Are you ready to elevate your Hakomi therapy practice and deepen your connection with clients? Do you want to work even more effectively at the nourishment barrier? If so, then this is the perfect opportunity for you—whether you’re embarking on character training for the first time or looking to refine your understanding and attunement.

This immersive character strategy training is designed to give you a comprehensive understanding of the Hakomi Character Map, a powerful tool for uncovering and transforming the core beliefs and strategies that shape a person’s behavior. Character—rooted in early life experiences—imprints upon us in ways that influence our neural development, creating lasting, unconscious beliefs and patterns. Though adaptive at one point in life, these beliefs often become limiting as we grow. This course will help you identify and work with those patterns to create lasting change for your clients.

In this training, you’ll explore the etiology of Hakomi’s five basic categories of character and the developmental wounds tied to each. Observing their physical, emotional, and behavioral tendencies, you’ll learn how to make theory-driven hypotheses about your clients’ needs and core material. You’ll then use Hakomi’s mindfulness-based techniques to bring these unconscious strategies into the light, allowing you and your clients to examine and transform them.

By the end of this training, you will be equipped to design more targeted, effective therapeutic interventions using the character map. You will also gain valuable insight into your own character habits and how they might influence your therapeutic relationships, helping you grow as a practitioner.

This training is part of Level 2, designed for individuals who have completed Level 1 of Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy training or equivalent Hakomi training. Many Hakomi graduates, CHTs, and CHPs find this training incredibly useful for deepening their therapy sessions and enhancing client work.

The training begins with a five-day in-person immersion and each block will include didactic materials, experiential exercises, group discussions, movement and embodiment work, and supervised practice sessions. You’ll dive deeply into the Hakomi method’s understanding of character theory, exploring how personality and character patterns reveal developmental and cultural wounding. Through this process, you’ll learn to create personalized strategies to help clients access their core material and offer reparative experiences for healing developmental trauma, attachment wounds, and cultural wounds.

This training also introduces the “Sensitivity Cycle,” a map that helps identify where clients become stuck in life. By exploring the four stages of the cycle—clarity, effective action, satisfaction, and relaxation—you’ll be able to recognize and address the character strategies that keep your clients from a more satisfying life.

With ample practice and supervision, you’ll fine-tune your ability to attune to clients’ developmental and adaptive strategies, using countertransference as a tool to understand your clients and yourself. This process will deepen your self-awareness and enhance your ability to use yourself as a therapeutic instrument, fostering profound healing for both you and your clients.

This Character training is a part of the Level 2 of the Comprehensive training that includes both Character training and Advanced supervision.

If you’re ready to take your Hakomi practice to the next level, this training is an invaluable opportunity. Join us for a transformative experience!

Objectives:

Upon completion of this program, the participant should be able to:

• Identify the developmental stages and life tasks connected to character formation
• List the five basic categories of character strategies used in Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy
• Develop a felt sense of the somatic organization and governing beliefs related to each of the character strategies
• Demonstrate effective clinical strategies for working with character in a psychotherapeutic context
• Understand client-therapist interactions from the perspective of character development
• Discuss neurobiological perspectives on human change processes, including character formation and change
  

2026
March 25-29, in person in Flat Rock, NC
May 15-17, online live
June 26-28, online live
Sep 11-13, online live
Oct 23-25, online live
Dec 4-6, online live

Find more details on dates and timing here

50 CE’s: (ACEP #5476): Hakomi Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP No. 5476.) Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Hakomi Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the program. 

To earn CE credit, students must log in at the scheduled time, attend the entire course, and complete an online course evaluation. CE Policy for SE Level 2 HERE.