This page is organized as follows, with each section underlined for your convenience:
A basic explanation of Hakomi.
How Hakomi differs from traditional talk therapy.
The main elements we work with in Hakomi.
The overall flow of a session so you know what to expect.
Contraindications to Hakomi (please read).
What is Hakomi?
Hakomi Somatic Therapy or Coaching is a modality in which the organic unfolding of your present moment experience is supported within the context of the therapeutic relationship, with your body’s wisdom as the compass.
The purpose of this modality is to support you in becoming more aware of unconscious perceptions, beliefs, and impulses that are accessed in a state of mindfulness within the therapeutic container.
With this awareness, you will be supported to deepen and process this core material, while introducing new possibilities through somatic experiments done in mindfulness, always with your consent.
A Hakomi session will support you to have an embodied understanding that your emotional landscape, sensations, and sensitivity are wise nervous system responses rather than problems to be solved.
You will be supported to experience your body as a resource, and trust the inherent wholeness that is already within you.
Whether or not you struggle with chronic pain, anxiety, or a sensitive system, you have likely had the experience of going to a therapist or mentor in which you sit and talk about what is going on in your life for an hour, and then you leave feeling like it was not transformative.
While the listening ear of someone is always helpful to some degree, talk therapy or coaching that does not address what is happening in the body in the present moment leaves out the most potent avenue for insight and transformation.
Transformation happens when we FEEL our core material from a place of safety, compassion, and support.
How does Hakomi differ from traditional talk therapy?
There are two main factors that differentiate Hakomi from talk therapy.
A Hakomi session is executed in a state of present moment awareness, or mindfulness.
Hakomi is oriented toward what is presently arising in your body as a felt experience, with respect to the organicity of your system.
Instead of talking about and attempting to solve what is challenging in your life with the rational mind, you will instead be supported to drop into a state of present moment awareness in order to visit the inner terrain that is underneath the surface of the mind.
Listening to the cues that your body is providing in a moment-by-moment basis is a compass toward gently deepening into and processing your core material (your emotions and internal sensations), and gaining insight into the automatic and unconscious impulses that are more challenging to access in ordinary states of awareness.
Rather than trying fix or simply “let go” of your internal barriers, limiting habits and behaviors, chronic pain, anxiety, sensitivity, etc., we instead lean into and support these inner experiences with an attitude of curiosity, acceptance, and nonviolence, knowing that they are protective responses that deserve to be honored and understood.
Your body and nervous system are working to keep you safe.
Your body has a lot to say about what happened to you growing up, how those experiences shaped you, and what your present needs are. You may already have some of this information from explicit memories that your rational mind understands.
However, the body is where we carry implicit memory which is the deeply held patterning of your nervous system that the conscious mind often does not have direct access to.
This is why Hakomi sessions occur in a state of present moment awareness, or mindfulness, for both client and practitioner alike, so that this core material is more accessible through the felt sense of the body.
Hakomi is a method for supporting you to process deeper layers of core material and developmental wounding patterns.
In Hakomi, there are two main elements we work with:
1. The automatic impulses and patterns of your nervous system
2. The beliefs and perceptions that you formed about yourself and the world
In a session, we will go back and forth between what is arising automatically and organically in the body with present moment awareness, and what that information means.
The somatic experience and the meaning behind it are equally important and necessary elements in supporting you to process your emotions and gain insight into your core material so that you have clarity on how to continue to work with your internal barriers that are presently limiting you.
In Hakomi, we are looking to understand what your missing developmental experiences were, the core beliefs that formed as a result of these missing nourishments, and the strategies that you developed to function in this world while carrying the core wound(s).
Together, we will get to know these barriers to nourishment you carry as a result of these wounds, and you will be supported to try on new possibilities with little somatic experiments executed in a state of mindfulness to help you get a taste of what the missing nourishment feels like so that you can have a felt sense of a new possible way of being to evoke neuroplasticity.
Our deep core beliefs about self, and perceptions of the world are rooted as a felt sense in the body. We can align with the inherent wholeness that is already within us when we befriend the protective mechanisms inside of us that keep us blocked from nourishment.
Once we feel and understand ourselves more deeply, we can relate with our sensitivity and our protections as allies, and have more choice in how we relate, respond, react, habituate, etc.
In Hakomi, the emphasis is on slowing down and allowing plenty of space to be with what arising inwardly in this moment. Hakomi could be compared to a supported meditation practice in dialogue with a mentor who is here to support you in going inward toward the felt sense of the body.
In this present day and age, we are used to moving at such a fast pace, and the Hakomi method gives you a chance to slow down and give space for the more subtle internal experiences that can shed a great amount of insight when listened to and supported by a practitioner who is equipped with the ability of attunement, curiosity, and skilled guidance based on the organic unfolding of your unique body/mind orientation.
This process is a collaboration between client and practitioner in which we are both equally on a journey together to learn more about how your system has learned to orient including what your strengths, challenges, blocks, behaviors, and habits are based off what your body is letting us know in the present moment.
What will happen in a Hakomi session? What will the experience of a session be like?
At the beginning of a session, we will almost always begin in mindfulness. You will be supported to go inward into the felt experience of your body, underneath the surface layer of the mind.
From there, based on what feels most alive and important to you, you will be gently supported to bring the practitioner along. It could be some content around something you are experiencing in your life, or something you are presently experiencing internally such as a physical or emotional sensation.
Once we have contacted something that’s alive and important for you to tend, you will be supported make space to gently lean into that experience in mindfulness. From here, together we will deepen into that experience, always with your consent.
Once we have some information into this experience that has been evoked through your body’s internal cues, you may be prompted to participate in a somatic experiment so that we can get to know more about how your system is oriented.
For example, you may be supported to repeat a movement or some words that the practitioner sees as potentially holding some significant clues into your subconscious terrain, with the intention of bringing unconscious material to your conscious awareness.
While you repeat the movement (for example, tightening a fist) or the words (usually word with emotional tone to them), you will be encouraged to slow down, repeat, and study the experience in mindfulness to learn more about that impulse.
The practitioner may take over the words or movements for you so that you can hear or see them outside of yourself. Props may be used to support certain impulses, for example using a pillow to support your inclination to hide, or wrapping a blanket around you tightly to support the impulse to contract.
Another experiment may be doing the opposite of the impulse, for example, opening your arms while you speak instead of crossing them. Together, we notice what happens next and deepen further into your experience from there.
When these natural impulses are studied in a state of mindfulness, always with your permission, and with a sense of safety and trust in the therapeutic relationship, you can begin to feel what core material is underneath these impulses.
This is where the potential for deepening and processing occurs, within which lies the potential for a transformative experience.
Transformation is nothing that can be hurried or forced, which is why nonviolence is one of the key principles in the Hakomi method. The practitioner’s job is to balance the delicacy of your desire for change, while simultaneously honoring the organic timing of your unfolding process.
While having a big, transformative experience may be a level of profundity that you desire, and certainly can happen in this kind of container, often mini-transformations are likely to occur where smaller bite-sized nourishments are taken in one bit at a time.
Transformation occurs when you not only gain insight into what your unconscious core material is, but you also get a sense of what the missing nourishment is, and you have a felt experience of that nourishment.
Once you have a felt experience of the missing nourishment, you will be supported to linger in that experience to give your system some time to adjust to the feeling of a new potential way of being. This will evoke neuroplasticity, and support you to integrate this experience into your daily life.
Transformation occurs when our center of gravity shifts from unconsciously protecting the wound to consciously trusting a new possibility.
Integration is key for long term change, and therefore, you will be supported to take a few minutes together at the end of each session to debrief what just happened, and collaborate on how you can take what you just experienced or learned to infiltrate into your life.
To note, the above stated sequence of a session is a general guideline for the Hakomi method. Not every session will be transformative, and no two sessions will be the same. With the principle of organicity in mind, the therapist or coach will not hold any agenda, other than to keep you safe inside of the window of tolerance, and to allow for the organic unfolding of your process.
My intention is to hold what we discover together with loving presence, curiosity, and willingness to support you with whatever arises, whether that is supporting you to deepen further or to help you lean toward resourcing if the material we uncover is overwhelming.
My job is to keep you safe inside of the window of tolerance so that you can effectively process your core material in a way that is supportive for integration.
Contra-indications for Hakomi-informed Somatic Coaching:
I am not a licensed clinical therapist, and therefore I will refer you out if you have any of the following diagnoses or challenges so that you can be safely supported:
An active addiction
An active eating disorder that's not being addressed
Personality disorder
Severe unresolved trauma
Severe clinical depression
Schizoaffective disorder
Bipolar disorder
Suicidal ideation
This is NOT a comprehensive list of contra-indications to working together.
Prior to working together, I will ask you questions to see if we are a good fit. I encourage you to ask me questions as well, and to get a sense of whether or not I will be a good fit for you. If you sign up for a session without scheduling a 30 minute call, and we don't know each other, I will reach out to you to schedule one.
This work is NOT appropriate for crisis intervention.
This is not for you if you want someone to fix you or tell you what to do.
This is NOT for you if you want someone to do the inner work FOR you.
I am not here to give specific advice for challenging situations happening in your life. I am here to support your own internal awareness of what your needs are, helping you to hone in a deeper sense of how to communicate your needs nonviolently and effectively.