# Hakomi

The Hakomi Method is a psycho-therapeutic approach developed by Ron Kurtz in the 1970s that integrates mindfulness and somatic techniques to address psychological and emotional issues.

## Approach and method

According to the Hakomi Institute, the method uses mindfulness, psychotherapy, and somatic interventions to address attachment wounds and developmental trauma. Hakomi combines Western psychology, systems theory, and body-centered techniques with the principles of mindfulness and nonviolence drawn from Eastern philosophy.
Hakomi is grounded in five principles:
* mindfulness
* nonviolence
* organicity
* unity
* body-mind holism
These five principles are set forth in Kurtz's book, Body-Centered Psychotherapy. Some Hakomi leaders add two more principles, truth and mutability.
The Hakomi Method regards people as "self-organizing systems", organized psychologically around core memories, beliefs, and images; this core material expresses itself through habits and attitudes around which people unconsciously organize their behavior. The goal is to transform one's way of being in the world through working with core material and changing core beliefs.
Unlike other forms of therapy, Hakomi incorporates mindfulness as a central component, rather than using it solely as a supplement to traditional psychotherapy.
The Hakomi Method follows this general outline:
* Create healing relationship: Client and therapist work to build a relationship that fosters a sense of security and encourages unconscious exploration. This includes practicing a so-called "loving presence", a state of acceptance and empathic resonance.
* Establish mindfulness: The therapist helps clients study and focus on the ways they organize experience. Hakomi's viewpoint is that most behaviors are habits automatically organized by core material; therefore, studying the organization of experience is studying the influence of this core material.
* Evoke experience: Client and therapist make direct contact with core feelings, beliefs, and memories using "experiments in mindfulness"—somatic and verbal techniques to "access" the present experience behind the client's verbal presentation, or to explore "indicators": chronic physical patterns, habitual gestures, bodily tension, etc.
* Processing: This step often involves exploring emotions and memories in greater depth, with the therapist guiding the client using state-specific techniques such as 'working with the child' or addressing strong emotions. The client is helped to recognize the core beliefs as they emerge, and the therapist often provides what Kurtz called "the missing experience", a form of "memory re-consolidation" where the child, as they revisit the negative experience(s) that generated their core beliefs, now receives the nourishment and support that was needed at the time. This can contribute to shifts in core beliefs. The same process may be used working with the adult rather than the "child state".
* Transformation: The client has a therapeutic experience distinct from past experiences, which may help them recognize the possibility of alternative perspectives and emotional responses.
* Integration: Client and therapist work to make connections between the new healing experiences and the rest of the client's life and relationships.
Other components of the Hakomi Method include the sensitivity cycle, techniques such as "contact and tracking", "prompts", "taking over", "embracing resistance", and developing a greater sensitivity to clients and how to work with their individual issues based on the character typology introduced by Alexander Lowen.

## Related therapies

The Hakomi Institute (founded in 1981) describes itself as an international nonprofit that offers training in Hakomi therapy in multiple countries. Its website includes an international directory of Hakomi practitioners. The institute's programs focus on training psychotherapists and professionals in related fields. Its faculty are primarily professional psychotherapists who incorporate insights from neuroscience and clinical practice into their teaching of the Hakomi Method. The Hakomi Institute is a professional member of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the U.S. Association for Body Psychotherapists, and an accredited Continuing Education provider for the National Board for Certified Counselors and the National Association of Social Workers.
Ron Kurtz left the Hakomi Institute in the 1990s to create a new organization, Ron Kurtz Trainings. With a new group, he developed the Hakomi Method in new directions, offering training for both professionals and laypeople. He called the refined version of his work Hakomi Assisted Self-Discovery.
Both versions of the Hakomi Method are based on loving presence, mindfulness, somatic, and the other principles described above, and fall within the definition of body psychotherapy.
Another technique based on the Hakomi Method is Sensorimotor psychotherapy, developed by Pat Ogden.

## Validation

The European Association for Psychotherapy recognizes body psychotherapy as a validated branch of psychotherapy; the Hakomi Method is one of the modalities included under this category.