Client: Brandi
Title: Somatic Exploration
Indicator or core experience: holding tension in the body and having to work hard to prove oneself
Nourishment: you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, you are good enough just the way you are
Hakomi skills that are illustrated by this session:
- How to introduce the Hakomi process to a new client and allow them to begin in a natural way
- Working with somatic experience
- Contact statements
- Matching touch with somatic tension – being precise
- How to acknowledge a client’s ability to self study
- Waiting in silence as the client studies experience
- How to refine experiments
- Using a Hakomi question and aiming it directly at a muscle
- Using a resting position for integration
- The third phase is experimental – it is really a phase in which experiments are refined to match the underlying belief
- Hakomi is method that uses consciousness for healing (Hakomi is NOT about convincing anyone)
- How to use time tags to make the experiment more realistic
- How to use the significant nourishing statements at the end to reinforce integration
Guides to Watching this video:
- How to work with somatic experience using the client’s hand – this might appear to be the first experience but it is just setting the conditions for self study
- This client is familiar with self study through CI and so it is easy to work with her
- Notice how attention to one area of tension begins to develop into a pattern
- The transition from phase 1 to 2 at 8 min is very subtle in this video – I move from accompanying the first somatic signal to tension sequence
- At 10:45 I make a guess about a need for resting
- The first verbal experiment (“it’s ok to rest now”) bring up a lot of emotion and I wait quietly with her
- I make contact with grief but when I check it out with her, she adjusts it to feeling relieved
- The next experiment is “you don’t have to work so hard” and then I refine it to “you don’t have to prove anything”
- “you don’t have to prove yourself” is the next refinement and I contact the old hurt
- The belief really shows itself at 17:00 when emotion shows up when I say “you don’t have to prove yourself” and “you’re good enough just as you are”
- The third phase in this piece is 23 minutes, more than half of the session
- The need for rest is consistent throughout the session and so I encourage her to lie down – that is a great position for integration
- “I’ll hold it all together for 5 min” elicits emotion – notice the time tag that I place on that experiment