Nonviolence through Allowing
You don't need to be fixed.
You are not broken.
You need care, compassion, understanding, and support.
As I continue to gently working with myself, and with others, I notice the strong tendency to want to make it all better. To seek relief for myself and to try to offer it to clients when I see them in pain.
While relief is nice when it happens, I notice often that the more I seek it, the more I drive myself into patterns that do just the opposite.
One of the main pieces that I'm learning as I work with myself and others is that there has to be room for allowing. Setting a container with the intention to allow a certain process to unfold, and then giving space for that process to unfold in its own timing is a gentle, nonviolent approach I use with my clients.
Whether it's allowing for the the outpouring of a previously repressed emotion, an "aha" moment of insight, or a way that the body wants to let go of something through movement or expression, there is a process here that cannot be forced or hurried.
The therapeutic container is one place in which the set, setting, intention, and loving presence of another can allow for whatever is ready to rise to the surface.
The body holds the innate wisdom, and knows when we are ready.
We can't think our way through change. Yes, the rational mind is an important key player in the process of transformation, but the BODY holds the keys to unlock the door.
Our bodies are so intelligent. And even though we may pressurize ourselves to change, if we aren't ready at a deep, genuine level, the body will continue to hold on.
The body knows when we are safe enough, and when the conditions are just right for something to rise from the unconscious to the conscious, or for deeply repressed emotions that are ready to be felt, expressed, and witnessed, to do so in a container of safety.
Hakomi-informed 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 first principle in Hakomi is nonviolence. Of course, this means nonviolence in the explicit, obvious ways. But it also refers to the subtler forms of violence that can occur when the therapist or coach has an agenda that's not in collaboration or consent with your needs.
There are certain pieces of information I am looking for when we work together, namely, your core missing experience(s), the core beliefs about yourself and the world that formed from the missing experience, and the strategy with which you have utilized to function in the world with the core wound.
But rather than trying to directly elicit this information from you, or take some kind of set formula or method to insert from the outside onto your internal experience, I lean in and trust what's unfolding for you right now.
There is enough right here at the surface through your body language, felt sense, tone of voice, emotional quality, and overall energy that we can together gently contact and deepen into.
This requires collaboration and a willingness for the practitioner and client alike to step into the unknown.
This requires the practitioner to be on an equal meeting ground with you. Human to human. An honest willingness to also be vulnerable.
This is why I love Hakomi, and this is why it stimulates my growing edges and keeps me humbled.
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 your core material, while introducing new possibilities through somatic experiments done in mindfulness, always with your consent.
A Hakomi-informed somatic 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.
These responses need understanding and care, not fixing or immediate transcending, even if they are uncomfortable and limiting.
You will be supported to experience your body as a resource, and to trust the inherent wholeness that is already within you.