Hakomi

What is Hakomi?

Hakomi is a mindfulness-centered body psychotherapy. The American Ron Kurtz developed it from the 1970s on, and the first Hakomi Institute was founded in 1981. The name comes from the Hopi language and is usually translated as “How do you stand in relation to these many realms?” The question gets to the heart of it: how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world, and which unconscious assumptions steer this.

Hakomi combines mindfulness and nonviolence from Buddhist and Taoist traditions with the knowledge of body psychotherapy and systems thinking.

What principles define Hakomi?

Five principles define Hakomi. They are attitude and craft at the same time:

• Unity: Everything is connected and in relationship, within us and between us.
• Mindfulness: We slow down and perceive what is happening in the moment, without judging. The space between perceiving and judging grows larger.
• Nonviolence: We go with what shows up, not against it. Even what protects you has good reasons and is honored.
• Organicity: Every person organizes themselves and carries the wisdom for their own path within. What shows up is what is ripe, not what someone expects.
• Mind-body holism: What we experience shows up in the body, and through the body it becomes accessible. The body often knows what the mind can’t remember.

Later, loving presence was added, in Hakomi usually called Loving Presence: an alert, benevolent presence that provides safety. Loving Presence is not a technique, but the ground on which everything else works.

Strategies that aren’t you

Hakomi calls these inner patterns survival strategies. They are like a garment we put on early: every action is shaped by it, and at some point we forget we’re wearing it. Like an actor playing a role who has forgotten they’re acting. The strategy is a learned way of being in the world, not who you are.

I want to survive without having to disappear.

Many strategies serve exactly this wish. They aren’t disorders, but creative adaptations, and they once protected us. That’s why Hakomi doesn’t speak of rigid types, but of styles, the way an artist has different forms of expression. Each style revolves around a life theme:

Behind every protector there is something being protected. Withdrawal, busyness, the “I can do it all myself” keep something vulnerable out of sight. So it isn’t about getting rid of strategies. We honor them and get to know them. Only then does what they protect become tangible.

Reality or strategy?

A strategy doesn’t feel like a strategy, but like knowledge: that’s just how I am, that’s how the world is. That’s why it’s so hard to see. The strategy is what I believe I’m doing and what I believe I know.

In Hakomi, mindfulness means seeking out the moment in which I’m not in control. The controlled world consists of what I already know. In mindfulness, I get to know what is new. Space opens up between perceiving and judging, and in this space it becomes visible what is reality and what is strategy.

What happens in a Hakomi session?

At the start there is often a topic, a recurring pattern, a question, or nothing in particular at all. You show yourself as the person you are anyway. A session begins and ends in everyday life; in between lies the time of inner mindfulness:

I follow what shows up, in posture, voice, pace, and small stirrings. Some things I name, with a small question mark in my tone, such as: “A bit uneasy?” What you make of it is open. Lingering with the experience is the fastest way to meaning.

At the end, the rule is: wet paint. What has newly emerged isn’t talked to pieces right away. It can keep working.

Small experiments in mindfulness

Hakomi works with experiments, not with explanations. The experiment is always announced and asked about first, and it takes place in inner mindfulness so that you notice what reacts involuntarily. The reaction is the material.

A second form is taking over. For a while, I take over something you usually do yourself: the tension that holds your shoulders up, a thought that keeps coming back, a holding together. I don’t want you to be any different. We take over the work, not the experience. When the strategy doesn’t have to do anything for a moment, what is waiting behind the background noise becomes audible.

Beliefs that feel true

Beneath the strategies lie core beliefs about ourselves, about others, and about the world. They formed early and don’t feel like opinions, but like facts: “I’m too much.” “If I need something, I lose love.” “I have to be strong and independent.”

Such beliefs don’t change through insight alone, but through new experience. That’s why Hakomi asks: what would have been needed back then? And it isn’t about replacing the old, but about expanding it:

The old experience remains. Together with the new one, a choice arises where before everything ran automatically.

What Hakomi is not

How I use Hakomi

In my work with you, Hakomi is an attitude and a method. As an attitude, it shapes how I meet every person, including in crisis and trauma support or in Intervision. As a method, I use it when someone wants to meet themselves, with or without a concrete concern.

Hakomi lives from the relationship, from a safe space for you, and from learning in present experience, without anything having to be different. Other methods often have a goal orientation. That often makes sense, but it quickly takes us away from ourselves.