddhist studies
there described Hakomi as “applied Buddhism.”

For about the past 15 years Kurtz has emphasized “the practice of loving presence.”
This state of mind and being of the practitioner creates the field or context in which
the rest of the method takes place. It has thus become the focus of the training,
supported by research, as reported in the APA’s Heart and Soul of Change: What
Works in Therapy, in studies by Stephen Porges, and in such groundbreaking books
as A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis and his colleagues. (Both Porges and
Lewis were keynote speakers at the last Hakomi conference held in Boulder in
August 2005. The next Hakomi conference will be held in August 2008 in Boulder.)

Hakomi is now being taught by dozens of trainers all over North America, as well as
in Central and South America, Japan, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Kurtz
continues to teach and practice at home in Oregon, as well as at other centers,
including a training in Austin, Texas, “Hakomi for the Buddhist-minded”.

In addition to its use in psychotherapy, Hakomi is being practiced by helping

professionals in such settings as medicine, teaching, life coaching, social work,
spiritual workshops, parenting, and support groups.

What follows is brief interview the author had recently with Kurtz:

D: Before anyone was really talking about mindfulness, especially in

psychotherapy, you came up with the idea of using it in combination with simple
experiments for self-study. What gave you the idea to do that?
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R: It was in the early 70's. I was working with a woman who had very negative ideas
about her value as a person. She didn't say so, but she “acted that way”. I
imagined that telling her she was okay would only evoke an argument or nothing at
all. So, I asked her just to pay attention to what she experienced when I said the
next thing to her. I waited until she looked ready and I told her, “You're a good
person.” Something like that. I remember that she started crying and we took it
from there. So, that was the beginning. “Pay attention to your experience” was
really my way of asking for mindfulness. With my background in Buddhism, I
quickly recognized it as such. Using mindfulness this way has become a central part
of my work.

D: If you could refer to one major change in how you understand the point of
psychotherapy now, compared with say 20 years ago, what would you point at?
R: I'd point at the greater freedom I have now in relating to clients as whole,
complex people rather than examples of disease categories or character patterns.
The point of psychotherapy for me has become this: “If you are ready and have the
courage to take a deep and honest look at yourself, I'll assist you. In doing this, you
will bring into consciousness - and be able to make new choices about - the
normally automatic, nonconscious implicit beliefs which organize your behavior and
run your life.”

I have also found that when using the Hakomi Method, clients who are ready to do
this move very quickly into deep, emotionally painful material that may have
remained unconscious for many years. So, my beliefs about how long
psychotherapy has to take have changed radically.

D: When you talk about the importance of the state of mind of the therapist, what
exactly do you mean?
R: When we meet another in an intimate way - as we do in therapy and assisted
self-discovery - our very beings influence each other. My moods, my thoughts, my
way of being will interact, emotionally, neurologically, even philosophically, with
yours. If we are congruent, we will reinforce each other. Where we are not
congruent, there will be tension between us and perhaps one of us will change to
meet the other. If I am in “loving presence” - that is feeling love and compassion
towards you - and can maintain my awareness of what is transpiring in the present,
I will be creating an emotional context that will noticeably affect your state of being.

The power of these two - love and presence - have been celebrated for centuries.

Feeling love and being in the now: when these are parts of the therapist's way of
being, the influence will be positive and powerful.

D: What inspires you to take this new direction in calling the method “assisted self-
discovery”?
R: Two things: one, changing my view of myself as the “cause” of change. As a
therapist, I am only a participant, a helper. I'm not the controller of the therapy
process. I am part of the client's healing process. Like all healing processes, it is
the organism's own resources, will and power to heal that are most important. Yes, I
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can assist, but I am not the cause. This might seem obvious to some people, but
when I am supervising students, I see them working too hard and doing too much. I
don't see them leaving enough room for the client's own resources to come into
play. And that's the second thing: recognizing clients' resources, their own power to
contribute, their courage and their strength. When I see these, I remember, “I am
only assisting, only a helper here.” I don't feel as self-important as I once did.

D: You are going as strong as ever in terms of creativity, and don't seem to be
slowing down much, other than physically. I know you are thinking more and more
about the legacy you want to leave the world. How would you describe that today?
R: There is a growing group of skilled people who carry the knowledge and spirit of
the work wholly within their beings. Besides the body of work, the writings about
theory and techniques, the DVDs and training handbooks, I will be leaving a host of
excellent and devoted trainers, teachers, therapists and students. I believe I am
leaving a method that is true to our best nature, one that is effective and heartfelt
and which is in agreement with the universal human longing for peace, happiness
and spiritual wisdom. That, I hope, will be my legacy.

The author, Donna Martin, is an international trainer in the Hakomi Method of

mindfulness-based assisted self-discovery. The co-author with Ron Kurtz of a
forthcoming book on the practice of loving presence, she maintains a website
at www.hakomi.ca.