Hakomi is a body-centered (somatic) approach. The body is viewed as a “map of the psyche” – a door that can be opened to reveal the entire unconscious belief system of the individual. The body’s habitual patterns can become a powerful access route to deeply held core material.

Current neuroscience research has confirmed the basis for many foundational aspects of the Hakomi Method, including the effectiveness of mindfulness, loving presence, empathic attunement, limbic resonance, and memory reconsolidation.

We develop exquisite sensitivity and attunement, using empathic skills to read and contact subtle, unconscious cues. When integrated into the session with unique Hakomi techniques, it creates a rapid, experiential access route to unconscious core beliefs and implicit memories that invisibly shape our lives and behavior. Once conscious and directly experienced, these are available for memory re- consolidation and transformation, including the healing of attachment issues. This experiential process evokes a powerful “felt sense” for the client, allowing them to take ownership of core patterns as they emerge, and to integrate new options.
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It has always intrigued me that the first thing the Buddha spoke about, after sitting for 49 days under the bodhi tree and attaining enlightenment, was human suffering. He didn’t talk about brotherly love or peace or even how to be a better person. He spoke of suffering and how to free oneself from it. And he said that the key concepts to working with one’s suffering were 1. Noticing and 2. Accepting. In other words, mindful awareness is fundamental to personal liberation from suffering.

So if the Buddha were your therapist, he’d talk about mindfulness and how to bring the sources of suffering into conscious awareness through the practice of mindful awareness. He’d teach you how to notice your experience without being swept away by it; today we think of this as emotional (and physiological) regulation.

So there has always been a connection between the Buddhist teachings (dharma) and healing. The roots of Hakomi are mindfulness and nonviolence which is a form of accepting things the way they are without trying to force change. In Hakomi we believe that when a person has enough awareness of what is going on at a deep level, that this will naturally lead to seeking health. All beings want, at some level, to be content and free.

So, in this workshop we will explore the application of the Hakomi Principles of Mindfulness, Nonviolence, Unity, Organicity (Inner Wisdom), and Holism to self exploration and healing. The format will include mindfulness practices, working with others to study one’s experience in the moment, and finding that inner organic wisdom which leads a person toward wholeness and integration.

Faculty: Gregory Gaiser, P.C., C.M.T., CHP

Target Audience

This workshop is designed to provide experiential learning in the Hakomi Method and is also a prerequisite to the Hakomi Comprehensive Training.

Objectives

• To understand and apply loving kindness to oneself and others
• To understand and apply the Hakomi principle of Mindfulness in order to promote self awareness
• To understand the Hakomi concept of the Experimental Attitude
• To offer a context to explore different internal states of consciousness in a therapeutic relationship
• To offer a context to learn physical and emotional self regulation skills
• To offer a context to explore tracking the subtle body cues occurring in response to psychological content being accessed
• To offer a context to ground in open, non-judgmental curiosity about one’s own process
• To offer a context to explore nonviolence in a therapeutic relationship