Someone sits in the chair across from me, starts telling me about a phone call with her brother, and partway through the second sentence her right hand closes around the armrest and stays closed. She does not notice. I do, and in a Hakomi session that hand is where the work begins.
Hakomi is a mindfulness-based, body-centered method that Ron Kurtz began developing in the United States in the late 1970s. The word appears on a lot of practitioner websites and gets explained on very few of them, so this is the explanation: what the method assumes, what a session looks like, and how I use it as a somatic coach in Pittsburgh.
What are the principles of Hakomi?
Kurtz built the method on five stated principles, and a session makes more sense once you know them.
- Mindfulness. Most of the work happens in a slowed-down, attentive state in which you notice what is going on inside you right now, rather than describing what went on last week.
- Nonviolence, which practitioners also call non-forcing. Nothing gets pushed. If some part of you resists, the resistance gets studied rather than overridden.
- Organicity. The assumption that a person already has what they need to reorganize, and that the practitioner’s job is to support that process rather than direct it.
- Unity. The person in the chair is one system, and the people, rooms, and histories around them belong to that system too.
- Mind-body holism. What you believe about the world shows up in how you hold your shoulders, how you breathe, and where your eyes go when you mention your father. The body is part of the conversation whether or not anyone names it.
What happens in a Hakomi session?
A session slows down. Instead of narrating the week, you and I study what is present in the room, and most of what is present is small: a hand on an armrest, a breath that stops at the top, a jaw that sets when a particular name comes up. I will ask whether you are willing to notice these things in mindfulness, which usually means closing your eyes or softening your gaze and paying attention inward while I describe what I see.
The core technique is what Kurtz called the little experiment. I offer something, a sentence, a posture, or a touch (only with your permission, and only when it makes sense), and we both watch what happens. With the woman and the armrest, the experiment might be a sentence: “Notice what happens when I say, you can let go now.” Then we wait, and her hand might open, or tighten, or she might tear up with no idea why, or nothing might happen at all, which is also information. The goal is to find out what the hand is doing and what it thinks it is protecting, which is a different thing from getting it to relax.
The practitioner’s stance through all of this is often called loving presence. In practice it means that while you are noticing, I am paying attention to you with warmth and without an agenda, and that I say what I see without interpreting it for you. If I say your shoulders came up, that is a report, and you are the one who gets to say what it means.
Is Hakomi a kind of therapy?
Hakomi is used by therapists and by coaches, and I am a coach, not a therapist. I use Hakomi’s principles and techniques within the limits of coaching: present-moment awareness, patterns you can already see and want to change, and the way you carry yourself through a workday or a hard conversation. I do not work with mental health conditions. If what surfaces in a session belongs with a therapist, I will say so plainly and help you find one, and many therapists in Pittsburgh also practice Hakomi, so the handoff does not have to mean starting over.
Who is Hakomi for?
People who have talked about a pattern for years, can describe it precisely, and still do it. People who notice their body reacting before their mind catches up, and want to understand what the body is responding to. People who are curious about themselves and willing to sit with their eyes closed for a few minutes in front of someone else. Hakomi coaching is not for an emergency, and it is not a substitute for care when a mental health condition is involved.
How do I start?
You can read about how I work at /coaching/, and a discovery call is the first step. We talk about what you are hoping for, I explain what a session involves, and we decide together whether it is a fit.
The hand on the armrest, by the way, opened about forty minutes in, after she said a sentence out loud that she had apparently never said to anyone, and then she looked down at it as if it belonged to someone else.