A Brief Overview
The unique contribution of the Hakomi method is this: the method contains, as a necessary element, precise experiments done with a person in a mindful state, the purpose being to evoke emotions, memories and reactions that will reveal or help access the implicit beliefs and early experiences and adaptations that are influencing the person’s nonconscious, habitual behaviors.
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. 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. These centers handle things like color, depth and sequence. Their functions become obvious only when they cease to function normally. There unconscious organizers exert very strong influences on our whole way of being. Hakomi therapists are interested in these organizers. We’re interested in the organizers of emotions, beliefs, attitudes, motivations, and behavior. We’re interested in the adaptations that have been made to the most important situations in the client’s life. We call these organizers core material. It is the material that created and still maintains the kind of organization of experience we’re observing in our clients.
Often, core material is inaccessible to the client’s ordinary consciousness, but not as inaccessible as the brain functions that create vision. Through using this method, however, some core material can be made conscious. The method makes core material conscious.
Unnecessary suffering can arise through the influence of certain kinds of core material. The method is designed to access exactly this kind of core material and to provide ways to reduce its influence. This kind of suffering is unnecessary because it is being organized by core material that is no longer appropriate to the present. In addition, the cognitive components, like the beliefs that are implied by the habitual behavior, are overgeneralized. Some adaptations and implicit beliefs that developed early in life, while still active, no longer pertain. Though the current situation has changed, the old adaptations are still habitually and automatically applied. Outdated or not, they go on organizing experience, causing problems and unnecessary suffering.
So, we work to bring core material into consciousness. 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 healing processes of emotional release and insight. For this, mindfulness is essential. When a person is in a mindful state, his attention is on the spontaneous 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 protective mechanisms that prevent certain thoughts and emotions are somewhat weakened. 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 a implicit belief that people do not have time for him. Speaking rapidly is often an indicator of such a belief. One experiment the practitioner may do, again with that person in a mindful state, would be to say something like this: “Please notice your immediate reaction when I tell you, “I have time for you.’”
If our guess about the belief is correct, that statement should get a reaction. It could be something like an immediate, spontaneous thought, “No one ever has!” Or, the reaction could be a sudden feeling of sadness. It could also be a memory of not being heard by a significant person. A whole scene may appear. When these reactions are noticed by the person, it’s not just the belief which is made clear. The feelings and memories that arise also 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.
However, experiments in mindfulness aren’t done until several other important things have been established. As a session begins, the practitioner puts him- or herself into a compassionate state of being called loving presence. This state of being is created by focusing on those qualities of the other person that inspire and support appreciation, sympathy and understanding. It is an habitual form of attention for Hakomi practitioners. The client usually responds to loving presence, either consciously or unconsciously, by feeling safer and calmer.
The next thing the practitioner does is to begin to gather two kinds of information. At this early stage, one kind of information we’re looking for are signs of the person’s present experience. These signs are found in posture, gestures, facial expressions and tones of voice. They are things like a shrug of the shoulders or a slight redness starting in the nostrils which may be a sign of sadness arising. Constant, habitual attention is paid to these signs. This kind of attention is essential to loving presence and is an important influence on establishing good working relations. 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 the signs of present experience, without having to ask about them, is one of the best ways to establish intimacy and safety.
Once all loving presence is established and the signs of the client’s present experience is being tracked, a second kind of information is gathered, the kind needed to create experiments. This kind of information is not normally gathered by asking questions or obtained through conversation. It’s gathered by observing the person’s habitual, nonverbal behaviors. We call these “indicators”. As Kahlil Gibran has pointed out, The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. The search for and use of indicators is central to the process. Both of these kinds of information can be gathered within few minutes. The practitioner concentrates on looking and listening not just for the signs of present experience, but for behaviors that might be the external expressions of core material. Indicators are numerous and many are quite common and easily noticed, like speaking rapidly or any constant facial expression. The indicators people have are habitual. They happen automatically, as most habits do, without conscious awareness. Because they are so often expressions of core material, they are the most fruitful when used in experiments. I train students extensively in “reading” nonverbal behaviors for such indicators.
When the practitioner finds an indicator to work with, she draws the client’s attention to it and together they set up and do an experiment designed to bring the nonconscious organizers of that indicator into consciousness. With the person in mindfulness, the practitioner does something designed to evoke a reaction. This process is designed to bring the unconscious material organizing indicator into consciousness or at least closer to it. If the practitioner has chosen a good experiment and has done it carefully with the full cooperation of the person, then a telling reaction is often the results. The reaction itself is in consciousness simply because the person is in mindfulness. When a reaction is noticed, it is immediate and experiential. Its connection to core material may also be obvious or at least, suggested.
These experiments in mindfulness often evoke emotions. When such emotions are not interrupted, they have the power to draw memories and other associations into consciousness, associations that make sense of the reactions that occurred. Once core material is in consciousness, the work moves into supporting the expression of emotion and the integration of the material that has surfaced. Essential to this process is allowing time for the spontaneous integration that usually follows and the creation of new, more realistic and satisfying habits around the revised material. This sounds easier than it may be.
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 various indicators may 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. All of this is described in detail below in the section on the Six Skill Sets.
The Therapist’s State of Mind: Loving Presence
In this model, what is seen as primary in shaping experience is not external reality—not what is cognized, not the object of awareness—but rather the properties of that moment of mind itself.
—Daniel Goleman
The phrase state of mind has much more precise meaning nowadays than it had just a few decades ago. Neurological research has revealed much about exactly what states the brain can be in when people interact. Many books have been written on the interaction of caregivers and the infants in their care. Adults in relationship also affect each others’ states of mind. For the very intimate relationship between a therapist and client, the therapist’s conscious awareness and deliberate control of his or her state of mind is essential. The effect of the therapist’s state of mind on the process of this method is without doubt the single most important factor in it’s success.
To best serve others in their self-study, the therapist must be able to sustain both presence and compassion. The therapist has to maintain a constant focus on present activity and present experience, both her own and that of the client. That kind of presence is needed. A feeling of compassion is also essential. When presence and compassion are combined and constant, the therapist’s state of mind can be called, loving presence. In training people in this method, the development and practice of this state of mind are primary goals.
In a very short time, loving presence can establish in the client, a sense of being safe, cared for, heard and understood. Self-exploration, especially when using mindfulness, places clients in extremely vulnerable positions. A therapist in loving presence helps clients to allow this vulnerability and provides best context for assisted self-study to happen. Here’s a quote:
“Loving presence is easy to recognize. Imagine a happy and contented mother looking at the sweet face of her peaceful newborn. She is calm, loving and attentive. Unhurried and undistracted, the two of them seem to be outside of time… simply being. Gently held within a field of love and life’s wisdom, they are as present with each other as any two could be.”
For the therapist to develop this state of mind, he or she must first of all look at others as living beings and sources of inspiration. As one therapist put it:
If you cannot see anything lovable in this person that you can respond to in a genuine way, then you are not the right person to help this person.
It is this intention and habit of seeing something lovable in the other that creates the feeling state necessary for loving presence. The first thing I instruct students to do: create this habit as the primary thing in any interaction! Create it and sustain it throughout your sessions!
I want to start with the most importing thing I have to say: The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being. And this is lucky, because if we had to be smart, or good, or mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there. Even if it is a cat or a bird, if you are trying to help a wounded bird, the first thing you have to know is that there is somebody in there, and that you have to wait for that “person”, that being in there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing.
There are any number of things that will support this intention. The first goal is to establish a relationship that will support self-study; the habit of gathering information by asking questions and considering answers is not the way to do it. First, one must avoid being drawn into a conversation about abstractions—ideas, explanations, the meaning of the past and such. The therapist’s words and actions must demonstrate that he or she is paying attention to what the client is experiencing right now, cares about what the client is feeling, and understands what that means for the client. This connection through present experience is the key to limbic resonance. So, the therapist searches for what there is about the client that is emotionally nourishing or inspiring of appreciation and connection. Another thing that helps build the right relationship is realizing the process as a collaborative enterprise where feelings of partnership, teamwork and mutual respect are basic. The idea that we are not separate, that we are inescapably parts of a whole greater than each of us alone, is the root of loving presence.
Nonverbal Indicators and Formative Experiences
Accessing the kinds of beliefs that pervasively and unconsciously influence experience requires that the therapist get ideas about what the client’s formative early experiences were or what implicit beliefs the client’s behaviors are expressing. To gather this information, the therapist focuses attention on the qualities of the client’s habitual posture, tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, speech patterns and such. Many of these qualities are habitual nonverbal expressions of implicit beliefs. We call them indicators. (In the vernacular: “clues.”)
As you may imagine, there are many such indicators. Some can be completely obvious as to what they say about the client. Others require that the therapist learn them over time. In Bioenergetics, for example, the indicators are often postural. A sunken chest and locked knees for a Bioenergetic therapist would be indicators of “an oral pattern”. Given that pattern, the therapist has both a diagnosis and a way to proceed with treatment. Almost all methods of psychotherapy use particular sets of indicators this way and usually refer to them “symptoms”. In this method, we use indicators differently. We use them to get ideas for experiments.
As we interact and relate to others, we don’t normally focus on their little, seemingly insignificant habits. In an ordinary interaction, conversation is most important; we might not consciously think about a person’s subtle nonverbal behaviors. We might ignore a slight feeling of discomfort (about not being believed) which results from the way the other person is looking at us with her head always turned to one side. Odds are she won’t be consciously aware of either the angle of her head or the skepticism it indicates. This level of interaction is usually handled by the adaptive unconscious. In Hakomi, we consciously search for indicators and the turning of the head is a common one. Through experimenting with it many times, I have come to expect that it can indicate formative experiences of not being told the truth or not being understood. The emotion associated with it is usually hurt. Though the hurt is not being felt at the moment, it is an expression of the implicit belief: “I must be careful about what people are telling me! I could get hurt again.” Though not conscious, this belief is controlling present behavior and experience. Indicators are the external expressions of this process.
In Hakomi, we use indicators to create experiments, experiments designed to trigger reactions. This is a vital piece of the method. It is our clear intention to study a client’s behavior not for symptoms of disease but for sources of experiments. We anticipate that the experiments we carry out will bring the unconscious, adaptive processes driving that behavior into the client’s awareness. A therapist using this approach is thought of as having an experimental attitude. We are evidence seekers, evidence which is gathered on the spot, evidence that clients can use to understand themselves. The basic idea is this: (1) indicators suggest experiments; (2) experiments create reactions; (3) reactions are evidence of implicit beliefs. Gathering evidence is what experiments are all about and that’s exactly why we do them.
For instance, if the client’s habit is to hold her head a little bit off center and turned slightly away, we might do an experiment where the client, while in a mindful state, slowly turns her head back towards center. Most such clients, when doing this movement deliberately and carefully will react with fear. This fear is about being emotionally hurt and it is associated with memories of that happening and beliefs about how to avoid it. The habitual turning of the head is only one indicator and the experiment only one that could be done. There are endless numbers of possible indicators and the experiments that can be done. Finding indicators and devising suitable experiments is one of the things that makes this work so interesting. It is a combination of searching for clues like a detective and testing them like a scientist. It is a long way from “the talking cure”.
Experiments
The method is designed to lead clients towards greater consciousness of the implicit beliefs that organize their reactions and experiences. That kind of information is not readily available to consciousness. So, we don’t just ask for the information. Questioning doesn’t usually yield the kind of information we’re after. What we do is: we create experiments using our guesses about what the unconscious material might be. We get our guesses from behaviors that the surface expressions of those deep structures. We call them indicators. Good experiments almost always evoke the memories, images and beliefs that exist at the deeper levels. In order to make conscious what was unconscious (and to satisfy our curiosity by being detectives and scientists), we think, guess and we experiment. All our techniques serve that end.
The discoveries that clients make are the outcomes of experiments. It’s what this method does that other methods don’t do. This is the only method I know of that does experiments in mindfulness. These experiments create moments of insight, you could say, assisted insight. Here’s the sequence: (1) once our relationship with the client is in place and the client understands what we’re doing, we study the client for indicators and make our guesses about what they might mean and/or what experiment we might do to both test our guesses and possibly bring unconscious material into the client’s consciousness. (2) We set the experiment up carefully: we prepare the client; we help the client become mindful; we explain what we’re going to do. (3) We wait for the exactly right moment and when everything’s ready, we carefully do the experiment. (4) Then we watch for and/or ask for the outcome: the client’s immediate reaction.
The process starts with loving presence and loving presence is maintained throughout. Still, you have to switch gears at some point so that you’re doing two things at once. You’re in loving presence which should be an habitual state of mind that shapes all your behavior (your pace, your tone of voice, the way you look at people). At the same time, another habitual part of you is looking for indicators. You’re also listening for key words and phrases. You’re thinking about the client’s belief system and childhood. All this is going on in the early phases of a session. Loving presence, however is the priority. Some part of you has to maintain loving presence even while you’re doing all this gathering of information. You need information… so you can experiment!
Given that loving presence has been established, you search for indicators. When you find one, you create an experiment using it. You have to have the idea that the indicator is one that will probably lead to deeper material. You have to imagine what kind of experiments you could do with that indicator and maybe even what reactions they might lead to. Your experience with the method over time will help you do that. You do all this in your mind because you have to know what you’re going to do. Since therapy is a real time process, you want do this part rather quickly. Don’t start to set up an experiment before you know what you’re going to do. Then, set it up. Experiments have to be set up in certain precise ways.
Here’s what I mean: There are three essential parts of the set-up. The first is: you describe the experiment to the client. You give clear instructions. You say something like, “I would like to do an experiment where you go into mindfulness and I will…blah, blah, blah. If it’s going to be a probe, you might say something like, “In this experiment, you’ll become mindful and when you’re ready, you give me a signal and I’ll make a statement and we’ll notice what happens. Okay?” It helps clients relax a little when they have an idea about what the experiment is going to be like. You don’t tell them what your statement is going to be—though you could do that and I have done it, without losing the power of the experiment. So, you give them a clear idea of what’s expected of them and what you’re going to do.
After describing what you’re going to do, you get permission to do it. “Is that okay with you?” Track for whether it really does seem okay. A client may say okay when they’re really afraid or want to do something else. If you get clear, sincere permission, then you ask for and wait for mindfulness. You say, “Please become mindful and give me a signal when you’re ready!” You track for signs that the client actually went into a mindful state. Watch for the signs of mindfulness and wait for the signal. The signs are: (1) the client becomes very still and (2) his or her eyelids flutter up and down over closed eyes. This movement of the eyelids is almost always an accurate sign that the client is in mindfulness. I use it all the time.
Of course, mindfulness is a radical shift in the way we pay attention. If you’re working with a new client, you may have to teach him or her about what mindfulness is and you may have to help them get into it the first time.
Then, you do the experiment.
If it’s an effective experiment, you’re going to get results. You’re going to get useful outcomes. There are two kinds of useful outcomes: (1) there are emotional outcomes and there are (2) insight outcomes. Sometimes these are combined. If the emotions are intense, your path is to offer and provide comfort, if it’s accepted. Maybe you take over some of the spontaneous management behaviors, if they allow that. You offer to support the client’s spontaneous changes in posture and tensions. These are ways in which the adaptive unconscious attempts to manage strong emotional experiences. Whatever the client is doing to manage his or her emotions, you support that. For instance, if the client covers her face with her hands, you can have an assistant put her hands over the client’s. That’s if the emotion is intense.
If it’s a mild emotion, you can still get reports about the experience or set up a second experiment based on the emotional reaction that occurred. When a client becomes sad after an experiment, or anytime during a session, I offer to have an assistant sit by the client or put an arm around her or a hand on her. It that is accepted, I sit silently and give the client time to feel the emotion and allow associations to arise. This very often leads to memories and/or insights. If it’s an insight, if the client is quiet and you can see from her facial expressions that she is having thoughts and realizations, then just be silent and watch. I learned to do that late in my career. When the client is having insights, the best thing to do is to do nothing. Don’t interfere! There’s nothing you have to do. Insight is a very legitimate outcome of a good experiment. Just wait! You’ll notice when the client is ready to interact again; he or she will come back into contact with you. Then you can say something like, “Had some insights, huh.” Or, just look quietly at the client and she will probably tell you all about it.
We provide comfort and we provide silence in support of emotional reactions and insights.
Now, it doesn’t always go that smoothly. Sometimes there’s no reaction to an experiment. Sometimes, the client has an immediate thought or an image or a memory. You have to know what to do with those things. With a thought, you might have an assistant take it over. That kind of taking over is a follow up experiment. Set it up the same way. There are experiments you can do with images and memories, also. Sometimes an experiment will evoke a child state of consciousness. Sometimes strong memories. There are ways to work with all of these. I won’t go into the details on that now.
I want to emphasize two things about experiments. One is that they’re central to the process and they require a certain precise care when you do them.
You can create experiments not only from physical indicators but from deductions about what the client is saying or doing. For example, a client may have insights and not share them with you. That’s a kind of indicator. You can think about things like that by asking yourself, “When does someone create a habit of not sharing?” “What kind of childhood did the person have?” “Why not share?” “What kind of belief system is behind that kind of behavior?” You do some of that kind of thinking. We can speculate that the person who doesn’t share probably doesn’t expect any help from others. It’s one hypothesis we could have. So, we can then test that idea. Experiments are first of all tests of ideas. That they’re evocative is part of it for our kind of work, but basically they are ways to testing your ideas about the client.
The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.” —Richard Feynman
You set up experiments to test your ideas about the client. And the experiments you set up are also designed to evoke something. The reactions evoked give you answers to your questions and, if the experiments are good ones, they move the process towards insight and change. If you think not sharing is the result of a core belief that says, “don’t expect help”, then you do a probe like, “I’ll help you.” Or, you ask the client to fall backwards without looking back and you catch them. If falling back is difficult for the client or if saying “I’ll help you” triggers crying and sadness, then you’ve tested your idea and you’ve moved the process.
I have one more very important thing to say about experiments. When you do an experiment, be sure to get the data. Get the data! Get the results! Your asking the client to, “Please notice your immediate reaction when….” You want to know what happened. If you can’t see and hear what happened, get a report! That’s one reason you did the experiment. To find out what would happen. You’re not just curious, you also need that information to move the process. Of course, many times you will have noticed what happened. In that case, you don’t have to ask for the data; you’ve already got it. Make a contact statement or something!
Well, what if they don’t tell you their immediate reaction? What if they get dreamy and start saying something like, “You know, my mother used to make these cookies.” Do you want to hear about cookies or do you want to know what the client experienced when you did the experiment? You’re not there to listen to stories. An experiment can lead to diversions. If it seems to doing that, interrupt. When you get a chance say, “So, you’re remembering those great cookies, eh. I get that they tasted really good. But, you didn’t tell me what happened with the experiment. Can you tell me that.” Get the data!
To summarize: by noticing indicators and making deductions, you get ideas about the client. Then, you test those ideas by doing experiments. So, it’s get ideas and test. Get ideas and test. That’s the information gathering operation within the therapy process. Experiments often evoke strong emotions and insights. That’s another good thing that can happen. When it does happen, you follow through by working with the management of the emotion. All of this leads to discoveries. The process works when the client discovers something about his or her deepest convictions and models of the world. Because we’re looking for that same information, we’re leading the client to exactly what they need to get for themselves.
So, do experiments and get the data. The data can lead you to the next step in the process. What you do next depends on what was evoked. That’s also going to tell you whether your ideas are right or not. If you really wanted to practice the one thing that will give you the hang of the method, it’s this: get ideas and test them. You’ll not only be doing therapy, you’ll be doing science. It’s also fun. It’s why people go hiking in the woods. It’s why people read detective stories. It’s why scientists stay up at night.