Course-Reader-2009 Hakomi

Course Reader
on the
Refined Hakomi Method
of
Mindfulness-Based,
Assisted Self-Discovery
© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 1

© July 19, 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.
976 Linda Ave.
Ashland, OR 97520
Reproduction, in part or in full, without written permission by

Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. is prohibited.
A good therapist, shares control with everything present—sometimes moving deeply

into the unfolding action, sometimes waiting quietly while the other does inner
work—gracefully surfing the changing amplitudes of intimacy. —R.K.
2 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

Table of Contents
Why Self-Discovery 5
Hakomi’s Uniqueness 6
Statement of Purpose 6
About Humans 6
Prototypic Healing 6
Section I. The Fundamental Situation 7
1. The Nature of Mind 7
a. Consciousness is Choice 7
b. Consciousness is Limited 8
c. Helping Our Clients Become Conscious 9
d. Insight 11
2. The Unconscious 12
a. The Unconscious I 12
b. The Unconscious II 13
c. The Adaptive Unconscious 15
d. Found in Translation 18
3. Belief and Implicit Belief 19
a. “We Are Such Stuff…” 19
b. Implicit Beliefs 19
c. Implicit Beliefs as Rules 20
d. Rules of Thumb 21
4. Mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Self-study 23
a. What Mindfulness Is 24
i. How to Get into Mindfulness and What it Feels Like 24
ii. How Mindfulness is Used in Evoking Reactions 24
iii. How to Study Your Reactions 25
iv. How to Report Your Reactions 26
v. When the Reaction Includes the Expression of Strong Emotion 26
5. Musings on the Self 26
a. About Prediction 27
Section II. The Method 28
1. A Brief Overview 28
2. An Outline of the Method 30
3. Recent Thinking That Has Refined the Method 34
a. The Adaptive Unconscious 34
b. The Healing Process 35
c. The Process in Graphic Form 36
4. The Process as Three Phases and Six Skill Sets 37
a. Three Phases 37
i. Phase One: Preparation Phase 37
ii. Phase Two: Assisted Self-Study Phase 37
iii. Phase Three: The Healing Phase 38
b. The Six Skill Sets 39
i. State of Mind Skills 40

ii. Relational Skills 40
iii. Observational Skills 41
iv. Modeling Skills 41
v. Experimental Skills 42
vi. Support for Healing Skills 42
5. Loving Presence: The Therapist’s State of Mind 42
6. Nonverbal Indicators 44
7. Experiments 45
8. The Healing Process 48
9. Logic of the Method 49
10. Some Essential Aspects of the Refined Method 50
a. The Client’s Commitments: Mindfulness and Honesty 52
b. The Focus on Present Experience 53
c. Indicators 54
d. Working with Indicators 55
e. Examples of Signs and Indicators 58
f. Following 58
g. Habits as Causes of Failure 60
i. Habit One: Having to Be in Control 60
ii. Habit Two: Focusing on Figuring Everything Out 62
iii. Habit Three: Getting Stuck in Conversations 62
h. When and How to Intervene to Move the Process Forward 63
11. Evoking Emotional Reactions 64
Papers & Appendices 65
The Hakomi Way by Donna Martin 65
Hakomi Simplified by Randall Keller 68
Appendix I. Books and Articles Cited 87
Appendix II. The Evolving Vision 91
Appendix III. The Method as Process 96
Appendix IV References and Quotes on The Unconscious 101
Appendix V The Process for Clients and Students 102

Why Self-Discovery?
“My central thesis is that human personality resides in two places: in the adaptive unconscious and in the
conscious construals of the self. The adaptive unconscious meets Allport’s definition of personality. It has
distinctive, characteristic ways of interpreting the social environment and stable motives that guide people’s
behavior.… These dispositions and motives are measurable with indirect techniques (i.e., not by self-report
questionnaires). They are rooted in early childhood, are in part genetically determined….”
“…. Because people have no direct access to their nonconscious dispositions and motives, they must construct a
conscious self from other sources. The constructed self consists of life stories, possible selves, explicit motives,
self-theories, and beliefs about one’s feelings and behaviors. Oddly, these two selves appear to be relatively in-
dependent. There is increasing evidence that people’s constructed self bears little correspondence to the noncon-
scious self.1
“Personality resides in two places…” One is the adaptive unconscious, measurable by indirect
techniques, knowable by indirect means. Let’s call that personality, the adaptive self. It is all the
ways we learned to be in the world, our dispositions and motives, our habit patterns. The other
personality, according to Wilson, is the constructed self, all those practiced enactments of who are
that we offer up to each other.
There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;2
About these two selves, the adaptive and the constructed, there is increasing evidence that they
are, amazingly enough, “relatively independent”. So, we have choices when it comes to knowing
each other, and knowing our selves. We can learn about each other through an exchange of sto-
ries, stories about our constructed selves. Or we can know each other through “indirect tech-
niques”. (I’ll be talking about them, in a moment.) If I, as a Hakomi practitioner, can learn about
you using such techniques, I may also be able to help you to know your adaptive self. Assisting
someone self discover is the goal of the method.
Questions aren’t the way to learn about the adaptive self. Ask a question, you’ll get a construed
answer. To consciously interact with the adaptive self, you’ll have to use those indirect techniques
that are the heart of the Hakomi Method. While there are interactions going on between two
people at the level of their adaptive selves, normally, the influences on those interactions are hap-
pening more or less outside of consciousness. Here, very briefly, is how we do it consciously in the
service of self-discovery:
We pay attention to the client’s habitual expressions and behaviors. We make experienced guesses
about the historical situations that might have influenced the development of those habits and
expressions.3 We then test our guesses using “little experiments” done with the client in a calm,
self-observing state. The little experiments are simple statements or gentle nonverbal interven-
tions, that are designed to evoke reactions that reveal the beliefs, “dispositions and motives” of the
adaptive self.
You want to use experiments—which are just a better way to ask questions—if you want to talk to
the adaptive unconscious. Second, there are two kinds of selves, conscious and nonconscious. In
this work, we intentionally communicate with the adaptive unconscious, by our tone of voice and
by contacting the experiences and actions that are controlled by it.
1
Wilson, Timothy D. (2004). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge,
MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press.
2
from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
3
We call the client’s habitual expressions and behaviors, “indicators” and the client’s calm, self-observing
state, “mindfulness”.

Hakomi’s Uniqueness
The unique contribution of the Hakomi method is this: the method contains, as a necessary ele-
ment, precise experiments done with a person in a mindful state, the purpose of which are to
evoke emotions, memories and reactions that will reveal or help access the implicit beliefs, early
experiences and adaptations that influence the person's nonconscious, habitual behaviors.
Statement of Purpose
Our purpose is to evoke, and be stewards for, natural healing processes, processes that reach into
the depths of being to relieve emotional pain; to provide a warm, safe and emotionally effective
context in which our clients may explore the body-mind organizers of their experiences; to help
our clients realize the influence of certain foundational experiences on their habitual beliefs and
behaviors, especially those that are causing confusion and unnecessary suffering; to provide time,
comfort and support for the integration that follows insight; to bring consciousness and choice to
nonconscious behaviors, including thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, and ones sense of self; to place
ourselves in the most compassionate, present-centered state of being, in order to achieve these
goals.
About Humans
Perhaps the three key things about humans that makes them so special is that… (1) They can trans-
form themselves into higher and higher states of both consciousness and beingness, (2) their innate abil-
ity to express unconditional love allows them to nurture and lift the world around them and (3) their
innate ability to re-embody allows them to make many, many learning mistakes, lifetime after lifetime,
and yet eventually graduate with full honors from the space-time classroom.4
Prototypic Healing
The impulse to heal is real and powerful and lies within the client. Our job is to evoke that healing
power, to meet its tests and needs and to support it in its expression and development. We are not the
healers. We are the context in which healing is inspired. — Ron Kurtz
Picture this: A young child. She’s outside playing. He mother is nearby. The child is full of energy
and she’s running from place to place. At one point, she trips and falls, hurting her knee. She re-
ceives a small bruise and she starts to cry. She looks around for her mother, gets up easily and
runs to her.
Her mother picks her up and holds her close. Her mother says, “Oh! You fell down. It hurts.
Huh.” With her words and her loving, soothing voice, she radiates understanding and sympathy.
The child, still crying a little, slowly begins to calm down. Her mother kisses her on the top of her
head. She looks at the bruise. She finds some water, wets a handkerchief and gently cleans the
bruise. As she cleans, she says, “Sometimes when we run, if we’re not careful, we can fall down
and hurt ourselves.” The child is calm now, looking into her mother’s face. And she has some
things to think about: like running and falling and being careful. The child thinks awhile as the
two sit together is silence. After a while, the child is gets down. She’s ready to play some more. As
she moves off, she runs a little slower than before. She’s being careful. Her mother watches her
and says, “That’s right! Nice and slow!” For the child, the incident is over. The pain has subsided.
Some learning has taken place, within a totally loving context. A healing happened, suffering was
eased, comfort given. The bruise will heal by itself; the experience has already healed. The work is
more or less just this.
4
Tiller, William A. Dibble, Walter E., Fandel, J. Gregory (2005), Some Science Adventures with Real
Magic, Pavior Publishing, Walnut Creek, CA (page 245)

Section I.
The Fundamental Situation
… he [Brian Arthur] linked these to a different way in which action arises, through a process he
called a “different sort of knowing.” “You observe and observe and let this experience well up into
something appropriate. In a sense, there’s no decision making, he said. “What to do just becomes
obvious. You can’t rush it. Much of it depends on where you’re coming from and who you are as a
person. All you can do is position yourself according to your unfolding vision of what is coming. A
totally different set of rules applies. You need to ‘feel out’ what to do. You hang back, you observe.
You’re more like a surfer or a really good race car driver. You don’t act out of deduction, you act
out of an inner feel, making sense as you go. You’re not even thinking. You’re at one with the
situation.
—C. Otto Scharmer5
The Nature of Mind6

Consciousness is Choice
Consciousness is the experience of having a cortex.
When you are born your cortex essentially doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t know your language, your
culture, your home, your town, songs, the people you will grow up with, nothing. All this information,
the structure of the world, has to be learned.
—Jeff Hawkins7
You can’t do what you want, ‘till you know what you’re doing.
—Moshe Feldenkrais8
Sensations that are qualia-laden afford the luxury of choice. So now we have identified two functional
features of qualia: irrevocability on the input side and flexibility on the output side. … There is a third
important feature of qualia. In order to make decisions on the basis of qualia-laden representation, the
representation needs to exist long enough for you to work with it.
—V.S. Ramachandran9
Here’s William Calvin on Intelligence:
From: Ephemeral Levels of Mental Organization: Darwinian Competitions as a Basis for Consciousness10
5
Quoting the economist, Brian Arthur, in the book, Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in
People, Organizations, and Society by P. Senge, Scharmer, J. Jaworski, and B. S. Flowers
6
And, of course, that means “and Brain”. A good book about the Mind and Brain, is: Schwartz, Jeffrey M.
and Begley, Sharon. (2002). The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force New
York: Regan Books, Harper Collins, Publishers
7
Hawkins, Jeff and Blakeslee, Sandra, (2004) On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and
Company, LLC. See also, an important paper in the Readings and on my website:
http://www.hakomi.com/welcome
8
A favorite saying of his. (Personal communication.) A good book about Feldenkrais is Making
Connections: Hasidic Roots and Resonance in the teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais by David Kaetz. River
Center, Vancouver, B. C.
9
Phantoms in the Brain, pg. 238
10
In Toward a Science of Consciousness III. Eds. Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak, and David J.
Chalmers. 1999. M.I.T. Press.

Just as intelligence has been described as ‘What you use when you don’t know what to do,’ when no
standard response will suffice, so too consciousness is prominently involved when the situation contains
ambiguity or demands creative responses, ones that cannot be handled by a decision tree. Many mental
activities can be handled by subroutines; consciousness helps to deal with the leftovers (and create new
subroutines for the next time).
—William Calvin11
About the Above Quotes:
1. There is still discussion concerning exactly what we are born with. Evolutionary psychologists
say a lot, others, like Sharon Begley think not so much.12 Hawkins is one of the later.
2. It’s not just mental activities that can be handled by subroutines; lot’s of physical acts can also.
Some are inherited, like swallowing. These are called fixed action patterns. They form into
more complex structures, called general action patterns. Subroutines, mental or physical, or
mental-physical combinations, can be formed into more complex routines. So, at every level,
remembering Ken Wilber13, anything is both a part of a larger whole and a whole made up of
smaller parts. It’s not really turtles, it’s parts and wholes all the way down. It’s also routines
and subroutines all the way down the living ladder. Every operation is a subroutine of larger
operations and a routine made of smaller subroutines.
3. When a mental activity is “handled by subroutines”, it’s more than likely done without con-
scious attention. Bargh and Chartrand use the word non-conscious. In their paper “The
Unbearable Automaticity of Being” they describe several experiments on automatic behaviors.14 A
whole book devoted to this subject is Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson discussed in
the next section.15
Consciousness is limited16,17
…the nervous system’s overall mode of operation…attempts at all times to increase its computational ef-
ficiency while lowering its computational overhead.
Comforting or disturbing, the fact is that we are basically dreaming machines that construct virtual mod-
els of the real world. It is probably as much as we can do with only one and a half pounds of mass and
a ‘dim’ power consumption of 14 watts.
—Rudolpho Llinás18,19,20
You can’t be conscious of what you’re not conscious of. —Julian James21
11
Calvin, William H. (2001). How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now. New York: Basic
Books.
12
Brooks, David (June 26, 2009) Human Nature Today. New York Times.
13
Wilber, Ken (1995) Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala
14
Bargh, J. Chartrand, T., The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, available on the web at:
http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/trivia/Bargh.pdf
15
16
This topic is written about as “cognitive load.”
17
Swiller, J. Cognitive Load Theory. Go to http://tip.psychology.org/sweller.html
18
i of the vortex, pg. 254
19
In i of the vortex, Chapters 3 & 8.
20
One more good book to mention is Blink: Gladwell, Malcolm (2005) : The Power of Thinking Without
Thinking. New York: Little Brown. A particularly pertinent section is the one on improvisational theater,
starting on page 111.
21
From: The of Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Consciousness can handled only so much load, process so much information. It’s subject to “ego
depletion.” And, as we saw above in the quote from Ramachandran, consciousness needs time,
because alternatives are being considered. For clients to consider alternatives where there were
only automatic subroutines, we have to help them make certain things conscious that are, for one
reason or another, unconscious. Once conscious, they can be better integrated.
And that’s where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is key to helping clients become aware of
how their experiences are habitually managed. The little experiments we do, with the client in a
mindful state are designed to evoke reactions that bring awareness to how certain categories of
experience are avoided. (“I’ll never fall in love again.”)
Helping Clients Become Conscious

Conscious of what? A good answer is: “integration failures” and “overgeneralised belief sys-
tems.”22
What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get another chance to catch pneumonia.
And when you do,
He’ll never phone ya’
I’ll never fall in love again.
I’ll never fall in love again.23
You have to imagine that someone making a prediction like He’ll never phone ya’ and deciding in a
very generalized way to never fall in love again is more than likely harboring an painful memory or
two of experiences she’s had falling in love. And we might guess that those experiences were never
successfully integrated. The memory of them never lost its ability to cause pain and prompt the
determination to avoid such experiences happening again.24 Her adaptive unconscious, we could
hypothesize, has become organized to automatically avoid situations where she might fall in love
again. Lastly, the hypothetical singer of this lyric no doubt realizes that she is organized to avoid.
However, in many cases, the real people we work with have habits of organization that they are
not aware of. Nor are they conscious of the memories that control their organizing habits. Our
task is to bring all that into consciousness and to create new, positive experiences to help heal and
integrate the long forgotten experience, to allow consciousness to take the time to make sense of
what happened, and to regain the power to decide what choices they actually have. Ordinary
common sense tells us that there are people in the world who will call you when down with
pneumonia. And, falling in love again just might work out.
It was Pierre Janet’s theory that certain experiences overwhelm a person’s ability to synthesize
reality into a meaningful whole.25 The experience cannot be made sense of. It must be managed,
the emotions contained, lest they overwhelm the mind and body. The associated thoughts and
emotional expression is interrupted and relegated to the unconscious. Yet, as we see in trauma
victims, flashbacks and nightmares “irritate” the system. Entire systems of adaptation form
around such experiences. Some of those adaptations appear in people in the form of indicators,
jut as they do in adaptations to less traumatic experiences. We can think of these as integration
failures. Here, Ernst Rossi discusses Janet’s idea.26
22
See also the discussion of Janet’s ideas, in the section called, Some Essential Aspects of the Method.
23
Words by Hal David Music by Burt Bacharach (1969) I'll Never Fall in Love Again. Originally written
for the 1968 musical, Promises, Promises.
24
It’s important to remember that successful avoidance is its own reward. Every time we avoid something
successfully, the habit to do so becomes stronger.
25
Janet, Pierre.1925. Principles of Psychotherapy. G. Allen & Unwin Ltd.: London
26
from The Symptom Path to Enlightenment by Ernst Rossi, pg 125

“During these periods of abaissement,27 Janet found, our psyche seems to lose some of its capacity to
synthesize reality into a meaningful whole. If we encounter a traumatic or strong emotional event dur-
ing these periods, the mind lacks its usual ability to make sense of it and fit it properly into a mean-
ingful, secure whole (Ellenberger, 1970, p.380, Rossi and Smith, 1990). During abaissement, we
tend to be emotionally vulnerable and easily overwhelmed; we can register the life experiences, but we
cannot properly “digest” them. The emotional experience floats in our unconscious, unassimilated, in
effect, jamming the gears of the mind. Janet hypothesized that such unassimilated experiences could
become the seed of psychological or psychosomatic illness, obsessive thought patterns, phobias—all
sorts of behavioral problems. Many chronic problems, he believed, were the result of the mind-body’s
continuing, frustrated effort to make sense of the original disturbing experience.
Janet believed that there was an underlying physiological source of the abaissements during the day
that was somehow associated with stress and exhaustion. One medical historian of this era summa-
rized Janet’s view:
‘We do not know the exact nature of psychological forces. Janet never doubted that they were of a
physiological nature, and seems to have believed that the day would come when they could be measured.
He considered that these forces were, to a great extent, connected with the condition of the brain and or-
gans… and differ from one individual to another. These forces can be reconstituted in some way. “I
don’t know what these reserves are, but I do know that they exist,” said Janet. One of the main sources
of this reconstitution is sleep; hence the importance for the therapist to teach his client about the best way
of preparing himself for sleep. The same could be said about the various techniques of rest and relaxa-
tion, the distribution of pauses throughout the day, of rest days during the month, and of vacations during
the year… (Ellenberger28)’”
A strong emotional event that remains unassimilated, “jamming the gears of the mind”, requires
some very specific support to finally become assimilated and the individual returned to normal
functioning. First of all, the event must be returned to consciousness. The initial procedures of
the method—the client’s commitment to self-study, the building of a relationship, use of mindful-
ness and experiments—are all designed to create the necessary context for bringing not easily ac-
cessible material into consciousness. Once the event and its associated feelings have been acti-
vated, the remaining procedures focus on integrating it, which means reconstitution of psychological
reserves, making sense of the experience and assimilating it.
Often an important element of an emotional event that is being assimilated is the presence of a
sympathetic, caring person who supports the individual through the pain and confusion of the
event. For a child, that’s usually a parent, a caretaker or an older sibling. For the client, it’s the
therapist or, when I work, it can be my assistants.
When you hold a client during the time of emotional expression and integration, you could be
supplying exactly what was missing during the original event. Maybe the people who were there
were causing the problem and the pain. Or they were too disturbed themselves to be able to offer
what was needed. Maybe no one was there to offer comfort or—as Al Pesso once told me—sim-
ply to bear witness. It always needs someone to be there. When someone [like a small child]
doesn’t have the “capacity to synthesize reality into a meaningful whole”, it needs someone to
help. It needs a calm, sympathetic, patient and understanding person, someone who knows how
to care for a soul in pain. When a client is reliving an old painful event, the therapist’s silent pres-
ence and kindness can provide that kind of support.
In a similar way, it has been argued that some experiences remain “unfinished” and that com-
pleting them has therapeutic value.29 Frederick Perls called it “unfinished business”. The idea has
27
the word abaissement is French for lowering.
28
Ellenberger, Henri F. (1981) The Discovery of the Unconscious. Basic Books
29
I remember that the case was made years ago in an article from the magazine ReVision, by an Irish
psychotherapist. Could not find the reference.

been out there for a while. The assisted self-discovery method works to complete unfinished expe-
riences. In this short section, I’ll try to give a very general description of that process. First, two
other ideas which can help with that must be looked at. Here’s one of them:
Psychotherapy, like other forms of medical intervention, is now expected to be “evidence-based,” and
the evidence doesn’t support the view that talking about childhood experiences has therapeutic value.
Research shows that the effective forms of psychotherapy are those that focus on people’s current prob-
lems, rather than their ancient history. — Judith Rich Harris30
I’ll try reconciling these two points of view: “undigested childhood experiences” and the idea that
talking about childhood doesn’t help. First, the second idea. This one is my own idea and it’s
about “missing experiences”. I am going to offer a very obvious point. When painful experiences
don’t complete, it is because support for its completion was missing. We can then ask, what are
those conditions and actions that support the completion of painful experiences? Here’s what I
think main ones are: a feeling of safety and being protected, enough time, the presence of a
skilled, compassionate person, and the physical comfort needed to contain the whole process of
completion.
Safety is needed to allow the overwhelmed mind to turn inward and work on completing the
experience. That process is called “integration”. Time is needed because integration takes time.
What we do in Hakomi is start the process of integration in such a way that it has a very strong
possibility of completing. We don’t always complete long-standing unintegrated experiences in
one shot but, often we do. Still, it may only need one good therapy session to start a process that
leads naturally to a successful completion. A skilled, compassionate person is needed because the
initial effort to complete includes the effort to bring unintegrated experience into present aware-
ness and to contain the emotions released by that awareness.
Insight31
There seems to be an inherent need in our species to know how things hang together, to make
sense of our experiences, to have reasons and explanations for the how and why of them. Some-
times it’s easy, sometimes a little work is required (think of quantum theory for example), and
sometimes, it’s almost impossible. When things happen that overwhelm the mind, like trauma or
incredible complexity, making sense doesn’t happen. Another important barrier to making sense
is the large amount of behaviors that are initiated and controlled by the adaptive unconscious.
When things don’t hang together, especially when they involve painful experiences and significant
people in our lives, the memory is avoided. Though repressed, it can still have strong effects. The
more powerful of these experiences usually happens in childhood, as the person’s mind is as open
then as it will ever be. In our work with clients, those buried memories and painful emotions
sometimes come suddenly into the client’s awareness. When that happens in the therapy setting,
the impulse to make sense arrives with them often overrides the habit of repressing them. Then,
the client’s adult mind may now have spontaneous insights that move the process along and begin
to resolve the issues that those earlier experiences created. Often, very little support from the
therapist is needed. The therapist’s silence and some comforting to help with the emotions, are all
that’s needed.
The client’s face can often reveal that she or he is having insights. There may be sounds like “oh”
and nodding of the head. These are signs that the client is doing internal work. It’s best that the
therapist remain silent at these times.
Insights create meaningful histories. They make sense of what happened. They provide a way to
summarize remembered events and place in a framework that makes sense of them. The memo-
30
From No Two Alike by Judith Rich Harris, pg 138
31
Thanks to Carmen Senosiain for seeing that this section needed to be written.

ries of those events may still attract an emotional charge, but they will no longer confuse or trou-
ble one (irritate, Janet would have said) or need to be repressed. In that way, insight provides the
kind of relief that clients come to us to feel.
The Unconscious
The Unconscious: I
Self-States: Multiplicity.
In Philip Bromberg’s book, Awakening the Dreamer, he clarifies the general observation that many
people, over many, many years have talked about, the multiplicity of selves. The idea is that we‘re
composed of many selves. Various theorists talk about it. In Internal Family Systems, the selves
are categorized. There are managers, exiles, fire fighters and the leader. Other thinkers divide it
differently. Fritz Perls talked about top dogs and bottom dogs. Freud, ego, superego and id. There
are probably fifteen more or less reasonable theories of multiple sub-personalities. The useful idea
is that we each have several selves. It is the nature of their relationships that makes one who one
is. Here’s what on Hippolyte Taine said about it, as quoted in Bromberg32
One can compare the mind of a man to a theater of indefinite depth whose apron is very narrow but
whose stage becomes larger away from the apron. On this lighted apron there is room for one actor only.
He enters, gestures for a moment and leaves. Another arrives then another and so on. Among the scenery
and on the far off back stage there are multitudes of obscure forms whom a summons can bring on the
stage and unknown evolutions take place incessantly among this crowd of actors.
Hippolyte Taine wrote that in 1817. So the idea of a multiplicity is not new.
There is one actor on stage and there’s a multiple of them offstage. Offstage, there are two kinds
of actors. There are actors who can come on stage when they are needed, when some situation
calls for a particular actor. That’s automatic. He stays off stage until such a situation arises. The
other actors remain off stage. If they are having an effect, it’s not noticed by consciousness. These
actors come on stage when the situation deems it appropriate. Bromberg calls these actors being
offstage, normal dissociation. It’s dissociation, but it’s natural and necessary for ordinary functioning.
Here’s an example from when I was in undergraduate school: I was walking on campus with a
buddy of mine who was in a jazz group with me. I played bass for a little extra money in those
days. We were talking the way jazz musicians talk. We had our own language and, being just our-
selves, we quite naturally used it. “Yeah, man, it was groovy.” “I’m hip, man, I dig it.” We were
walking along as we often did and we were talking that way. At one point, I noticed the chairman
of the English department coming towards us. He was, one of my closest mentors. At the time, I
was the editor of the literary magazine which was published by English department. So, when Dr.
Brody got within ear shot, the jazz guy I left the stage and was immediately replaced by the editor
of the literary magazine, who said, in very proper English, “Good morning Dr. Brody. How are
you, sir?” Dr. B. replied is his Chairman-of-the-Department self, “I’m fine Ronald, and how are
you?” And I said, still being my editor-of-the-literary-magazine self, “I’m fine, sir, thank you.” He
walked past us and, when I looked at my jazz buddy, he was standing there with his mouth open
and an expression that said, “What the @#&*% was that?”
I hadn’t even noticed that I had shifted selves. My buddy’s look woke me up to it. I had a tough
time explaining it. That’s a perfect example of how we can unconsciously switch roles, and have
a whole new self-state emerge. Now suppose I had seen somebody I really disliked. I would have
switched to even different self-state, one motivated by that emotion. We do this kind of thing all
day long. These different self-states are patterns of adaptation, unified adaptive patterns, evoked
32
Bromberg, Philip M. (2006) Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys. Mahwah, NJ: The Analytic
Press.

by perceived contexts or situations. They are the living history of the situations we adapted to. I
had to learn to relate to Dr. Brody, just as I had to learn to relate to my fellow jazz musicians.
Those learnings become habits, the way you do things. Being habitual you don’t have to think
about doing them.
Bromberg says dissociation is not the same in cases of trauma. Traumatic dissociation results in a
loss of function. There are some things you cannot do because of it. That function, that actor so to
speak, is kept off stage permanently. For example: if it has been dangerous in the past to speak out
against an authority, the person may never express dissent. Bromberg says, I see it [trauma] as the
precipitous disruption of self-continuity through the invalidation of the patterns of meaning that define the experience
of who one is. (You have to think about sentences like that one, but it’s precise and insightful.)
Another thing Bromberg talks about is that in a session, the client, the therapist or both may
switch self-states. Doing so then may change the interpersonal situation. You can see this fre-
quently in many kinds of situations, between couples, for example, or when people are discussing
politics. It is possible to notice self-state transitions when relating to clients and in all kinds of rela-
tionships. We all make transitions. When someone we’re with gets emotional; we may automati-
cally become compassionate. A child appears, we talk differently. We make transitions and not
always consciously. There is a part of the brain that is in charge of “executive function”. You can
think of it that way. You can consciously decide certain things, but don’t imagine that you are
always doing that. That’s an illusion. The next section is about how amazingly non-consciousness
we are.
This way of thinking provides a solid theoretical background for paying deliberate attention to
people for the nonverbal clues that suggest what’s going on backstage. What’s going on in the
back of their minds. I have developed the habit of listening and looking for clues to what is going
on “backstage” in people’s minds.
Example: Terry, my very loving wife was making me a vest. She decided to check out how it
would fit and was having me try it on. It didn’t quite fit. She said something as she walked away
and I detected something only said by her tone of voice. What she said in words was, “OK, I’ll let it
out!” What I heard was some actor offstage, adding, “Fatso!”
We can train ourselves to sense the actors backstage, to listen for what’s being “thought” but isn’t
being said out loud. We can learn to watch people—on the street or anywhere—and notice
something about their inner worlds. We can because they are acting as if they are in a particular
world and their behavior gives us signs of that. From their behavior we can we can make pretty
good guesses about their belief systems and from the belief system to the history that produced it.
Of course these are just guesses. But deliberately practicing that kind of guessing is going to im-
prove accuracy, especially if you get some feedback on your guesses, which can happen easily in a
therapy session where experiments in mindfulness are the core of the work. Nonverbal awareness,
mental modeling (thinking about the mind of another) and doing experiments helps is the method
and they move the process along. We don’t get the information needed to move the process by
asking questions and listening to answers and explanations. We can see and hear what we need to
know by observing indicators, guessing about beliefs and history, and testing our hypotheses. This
way of doing things is called, the scientific method.
The Unconscious II
How Amazingly Unconscious We Are

Note: A recent article in the Science News is particularly significant here: You Are Who You Are by Default.
It is so recent (July 18, 2009), that I will not have time to discuss it here. But I recommend it highly.
One more book, also recent, I’d like to recommend is, The Political Mind by George Lakoff.

Hakomi deals with the organization of experience. For everyone, experiences just happen, full blown
and immediate. We do not normally notice how much organizing goes into those happenings. We see
what we see without feeling or sensing how the brain creates images. We see the shapes and colors, we
speak words and sentences, we make hundreds of movements with our eyes, all without experiencing
how our brains do these things. All experiences are outcomes of highly complex organizing processes
of the brain which is receiving, from our sense organs, only streams of nerve impulses. All the trans-
forming of those impulses into conscious experiences take place outside of consciousness. Please have
a look at the quotes in Appendix VI.33
Here are my comments on five of those quotes:
In: Who’s Minding the Mind: Carey states: (a subconscious brain is) “more active, purposeful and independent than
previously known.” And, quoting Schaller, “because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, ….
the goal stays active.” The stuff lasts and lasts. The adaptive unconscious is active and normally inaccessi-
ble. Wilson also says this in Strangers. Of course, many spiritual practices and methods of psychother-
apy are attempting to overcome this all too normal state of affairs and to access the adaptive uncon-
scious. The differences lie in the way the various methods do this. In Hakomi, we do it by creating
and implementing brief, concise experiments while the client is in a mindful state.
In: Strangers to Ourselves: Wilson tells us that “judgments, feelings, motives—occur outside of awareness for reasons
of efficiency, and not because of repression.” Repression does occur, but it’s not the primary function of the
unconscious. The primary function of the adaptive unconscious is to conserve consciousness, to save it
for things that need prolonged concentration and deliberation, situations for which there are no
habitual reactions. When we attempt to bring the activity of the adaptive unconscious into conscious-
ness, we do it by noticing habitual behaviors and by working to help the client notice them.
In: Making Up The Mind Frith is one of the pioneers of neural imaging. He studied the activity of the
brain as decisions were being made. He discovered that what we do is not usually decided by con-
scious deliberation, the brain begins to implement most behaviors before we are conscious of this
happening. The moment to moment activity that is our daily life, which we may believe we are
responsible for, is carried out by subconscious actors whose motives and history we may not have
access to. Think, if you will, of all those habits that are hard to break! When was the last time that you
had the thought, “I think I’ll bite my nails now.”
In: The Itch: Gawande gives us the term, “sensor syndrome”. Our sensations, he says, can become,
“Unmoored from physical reality.” It’s not just our ideas that can be “unmoored”, our sensations can! Our
experiences themselves. When this happens, they appear totally real to us, but are in fact, only a kind
of dreaming of the brain. He also says, “perception is inference”. Here’s what Llinás writes, in his
book, i of the vortex: “the brain is a virtual reality machine”…. “Consider that the waking state is a dreamlike state (in
the same sense that dreaming is a wakelike state)”.34
In: Looking for Spinoza: Damasio names the automaticity of life itself, “from the humble amoeba to the
human”. Of course it had to be this way. The process of evolution solved “the basic problems of life”
billions of years before consciousness arose. Think of flowers turning towards the sun! Biological,
chemical solutions, like DNA, that work without thought, used over and over again for billions of
years. Evolution is a keeper of what works. When it solves a problem, the solution is used repeatedly
in variations and new species. We may expect that even consciousness has been used before, but no
doubt only in the very limited way we are able to use it.
33
I’ve made an appendix of the references and quotes, all of which talk about how unconscious we are, It’s
Appendix VI.
34
Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2002). i of the vortex: From Neurons to Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Adaptive Unconscious35
Wilson’s book brings light to the fact that we are much less aware or consciously in control of our
experiences than we ordinarily assume. What’s new here is that the adaptive unconscious is not
simply the unconscious of Freud—a cauldron of repressed desires—with its repressive forces and pow-
erful, irrational impulses. Wilson states, “…a good deal of human perception, memory, and ac-
tion occurs without conscious deliberation or will…” Deliberation, according to Ramachandran,
is making a choice from a set of options and he believes this is the main function of conscious-
ness.36 Nonconscious “thoughts” tendencies, and foundational memories are important compo-
nents of core material. When you add rationalization, you get this:
All men have two reasons for everything they do:
a good reason and the real reason.
—J. P. Morgan
And, I might add, very often without being conscious of the real reason.
Wilson tells us:

…the modern view of the adaptive unconscious is that a lot of the interesting stuff about the human mind—
judgments, feelings, motives—occur outside of awareness for reasons of efficiency, and not because of repres-
sion. Just as the architecture of the mind prevents low-level processing (e.g. perceptual processes) from reaching
consciousness, so are many higher-order psychological processes and states inaccessible.
Accessing the adaptive unconscious is one of the things that the method actually does. We’ll be
talking about this as we go along.
Wilson’s book addresses this question: Why is it that people often do not know themselves very well? Since
Hakomi is a method for helping clients gain self-knowledge, the question is totally relevant to our
work. The heart of our work, like much psychodynamic psychotherapy, is making unconscious
mental processes conscious. We do other things also, but bringing unconscious actions into con-
sciousness is possibly the biggest part of what we do. All else depends on it.
Wilson’s description of the adaptive unconscious: “pervasive, adaptive, sophisticated mental processes that
occur largely out of view”—points to a significant difference between this recent view and Freud’s
original view. That first began to change with Jung’s realization of the vast and positive aspects of
the unconscious. The unconscious is now being seen as the pervasive, automatic molder of action
and experience that it truly is. We are beginning to grasp what the meditative traditions have long
known: we are largely unaware. Thinking Without Thinking is the subtitle of book about how under-
standing and decisions can be made in the Blink of an eye.37 Our “ignorance” of who we truly are
has been a central topic in those spiritual disciplines where meditation and mindfulness are
important practices. It is a simple fact that without such practice, the truth of our automaticity is
difficult to realize. Here’s how one spiritual teacher describes the realization:
Somewhere in this process, (meditation) you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization
that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell
down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier that you were yesterday. It
35
With a few quotes from Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Wilson,
Timothy D. (2004). Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press. I’ve added a few comments on
those excerpts. The Unbearable Automaticity of Being is also well worth looking at.
36
See Phantoms in the Brain.
37
Gladwell, Malcolm (2005) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little Brown. In
Blink, Gladwell discusses both Wilson’s and Bargh.

has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are also not crazier than anybody else around you.
The real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not. So they still feel relatively comfort-
able. That does not mean that they are better off. Ignorance may be bliss, but it does not lead to Liberation.
So, don’t let this realization unsettle you. It is a milestone actually, a sign of real progress. The very fact that
you have looked at the problem straight in the eye means that you are on your way up and out of it.
—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana38
Wilson tells us that the unconscious is not a single entity with a mind and will of its own. Rather,
humans possess a collection of modules that have evolved over time and operate outside of con-
sciousness.39 I think of these “modules” as adaptive habit patterns, developed at various times to
deal with the various situations we find ourselves in: family, school, playmates, living conditions,
cultural norms, sub-cultural norms, and on and on. Another way to talk about these modules is as
sub-personalities or “parts.”40
As discussed earlier, consciousness is a limited capacity system. To survive in the world, people
must be able to process a great deal of information outside of awareness. Unconsciousness is the
result of our need to conserve consciousness. Since as practitioners, we wish to bring unconscious
material into consciousness, we have to access it. Evoking reactions that the client notices, as they
do in mindfulness, is how we do that. It is one of the things that makes this work powerful is its
ability to access the adaptive unconscious quickly and precisely. If the main reason for an adaptive
unconscious is the conservation of consciousness, then with the proper conditions—like the inner,
passive focus of mindfulness—it should be possible, maybe even easy, to access core material.
That’s exactly what we find.
Imagine this sequence of events: you’re out walking in the woods. Suddenly, out of the corner of
our eye, you see something and before you can think, you’ve jumped away from it. As you’re
jumping, the word snake comes to mind. All of this happens involuntarily. Totally unplanned.
Flash! A sense of danger. A jump. A thought. You take a quick look at the “thing” and realize,
“Oh, it’s only a piece of rope.” After you’ve already jumped and felt a surge of fear. It all just
happened. You didn’t deliberately do it, in the sense of taking the time to make a conscious deci-
sion. So, who did? Who thought it was a snake? It wasn’t your constructed self, the one you meet
your in-laws with. No, it was your adaptive self, the one that takes care of things that happen
without conscious planning. And that’s a lot of things!
Did your adaptive self know it was a snake? No! It couldn’t have; it wasn’t a snake. It interpreted
the image it perceived as possibly a snake and it immediately acted by jumping out of the way. It
did it without conscious awareness either of the interpretation or the decision to jump. Awareness
happens mid-jump perhaps or even later. It made a perceptual error. Still, it’s better to mistake a
rope for a snake, than to mistake a snake for a rope. That’s why, in such cases, we jump before we
think.
Thinking isn’t necessary, if the adaptive unconscious is handling it. That’s the point. You think
you’re just going for your evening walk and you surprise yourself by ending up at your old girl-
friend’s house. Or your having a long, internal conversation with someone you’re really angry
with… while you’re driving! Who’s paying attention to traffic lights and the cars around you?
38
Mindfulness in Plain English
39
One example of modularity is the visual system. It has over fifty separate neural circuits, each one having
a particular part in creating what appears in consciousness as a unified, integrated, stable visual image. The
amount of processing that’s needed to create that image is prodigious and enormously complex. Yet, we are
normally aware of nothing but the outcome.
40
Two books that examine what particular neurological disorders reveal about the modularity of the brain
are: Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran and Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self by
Todd E. Feinberg.

Who’s really driving? Not that conscious, deliberate person you are in your stories about yourself.
It’s that other guy, the one who learned how to drive. The same one who learned how to be you.
In Dietrich Dörner’s prize winning book, The Logic of Failure, he describes research showing that
one important reason people fail to solve complex problems is the strong tendency to maintain a
sense of competence as part of a feeling of well being. Because of this tendency, much of what
causes unnecessary suffering is, paradoxically, motivated to do the opposite.41
In working with “parts” or subselves (I like to call them “butlers”.), we can assume they are all
acting in “what they believe” is the best interest of the person they are parts of. The behavior of
these parts implies certain beliefs, just as the jumping implied a belief about snakes (viz. they’re
dangerous!). An typical example that comes up often enough in therapy is a person reacting with
disbelief when someone says, “I love you”. It easy to see that, that kind of reaction is protection
against possible hurt. Love could fail, as it often does. The implicit belief is: accepting love is dan-
gerous, I could get hurt. And you can bet there’s a memory of that exact thing happening.
Wilson tells us that automatic thinking has five defining features: it is nonconscious, fast, uninten-
tional, uncontrollable, and effortless. He defines automaticity as thinking that satisfies all or most
of these criteria. It’s good to remember these five features. When we watch to see if client’s are
reacting and listen to them reporting their reactions, these five features can tell us how automatic
the reaction was. Let’s take them one at a time. Nonconscious. Often we can see physical signs of
reactions that the client doesn’t notice. Fast. We’re looking for what happens immediately. We say
when we’re doing an experiment, “Please tell me your immediate reaction when…” We want to
know the first thing that happened. Unintentional. Completely unplanned. Clients are often sur-
prised by their reactions. That’s a good sign. Uncontrollable. Painful emotions can arise. Tension,
anger, crying, any of these can be the spontaneous reaction to an experiment. Often, repeating
an experiment results in the exact reaction being repeated. Effortless. Effort is more likely to be
expended trying to control the reaction, after it’s started happening. These reactions do not carry
the experience of “conscious will.” The book to read about that is: The Illusion of Conscious Will by
Daniel M. Wegner42. The adaptive unconscious is built for speed, the kind that works in the jun-
gle, where the snakes aren’t ropes. It bypasses deliberation and conscious decision making.
A few more quotes from Wilson:
“Mischel43 argued, personality is better conceived as a set of unique cognitive and affective vari-
ables that determine how people construe the situation. People have chronic ways of interpreting
and evaluating different situations, and it is these interpretations that influence their behavior.”
I like this way of thinking. I don’t think about character types anymore. I find that observing pre-
sent behavior and guessing about implicit beliefs from those observations more powerful, precise
and useful. I think Mischel is right: this is actually how personality works in the real world. A good
book to read is Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes. They kill, he says, because they were taught to
construe certain situations as calling for killing.44,45
41
Dörner, Dietrich (Author), Kimber, Rita (Translator), Kimber, Robert (Translator), (1997) The Logic of
Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situation. Perseus Books Group
42
Wegner, Daniel M. (2003) The Illusion of Conscious Will (Bradford Books) The MIT Press
43
Mischel, Walter. 1968, Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.
44
Rhodes, Richard. (2000) Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist. Vintage Books.
45
See in the Introduction, the section on Why Self-Discovery.

Found in Translation
The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious
one.46
….this question of how much conscious control we have over our judgments, decisions, and behavior is one
of the most basic and important questions of human existence.47
…we engage in conscious thought, and it fills much of our waking life. But what most people are not
aware of, and are sometimes shocked to discover, is that most of our thought—an estimated 98 percent—is
not conscious. It is below the level of consciousness. It is what our brains are doing that we cannot see or
hear. It is called the cognitive unconscious, and the scientific evidence for its existence and for many of its
properties is overwhelming. Unconscious thought is reflexive—automatic, uncontrolled. Think of the knee
reflex, what your leg does when the doctor taps your knee. Conscious thought is reflective, like looking at
yourself in the mirror.48
The difference between reflexive and reflective is discussed elsewhere as the difference between
reactions and responses.49 Because statements often evoke reactions that do not seem to be
appropriate to their literal meaning I use a particular technique to help clarify what’s going on.
Here’s an example:
In couples therapy, I typically start by helping each partner to come up with a short, precise
statement about their experience of the relationship. Then, I use those statements as probes. In
one session I was doing, one partner, a man, offered the statement, “I need more free time.” His
wife, who was in mindfulness, heard that statement and reacted immediately by feeling hurt.
When something like that happens in therapy, I ask the person receiving the probe to learn what
translation they’re making of their partner’s statement. (Of course it’s not the conscious mind
that’s doing the translating; it’s the adaptive unconscious.) I tell the person reacting something like
this: “Please notice what you hear (or what you think it means) when your partner says”… then I
have the partner say the probe again.
What the woman in this example heard, when her husband repeated the statement was, “I don’t
love you anymore.” That’s what the statement “meant” to her. Or rather, that’s what it was
translated into by her adaptive unconscious. Importantly, until we did it again, she was not con-
scious of even having that idea; she was aware only of feeling hurt. She heard one thing and re-
acted to something different, the meaning her unconscious mind had given it. It’s usually the case
with such translations, that the automatic translation is associated with a core issue that’s created
a perceptual bias.
It’s not just statements that are unconsciously assigned meaning. All kinds of behaviors are also.
Ordinary gestures and tones of voice are given meaning, usually without conscious thought. The
behaviors are given meaning at an unconscious level and that meaning generates reactions in the
people observing the behaviors. It’s what makes indicators, indicators.
Perceptions are also “given meanings”. Here’s a quote from an article called, The Itch:
….perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. …. our weaver-brain
assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is in-
ference.50
46
Carey, Benedict, Who’s Minding the Mind? Science News, July 31, 2007
47
Bargh, J. and Chartrand, T., The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, available on the web at:
http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/trivia/Bargh.pdf p.3
48
Lakeoff, George 2009 The Political Mind. NY: Penguin Books, pg 9
49
Page 26.
50
Gawande, Atul, The Itch, The New Yorker Magazine, June 30, 2008

Gawande’s article is a real eye opener. Our belief that we are consciously creating our thoughts
and behaviors is, as Nietzsche points out, vanity:
The strongest knowledge–that of the total unfreedom of the human will–is nonetheless the poorest in
successes, for it always has the strongest opponent: human vanity.
— Human, All Too Human
By working with mindfulness and reactions, we help people discover the sources of their habitual
emotions and behaviors. We help them understand their ordinary automaticity. Having the tech-
niques to bring habitual translators into consciousness is one extremely effective way to do this.
Several good books describe how much of our mental life is automatic and unconscious.51
Belief and Implicit Belief
We Are Such Stuff…”

In dreams, the things we see and hear, are not actually present to our senses. Our eyes and ears
are not perceiving them. Sightless men dream visions. The legless, that they’re running.
Consider that the waking state is a dreamlike state (in the same sense that dreaming is a wakelike state) guided
and shaped by the senses, whereas regular dreaming does not involve the senses at all.
Although the brain may use the senses to take in the richness of the world, it is not limited by those senses; it is
capable of doing what it does without any sensory input whatsoever. The nature of the brain and what it does
makes the nervous system a very different type of entity from the rest of the universe. It is, as stated repeatedly, a
reality emulator….
Comforting or disturbing, the fact is that we are basically dreaming machines that construct virtual models of
the real world. It is probably as much as we can do with only one and a half pounds of mass and a “dim”
power consumption of 14 watts.
The brain is a virtual reality machine. — Rudolpho Llinás52
The Hidden Observer: The psychologist, Ernst Hilgard, did many experiments on hypnosis, one
of which was with a blind person. Hilgard induced hypnotic deafness in the man and proceeded
to test it’s effectiveness by making sudden loud noises. He also observed and measured the man’s
physiological reactions. With all of these stimuli, there were no noticeable reactions.
As a second part of the experiment, Hilgard said to the same hypnotized subject, “If you can hear
what I’m saying, lift your right index finger.” The right index finger immediately went up. When
awakened from the hypnotized state, Hilgard asked the subject if anything unusual happened.
The man replied that the only thing he noticed was that at one point, his index finger arose unex-
pectedly and on its own. Hilgard theorized that this indicated that there existed a hidden observer,
operating outside of consciousness. This is credible evidence for the reality of the adaptive uncon-
scious.53
Implicit Beliefs
Implicit memory [sometimes called, procedural memory, sometimes, emotional memory] involves parts of the
brain that do not require conscious processing during encoding or retrieval. When implicit memory is retrieved,
the neural net profiles that are reactivated involve circuits in the brain that are a fundamental part of our every-
51
For example: Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson;
Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith and The Illusion of
Conscious Will by Daniel M. Wegner.
52
53
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch03_states/hidden_observer.html

day experience of life: behaviors, emotions, and images. These implicit elements form part of the foundation for
our subjective sense of ourselves: We act, feel, and imagine without recognition of the influence of past experi-
ence on our present reality.
— Daniel Siegel54
I’ve noticed that one of the big moments in therapy are those in which a client realizes that she
has a belief about herself or the world she didn’t know she had. Such beliefs are implicit and re-
flect foundational experiences. Such beliefs are implied by the behavior they produce. They’re not
normally available to consciousness. They are, in effect, unchallenged ideas about what’s real. I
often called such beliefs, “core beliefs”. Being habits, not conscious thoughts, they are never ques-
tioned. They operate outside of consciousness. They make up the world we assume, without
knowing we’re assuming it. They are frames of reference, adopted long ago, in which we remain
immersed. At best, we have only the faintest inkling we had anything to do with creating them.
Such beliefs define who we are. If “hakomi” means, “who you are”, implicit beliefs are the who. We
are dreaming machines and these beliefs are what we’re dreaming. The work of assisted self-discovery
is to help bring these normally implicit beliefs and realities into consciousness.
Implicit beliefs, like all beliefs, can cause suffering. The suffering may be unnecessary, if the belief
is mistaken. But, being implicit, it is not easy to challenge or to change. The most significant mo-
ments in therapy are the moments when clients discover who they’re dreaming themselves to be
and what world they are dreaming they’re living in. It’s a good sign if the client is surprised by
what they discover. Made conscious, implicit beliefs can be changed. Of course, once they’re con-
scious, they’re no longer implicit. Being conscious, they can be challenged and re-decided. A per-
son’s reality, which in each unconscious moment seems the very ground he’s is standing on, turns
out to be only a platform and not the true, good earth. Such discoveries set the mind spinning.
Integration is the process whereby the spinning subsides and the client stands firmly on new, more
solid ground.
So, we can ask about our clients, “What are their implicit realities?” “What worlds are they living
in? And, who are they in those worlds?” Assisted self-discovery is about answering those questions.
Humans have always believed incredibly unrealistic things, without scientific evidence. There
seems to be a human need to find patterns and meaning. So, science or no science, our minds
frame explanations and stories to satisfy that need. And what for many people counts as evidence
can be nothing like what evidence means to a scientific mind. When such beliefs are held by a
whole culture, a person who thinks differently is a “heathen” and may be killed for thinking so. It
has happened this way for untold centuries. It’s still happening.
Implicit Beliefs as Rules

Children learn a mental grammar by listening to a language (deaf children by observing sign language). They
are acquisitive of associations as well as new words, and one fancy set of associations constitutes the mental
grammar of a particular language. Starting at about eighteen months of age, children start to figure out the lo-
cal rules and eventually begin using them in their own sentences. They may not be able to describe the parts of
speech, or diagram a sentence, but their “language machine” seems to know all about such matters after a
year’s experience.
—William H. Calvin55
There are two very different kinds of learning, one where patterns are recognized and habits are
developed without verbal thought or memory; and a second kind that thinks in words about
54
from The Developing Mind, pg. 29.
55
Books.

things and remembers them as facts.
Quite early in life, children develop habits of speech based on the patterns of the language spoken
around them and to them. Later, they may also learn, as facts, the names of the rules of grammar
that describe those patterns. They may even learn to think critically about those rules. When a
person does that, the person is using a different part of his brain than the one he used to learn the
patterns in the first place. Without ever learning the rules of grammar as facts and without ever
thinking about them, the person is quite able to speak correctly. He knows the rules implicitly.
Every infant learns the patterns of relationship that she’s embedded in. Without thinking about
those relationships in words, she learns to expect whatever it is that is consistently part of her
world. She also learns as best she can to deal with her world. Her ways of dealing become the
core habits that give her a self and give her life the shape it takes.
The shaping starts even before she’s born. Conditions in the womb and in the world, the emo-
tions of the mother who is carrying her, all have an effect. Later in life, she may also learn to de-
scribe these things as facts, in words and sentences. If she makes the effort, maybe through medi-
tation or by doing psychotherapy, she may also come to discover and consciously understand the
implicit rules and convictions that organize who she is and what she can experience. Through this
process of discovery, she may be able to change in ways that open her to a new, more nourishing
world. It could be that world has been there all along and only her implicit beliefs kept her from
being a part of it. Without insight and discovery, people generally don’t change much.
I saw an old friend once, after forty years of not being in touch. We’re were in our late sixties
then. His way of relating hadn’t changed at all. He was the same person I went to kindergarten
and public school and high school with. It’s not that I’d want him to be different; it’s just that I
could see how stable the “habit of who he is” had been.
The goal of experiential psychotherapy is the discovery of self. Clients realize and come to under-
stand the habits, memories, rules and beliefs that control their everyday experiencing. Bringing
all this into consciousness means that not only do we notice the actions and emotions they
engender, we also learn to speak about them in words. We name them. When rules and habits
change, people’s experiences change. That’s what personal and spiritual growth are all about.
There are other tasks that are part of the therapy, but discovery is the essential one.
Rules of Thumb
An interested observer, noticing someone’s habitual behavior patterns, might easily have ideas
about the unconscious rules behind those patterns.56 A therapist might notice that a client thinks
silently, without attempting to engage the therapist in the process. A therapist trained to think
about indicators would quickly have ideas about self-reliance, weaknesses to be avoided, growing
up too quickly and a rule about not counting on others to help.
Thinking this way helps therapists understand how clients they organize their experiences.57
Understanding these things allows therapists to help clients become aware of them. In most peo-
ple, these organizing influences are no more conscious than the organizing principles that govern
riding a bicycle. Think of this: chimpanzees can learn to ride bicycles using the very same princi-
ples without having a way to talk about it.
We speak properly. We somehow know the how of grammar, without necessarily knowing the
facts of grammar. Even though most of us cannot name all the rules of that grammar, we speak
correctly. So, in some sense, we know the rules. But this knowing how is not the same as knowing
56
A good exercise that shows this is the ‘I have an idea about you’ one.
57
For example, organizing needs into weaknesses to be avoided.

facts. It’s not the same kind of awareness. It’s not in words. It’s implicit. It’s not thought. And so,
it’s not really belief. Still, we’re acting exactly as if we did believe. The beliefs are implicit.
We also relate to one another according to implicit rules. We relate as if we believed certain gen-
eral things about people or ourselves. We have implicit beliefs about what kind of world it is and
what kind of rules we should follow as people in that world. We follow these rules for relating,
again, without being able to state them. They are not stored in our minds and brains as facts.
They are part of the many things we learned through experiences and interactions throughout
our lives. They are learned using the inherited, highly evolved method of pattern recognition.58
This kind of learning and knowing are as old as life itself, infinitely older than words and thoughts.
This is the knowing that runs our emotional and relational lives.
As body psychotherapists, we carefully observe clients’ nonverbal expressions, postures, facial
expressions, gestures, movement patterns, and general patterns of relating. We ‘read’ all that for
what it says about the underlying rules, the experiences that created them are how they are still
shaping present experience. We look for indicators of the client’s core beliefs. Almost always,
these ‘as if’ rules have been part of our lives since childhood. Since we learned them early, they
also have the qualities of a child’s beliefs: they are simple, over generalized and often inaccurate
outside of what had been that child’s immediate world. Being inaccurate and unavailable as ideas
which can be examined, challenged and modified—they result in unnecessary suffering.
A part of a brain network which includes the limbic system holds the memories of this relational
learning.59 This kind of memory is called implicit memory. Memories of the events in which this
relational learning took place have strong emotions and images associated with them. For the per-
son who has an implicit belief that no one will help, the memories of being left alone to take care
of herself are painful to recall. The need for others is kept from consciousness. A part of the brain
makes sure of it. (“I’ll never fall in love again!”) We’ve been calling these associated emotions,
memories and images core material. When core material emerges into a client’s consciousness, it
usually appears first as a painful emotion or as a painful memory or visual image.
One more thing about these implicit rules of relationship: the ones learned early are simple. They
have not been made complex by conceptual thinking. When they’re made conscious, they can be
stated in very simple sentences. Though adult behavior can be and in most cases is quite complex,
the underlying rules are simple. They are rules like the one I’ve mentioned already: no one will
help. Some others are: Don’t expect to be loved. No one understands me. People will hurt me. I
have to please everyone. There are many and they are no more complex than these examples.
Yet, those simple rules give rise to highly complex systems of behavior. This is one of the key dis-
coveries of complexity theory.60 As Johnson61 points out, individual ants in a colony have only the
simplest rules that operate locally and only govern each ant’s reactions to the ants in its immediate
surroundings. An individual ant knows nothing of the global behavior of the colony. (As individu-
als, ants are not great thinkers.62) There are no boss ants. No one is in charge. No one is directing.
The colony’s “intelligence” and its highly complex behaviors emerge out of a few, simple, local
58
Pattern recognition: a couple of good books to read are: The Developing Mind by Daniel Siegel and A
General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, et al. See also, Gerald Edelman’s, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire.
59
For research on this, read Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience and Alan Schore’s Affect Regulation.
60
The repeated iteration of even a very simple formula can give rise to something as infinitely complex as
the Mandelbrot Set.
61
Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
62
No one has ever succeeded in teaching an individual ant anything even as simple as a two choice maze.
About ants, one might want to read Edward O. Wilson or a book called, How the Leopard Changed Its
Spots by Brian Goodwin.

rules.63 The colony responds successfully to continuously changing conditions. It almost seems to
be conscious. By any reasonable criterion, it’s intelligent. It’s just not the conscious kind.
In the same way, the complexity of human relationships emerges out of the particular simple, lo-
cal rules each of us learns in childhood. Many of these rules are cultural. A few are personal. For
most people, the rules remain implicit, outside of awareness and govern without rational evalua-
tion. So, as psychotherapists, we search for signs of something simple, something learned early
and stored forever in the shadow world of implicit memory. Our most important and delicate task
is to gently bring the light of consciousness to that shadowy world.
Mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Self-study
Sitting quietly and listening carefully to yourself, you can observe the main voice in which your
thoughts recite themselves.64
According to the buddhadharma, spirituality means relating with the working basis of one's existence,
which is one's state of mind. The method for beginning to relate directly with mind is the practice of
mindfulness.65
…the capacity to observe one's inner experience in what the ancient texts call a ‘fully aware and
non-clinging’ way66.
Bare Attention [mindfulness] is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to
us and in us at the successive moments of perception.67
The fundamental insight of most Eastern schools of spirituality, however, is that while thinking is a
practical necessity, the failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, moment after moment, is what gives
each of us the feeling that we call "I," and this is the string upon which all our states of suffering
and dissatisfaction are strung.68
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power.69
Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted. But
just think of what's involved. You have two tiny upside down distorted images inside your eyeballs
but what you see is a vivid three-dimensional world out there in front of you and this transformation
is nothing short of a miracle.70
63
I have one, interesting example of the power of local rules. William R. Bartmann became a billionaire by
changing one very simple local rule. Banks recover bad debts by paying people to pursue debtors and
hound them with great persistence and much guilt slinging and accusatory language. On average, they get
back1% of their money. Bartmann became a billionaire by buying those same bad debts and recovered nine
cents on the dollar on those same debts. He instituted one simple rule that all the people working for him
as debt collectors followed: Be polite! This simple local rule earned him an 800% profit.
64
Thurman, Robert. (1999). Inner Revolution. New York: Riverhead Trade Paperback
65
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation, Excerpted in the Shambhala Sun, March 2000.
66
From The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. I recommend this book
for its clear, scientific presentation of the case for free will. —RK
67
From The Power of Mindfulness
68
From The End of Faith, Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
69
Brooks, David (December 16, 2008) Lost in the Crowd. The New York Times
70
Rieth Lectures: The Emerging Mind, Lecture 2: Synapses and the Self. This lecture and four others can be
found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/reith2003_lecture2.shtml

We do not perceive the object in front of our eyes until the brain has made unconscious inferences abut
what that object may be. We are not aware of the action we are about to perform until the brain has
made an unconscious choice about what that action should be. 71
What Mindfulness Is
To summarize the above quotes, mindfulness is: “a powerful, momentary self-observation”; a tradi-
tional form of meditation and a method of self-study; a skill; it improves with practice; undefended
consciousness; a way to practice surrendering. a deliberate vulnerability, a chosen sensitivity.
In mindfulness, there is no intention to control what happens next. It is a deliberate relinquishing
of control. That's why the first focus in traditional practice is often on the breath. To pay attention
to the breath and not control it is more difficult than one might imagine, especially when we think
about how little attention we ordinarily pay to breath and how well it works outside of our con-
scious control.
In mindfulness one focuses inward on the flow of one's experience. In Hakomi, we use it in small
doses (30 seconds to a minute). We use it especially in the evocation of experiences. One of the
effects of practicing mindfulness is the gaining of perspective and distance on one's own internal
world, as if one had stepped back and seen a larger canvas than before. One discovers how one
habitually meets the world.
Francisco Varela and others72 have this to say about mindfulness:
Here, then, we are dealing with two reversals of the most habitual cognitive functioning, of which the first is
the condition for the second; the second cannot happen if the first has not already taken place.
• A turning of the direction of attention from the exterior to the interior.
• A change in the quality of attention, which passes from the looking-for to the letting-come.
How to Get into Mindfulness and What it Feels Like

To become mindful, turn your attention inward toward present experience. Simply notice and
allow your experiences to come into consciousness and retreat and make way for the next
experience. Let your experiences come and go, without “taking charge”. It may help to quiet your
mind by following your breath. Put yourself in the position of an observer, noticing your
experiences as if you were outside of them. There are experiences, but they’re not your experiences.
For those who practice meditation, mindfulness should be easy. Stay calm, relaxed, and focused
on present experience.
How Mindfulness is Used in Evoking Reactions

In a way, all successful psychotherapy depends on the ability to detach attention from habits and to
describe them from the point of view of a neutral observer.
—Helen Palmer73
Loving Presence is the state of mind of the therapist; mindfulness is what we want for the client.
That kind of mindfulness is just allowing and paying attention to reactions in short, precise
experiments created by the therapist. (We could note that long years of practicing mindfulness
meditation can lead to a state of loving presence. That and much more.)
If you can observe your own experience with a minimum of interference, and if you don’t try to
71
Frith, Chris (2007) Making Up The Mind, How the Brain Creates our Mental World Wiley. pg. 68.
ISBN-10: 1405160225, ISBN-13: 978-1405160223
72
Natalie Depraz Francisco J. Varela and Pierre Vermersch To appear in: M.Velmans (Ed.), Investigating
Phenomenal Consciousness, Benjamin Publishers, Amsterdam, 1999
73
http://www.enneagram.com/helen_palmer.html

control what you’re experiencing, if you simply allow things to happen and observe them, then
you will be able to discover things about yourself that you did not know before. You can discover
little pieces of the inner structures of your mind, the very things that make you who you are.
Once you are in a mindful state, experiments can be done.
For example, at a conference in Vienna, to demonstrate this method of using mindfulness to
several hundred people, I did this: First, I asked them to predict what they would experience, if
they were mindful and I said, “You’re a good person.” I asked them to predict this while they
were still in ordinary consciousness. Saying “you’re a good person,” while in mindfulness is a kind
of experiment and I wanted them to think about what would happen when we did it. So, each
person thought about it and told a neighbor what their predictions were. After that, I asked them
to become quiet and turn inward (mindfulness). I gave them about thirty seconds to this and I
talked to them in a very gentle, soothing voice about the various forms of experience they might
notice: thoughts, emotions, memories, images, changes in muscle tension and breathing. Like
that. After thirty seconds, I asked them to “Please notice your immediate reaction when you
hear…” a slight pause, and then, “You’re a good person.”
These were the results: About forty percent of the people reacted with experiences of sadness.
Some felt a little sadness; some had tears; some cried. Another twenty-five percent or so
experienced relief. A few people felt happy. Some noticed that their chests felt warmer and more
open. Some had a thought or heard an inner voice which said things like, “No! I’m not!” About
ninety percent failed to accurately predict what they actually experienced. Ninety percent! That’s
why this method of self-study is so valuable. You learn things about yourself that you could not
have predicted. A simple little experiment in mindfulness can do that. When an experiment is
designed for one particular person, as happens in therapy, it can much more precise and evoke
very powerful and revealing experiences.
Without mindfulness, it’s possible nothing much would have been evoked. If you say, “You’re a
good person” to a someone who isn’t in mindfulness, the person might just casually reply, “Well,
thanks!” If you ask it as a question, “Are you a good person,” again without mindfulness, you
might get an equally casual, emotionless answer, like, “Yes, I guess so.” “Sure.” No sadness. No
relief. No insight. Without mindfulness and the intention to study oneself, the person replies in an
automatic, conversational way. Nothing very interesting happens. But, using mindfulness, with its
open, self-observing concentration, something very important just might happen.
Here’s How to Study Your Reactions
As a client, you will need to become ready (mindful) for experiments. After that, just allow your
reactions and observe them.74
Note: there is a big difference between reactions and responses. As I use these terms, a reaction happens without
conscious deliberation and a response happens with at least some conscious deliberation. We could say that
reactions involve unconscious choices and responses entail at least some conscious choice.
Observe your reaction and “stay with it”. Pay attention to how it feels, how it draws associations.
Notice each thing, but do not hold on to any of them. Remember them, but don’t “think about
them.” At least, not yet. In a minute or less, that part of the experiment will naturally complete.
Unless… an emotion arises, possibly a strong emotion. In that case, allow the emotion if you can
and let it take you where it wants to go. Typically, associations will arise, memories, thoughts,
images, all of which help create an understanding of why that particular reaction occurred. At
some point, you will feel ready to speak about your reaction and the experiences that followed it.
Then you’ll want to report about it.
74
Reactions will arise and die away by themselves, if we do not allow them to lead into further actions.

How to Report Your Reactions
The important thing is to report the experience you had or are having, without analysis or
explanations. Those things should happen after you’ve described your reaction. Report exactly
what you noticed or are noticing if the reaction continues.
When the Reaction Includes the Expression of Strong Emotion
When the client reacts to an experiment with a strong, spontaneous expression of grief, anger or
fear, there are several things that should or could happen. When strong emotions emerge, they
are almost always constrained in some way by habitual management behaviors. For example:
grief is often habitually managed by holding ones breath and/or folding over. When a client
reacts to his or her emotions with management behavior, the usual intervention is to support the
management. (Taking over.75) Of course, the therapist must first get permission to do so.
Sometimes the offer and/or the granting of permission are done nonverbally. With any strong
emotion, taking over is the first option.
Taking over often allows the client to relax their management behavior. When that happens, the
process often moves forward in one of several ways. The emotion can change, e.g. from anger to
grief. Or, new impulses can arise. It they do, I encourage the client to “go with it”. I call that,
“following”, meaning, “follow spontaneous experiences”.76 Doing so is another way to move the
process along.
Sometimes, all that’s needed is to hold and comfort the client. Especially with grief and fear.
Again, you’ll need permission. And, you’ll need to respond to the client’s wishes, either to get
more comfort or to break the contact. I use assistants and I direct the comforting they offer.77
Musings on the Self
“I" has always been the magnificent mystery; I believe, I say, I whatever. But one must understand
that there is no such tangible thing. It is just a particular mental state, a generated abstract entity we
refer to as "I" or “self.”
So what is the self then? Well, it is a very important and useful construct, a complicated eigen (self)
vector. It exists only as a calculated entity. Consider the following two examples of what I mean. First
we have the concept of Uncle Sam. When one reads in the newspapers, “Uncle Sam bombards
Belgrade,” everyone understands that the U.S. Armed Forces have been deployed against that country.
However, there is no such entity as Uncle Sam. It is a convenient symbol and even a convenient
concept that implies existence, but it is a category without elements. The "I" of the vortex, that which
we work for and suffer for, is just a convenient word that stands for as global an event as does the
concept of Uncle Sam vis a vis the reality of a complex, heterogeneous United States.
The thalamocortical system is a close to isochronic sphere that synchronously relates the sensory-
referred properties of the external world to internally generated motivations and memories. This
temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components of external and
internal reality into a single construct is what we call the “self."
— Rudolpho Llinás78
I am struck by the close resemblance of Llinás’ statements to Buddhist ideas. I’m thinking of, All is
without a self. Llinás’ says the self is just a particular mental state. In my mind that changes everything. I
talked about this in the opening section of this handbook, Why Self Discovery. We have and use
75
Taking over is discussed in the section on Support for Healing Skills.
76
Following is discussed in the section on Some Essential Aspects of the Refined Method.
77
Using assistants is discussed in the section on Some Essential Aspects of the Refined Method.
78

constructed selves, situational selves, that we turned on and off automatically.79 It’s the self that
moves with us, as us from situation to situation. I can understand that the experience of no self, or
to put a fine edge on it, no separate self, can be a life changing event. The sense of oneness that
comes with it is a very highly prized state of mind. It entails a loss of boundaries and a sense of
being connected to everything.80 It’s a change from one mental state to another. Isn’t that exactly
what we help clients do, change their mental states, change the way they habitually organize their
interactions with the external world. We do not change their external worlds. We change the self
that meets the world. We change the construct. And that, in turn, changes everything.
About Prediction
Prediction Must Be Centralized—It Leads to Self
Given that prediction is the ultimate and most pervasive of all brain functions, one may ask how this function
is grounded so that there evolved only one predictive organ. Intuitively, one can imagine the timing mismatches
that would occur if there were more than one seat of prediction making judgment calls for a given organism's
interaction with the world; it would be most disadvantageous for the head to predict one thing and the tail to
predict another! For optimum efficiency it would seem that prediction must function to provide an unwavering
residency and functional connectedness: it must somehow be centralized to the myriad interplays of the brain's
strategies of interaction with the external world. We know this centralization of prediction as the abstraction
we call the “self.”
— Rudolpho Llinás81
So, according to Llinás, it is the self, that generates a unifying order out of the buzzing mess
around us. The self, he says, is the centralization of prediction. It binds our world together into a thing
we can deal with. It creates order and it does so through temporal synchronicity. And we know
that the prediction of demand is one of the greatest influences on physiology and behavior.82 A major
new theory about the neocortex talks about “the memory-prediction framework”.83
Let’s make a list, of what’s been said so far about the self. It is:
1. a magnificent mystery
2. a very important and useful construct
3. a generated, abstract entity
4. a convenient word
5. a category without elements
6. a convenient symbol and even a convenient concept
7. a temporally coherent event that binds, in the time domain, the fractured components
of external and internal reality into a single construct
8. just a particular mental state, a generated abstract entity
9. the centralization of prediction
And that’s just Llinás. Then there’s autobiographical memory and the adaptive self. Here’s how
intense it is: when you Google “the self” and you get 155,000,000 entries (in 0.15 seconds, by the
way). I won’t go into all of them.
79
See the Hippolyte Taine quote on page 18???
80
For more on this, see Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by A. Newberg,
E. G. D'Aquili, V. Rause. 2002. New York: Ballantine Books
81
Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2002) ibid.
82
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allostasis
83
The book to read is Hawkins, Jeff (2004) On Intelligence New York: Holt Paperbacks.

As interesting as all of the above might be, we might better just stick to what we need to know
about the self as it relates to the work we do. For us, the operative self, the one we can witness doing
things and saying things, is the external manifestation of a set of habits, memories and implicit
and explicit beliefs. We search for external indicators of these to help us understand how a person
is unconsciously organizing his or her experiences and behavior. We do experiments based on our
interpretations of those external indicators. We are attempting to do two things with all this: we’re
trying to make the adaptive self conscious, in order to provide a chance to change it and we’re
trying to help clients resolve and integrate old, emotionally painful memories. In this way, we
change the self, as concept, as mental state, and as centralized predictor.
Section II. The Method

A Brief Overview
A good therapist, shares control with everything present, sometimes moving deeply into to the unfolding
action, sometimes waiting quietly as the other does inner work, surfing gracefully the changing
amplitudes of intimacy. —Ron Kurtz
Hakomi deals with the organization of experience. For people having experiences — that’s you,
me and everyone else — an experience just happens, full blown and immediate. We see what we
see without feeling or sensing how the brain creates images.84 We see the shapes and colors, we
speak words and sentences, we make hundreds of movements with our eyes, all without
experiencing how our brains do these things. All experience is the outcome of complex organizing
processes of the brain, processes which take place outside of consciousness.
For vision, there are fifty or so different centers in the brain that contribute to the final visual
experience.85 These centers handle things like color, depth and sequence. Their functions become
obvious only when they cease to function normally. There are some unconscious organizers that
exert a very strong influence on our whole way of being. As Hakomi therapists, these are the
organizers we’re interested in. They are emotions, beliefs, attitudes, early learning, adaptations
and memories. We call these organizers core material. Often, they are as inaccessible to the ordinary
consciousness as are the circuits in the brain that create vision.
However, using this method, some of them can be made conscious. The method makes core
material conscious. Some core material causes unnecessary suffering and the method provides a
way to reduce it. Some suffering is unnecessary because the core material that organizes it, is no
longer applicable. Some beliefs, adaptations, etc. developed in early life situations no longer
pertain, but are still active. Though the current situation has changed, the old adaptations are still
be automatically applied. Outdated or not, they go on organizing experience, causing problems
and unnecessary suffering.86 So, we work to bring core material into consciousness. Doing so
offers the person a chance to reduce that kind of suffering. Once in consciousness, core material
can be examined and revised and its influence eliminated or greatly diminished. The way we do
this is unique.
We do something that no other therapy that I know of does. We do “experiments” with clients
while they are in a mindful state. These experiments are brief and evocative. They are created on
the basis of what we have observed about the individual and they are designed to evoke reactions
that will lead directly to emotional release and/or insight. And mindfulness is essential. When
84
Frith, Chris (2007) Making Up The Mind, How the Brain Creates our Mental World Wiley.
ISBN-10: 1405160225, ISBN-13: 978-1405160223
85
Crick, F. & Koch, C. 1995. Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex? Nature 375: 121-
23.
86
Of course, some suffering is normal and perhaps, necessary. Grief over a death might be an example.

mindful, attention is on the flow of moment-to-moment experience. The person in a mindful state
is letting things happen without trying to control them. The quality of attention is very different
from ordinary attention. Attention is turned inward and just observing. In that state of being, the
usual mechanisms that prevent certain thoughts and emotions are suspended. Evocative
interventions at such a times can produce strong, significant reactions.
Here’s an example. A person who habitually talks rapidly while carefully watching his listener,
may be being influenced by an core belief that people do not have time for him. Speaking rapidly
is often an indicator of such a belief. One experiment the practitioner could do—with the person
in a mindful state—would be to say something like this: “Please notice what happens when you
hear me say, ‘I have time for you.’”
That kind of statement could get a reaction, like the immediate thought, “No one ever does!” Or,
the reaction could be a sudden feeling of sadness. It could be a memory of not being heard by a
significant person. A whole scene like that may appear. Not just the belief is made clear. For the
person noticing the reaction, the feelings and memories that arise bring with them the knowledge
that this issue is still a source of emotional pain.
At this point in the process, there are things to do that will ease the hurt and modify the core
material and the behaviors it is organizing. Getting to this point is what experiments in a mindful
state are designed to accomplish.
Experiments in mindfulness aren’t done until several other important things have happened. As a
session begins, the practitioner puts him- or herself into a loving state of being. (There’s a lot more
about this later in this document.) Loving presence is created by focusing on those qualities of the
other person that inspire and support it. It is a form of attention. As we practice the method, over
time this way of paying attention becomes habit. With loving presence setting the general mood,
the person usually responds to it, either consciously or unconsciously, by feeling safer and calmer.
The practitioner then begins to gather a particular kind of information. This information comes
from observing the person’s nonverbal behaviors, the kind of behaviors that are not usually
focused upon.
The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you,
but in what he cannot reveal to you. —Kahlil Gibran
The information needed for experiments is not normally gotten by asking questions or from the
conversation. It’s gotten by observing behavior. At this early stage, the behaviors we’re especially
looking for are the signs of the person’s present experience. These signs are found in posture,
gestures, facial expressions and tones of voice, things like a shrug of the shoulders or a slight
redness starting in the nostrils. Paying constant attention to these signs requires a kind of present
awareness that needs as much practice as loving presence.
Information like this allows the practitioner to let the person know she is paying attention and is
aware of what the person is feeling. It allows the practitioner to respond to the person’s moods
and needs before they’re spoken about or even noticed by the person himself. Knowing and
responding to these things without having to ask about them seems the very best way to establish
intimacy and safety.
Once these are established—and it can happen within minutes—the practitioner concentrates on
looking and listening not just for the signs of present experience, but for habitual nonverbal
behaviors that might be the external expressions of core material, like speaking rapidly or a
constant facial expression of disbelief. We call these kinds of habits indicators. Indicators are usually
nonconscious, meaning that they are happen automatically and without conscious awareness.
They are the most fruitful subjects of experiments. Hakomi therapists are trained extensively in
“reading” nonverbal behaviors for such indicators.

When the practitioner finds an indicator to work with, she draws the person’s attention to it and
together they set up and do an experiment designed to bring the nonconscious organizer of that
indicator into consciousness. With the person in mindfulness, the practitioner does something
designed to evoke a reaction. This process brings the unconscious material organizing indicator
closer to or into consciousness. If the practitioner has chosen a good experiment and it’s done
carefully with the full cooperation of the person, then a telling reaction results. The reaction itself
is in consciousness because the person is in mindfulness. It is telling, because it is immediate,
experiential and its connection to core material is suggested or totally obvious.
Experiments in mindfulness often evoke emotions. Emotions, when they’re not interrupted, have
the power to draw into consciousness, the memories and other associations that make sense of
them.87 Once core material is in consciousness, the work becomes supporting the expression of
emotion, allowing time for the spontaneous integration that usually follows and creating new,
more realistic, and satisfying experiences and habits around the revised material. This is easier
than it may sound.
To become good at this work, students and practitioners have some important things to practice.
We must learn to cultivate loving presence. We must practice being loving. We must train our
attention to be continuously focused on the present moment. We must learn to recognize
indicators of core material. We must become good experimenters. So, we have to learn to make
good guesses about what the various indicators indicate. And, we have to create experiments that
will test our guesses and bring core material into consciousness. Finally, we have to be good at
helping people through the painful moments that arise after experiments and to help them
discover new and better ways to organize their experiences.
An Outline of the Method

1. Assisted self discovery
(1) seeing the work as assisted self discovery is one of the major differences between this
refined method and the original Hakomi and other psychotherapies.
(2) a second major difference between Hakomi and other psychotherapies, one that is
unique88 to Hakomi at the moment, is simply that we do experiments in mindfulness.
(3) the method of assisted self discovery requires not only the skills of the practitioner, it also
requires explicit commitments on the part of the person being assisted
2. Qualities and skills required of a practitioner
(1) practitioners must be able to sustain a compassionate and present-centered state of mind
(Loving Presence)
(2) loving presence combines several habits of feeling, attention and mindset. It is an
integrated combination of attitude, emotional state and focus of attention.
(3) compassion is the first and most important element, being present is the second.
(4) to be continuously present…
i. is to continuously stay focused on the observable behaviors of the moment, especially
the client’s non-verbal activities which modulate communication and regulate the
relationship, in particular:
87
For more about this, see Damasio, Antonio. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling
Brain. New York: Harcourt.
88
See “Hakomi’s uniqueness on page 2.

ii. the signs of the client’s present experience and the client’s general qualities and
habitual behaviors
iii. requires overcoming one of our strongest, most common habits, namely gathering
information through questions and conversation.
(5) practitioners must become masters of reading the information in nonverbal behaviors
(6) six skill sets are necessary for practitioners and are described in the outline that follows
this one.
3. Commitments and skills required of the “client”
(1) often still called “the client”, but no longer thought of as the clients in regular
psychotherapy are. Clients in the refined method may be thought of as self-studying, that
is seeking after the truth of who one has become and how with help one may explore
and resolve the issues that trouble and confine one.
(2) the client must be capable of entering into a present-centered, experience-focused, non-
controlling and vulnerable state of mind (mindfulness)
(3) the client must understand that the process includes as a central element, experiments
done in mindfulness. The client must be willing to enter into that process even though
painful emotions may arise.
(4) these are the commitments and skills required of people who are clients in the refined
method of Hakomi
Note: If the person is very anxious or easily distracted, or is someone who does not
understand what the process actually requires, then the work can be difficult or
impossible without some prior preparation.
4. Experiments
(1) are done with the client in a mindful state
(2) experiments are specifically designed to evoke reactions that will help bring unconscious
material (such as foundational memories, underlying emotions and implicit beliefs) into
consciousness
(3) reactions to experiments are noticed in mindfulness and reported
(4) reactions can be thoughts, feelings, images, impulses, memories, tensions or any
combination of these
5. Nonverbal Behaviors
(1) there are two kind of nonverbal behaviors that are of primary interest: the external signs
of the client’s present experience and observable indicators of core material.
(2) noticing the momentary ones is one of the ways we build and maintain our relationship
with the client.
(3) noticing the habitual ones gives us clues to the memories, emotions and implicit beliefs
that organize what the client can and cannot experience and is an important step in
setting up and doing experiments
(4) habits are often expressions of adaptations to powerful formative events and may point
toward important, underlying issues that control the client’s behavior
6. Nonverbal Awareness: Tracking

(1) practitioners gather two kinds of nonverbal information, signs of the client’s present
experience called tracking and indicators of core material
(2) tracking is noticing what the client is doing and possibly experiencing, moment by
moment. It is an essential part of being present.
(3) we use the information gain by tracking to connect with and to stay connected with the
client, by making contact statements
(4) a contact statement names the client’s present experience, quickly and simply
(5) tracking and contact are two basic techniques in the original Hakomi method
7. Nonverbal Awareness: Indicators
(1) practitioners train themselves to notice behaviors that could be indicators of core
material. These are certain personal qualities and habitual behaviors of clients, such as
postures, gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice and speech patterns.
(2) A few simple examples of indicators are: habitually shrugging ones shoulders, or tilting
ones head, or interrupting ones own speech, or speaking very quickly. The expression
left on a relaxed face is a prime indicator.
(3) habits like these are designed to operate automatically, without conscious attention.
Habits like these allow consciousness to be preserved for the non-routine things that
require fresh decisions.
(4) indicators are one of the two main sources of experiments. (The second source involves
listening to statements for implications and assumptions.)
(5) Knowing how to create an experiment using indicators is essential.
(6) the practice of searching for and using indicators has become a significant part of
teaching and practicing the refined method.
8. Experiments and Their Effects
(1) experiments are done with the client in a mindful state.
(2) when a particular indicator has been noticed and chosen, the next step is to get an idea
for an experiment.
(3) once you have one, you ask the client to become mindful89 and to signal when ready.
(4) when the client signals that he or she is ready, you do the experiment.
(5) if you’ve chosen a good indicator, and if you’ve done a good experiment with it, you’re
likely to get a reaction that can begin the healing and discovery process for the client.
(6) the reaction may also suggest or bring into consciousness the core material associated
with it.
(7) if the reaction is an emotional one, I do two things that weren’t done in previous versions
of the method: I touch the client (More likely, I have an assistant touch the client.) and
secondly, I remain silent while the client if the client turns inward and looks like he or
she is doing inner work.
9. About Using Touch
89
For a detailed explanation of mindfulness and how it is used, see page 22!

(1) touching clients is normally not recommended for psychotherapists. This is primarily
due to legal considerations. When I use touch, I first get permission and, since I use
assistants and may have several other observers present, I feel quite comfortable using
touch.
(2) once permission has been established, assistants will generally touch without asking
again.
(3) for a client who is experiencing sadness as a reaction to an experiment, a gentle touch
signals the client that we are aware that he or she is emotional, and that we are
sympathetic and paying attention.
(4) if there are signs that the client is working internally, (eyes closed, facial movements and
nods of the head) we do not interrupt. We waiting patiently for the client to open his or
her eyes, look at us and speak.
(5) in these moments of silence, the client is integrating something, making sense of the
feelings, memories and thoughts that arise in reaction to an experiment.
(6) silence, accompanied by gentle touch, helps the client to stay with his or her experience
10. The Natural Course of a Healing Process
Mastery of the world is achieved
by letting things take their natural course.
— Tao Te Ching
(1) mental-emotion healing processes are often start after an experiment in mindfulness.
These are spontaneous processes that will unfold given the right conditions. As best we
can, we provide those conditions. Among them are:
i. the process must not be interrupted or interfered with
ii. gentle touch or holding and comforting when appropriate
iii. attention, silence and patience
(2) as part of the natural course of a healing process, memories and thoughts that make
sense of the emotional reaction are drawn into consciousness the that make sense of it.
And that’s exactly what we want to have happen!
(3) during this process, we track for the external signs that the client is having memories and
insights and is integrating the emotional experience, signs of deep concentration on the
face and nods of the head, indicating realization or agreement with some idea.
(4) during this process, the client is gathering memories and ideas and is making sense of
them, making sense of what just happened and what happened long ago that left
confusion, that left painful feelings unfinished and unsorted out.
(5) after an experiment in mindfulness, clients often start doing this internal work. While
doing this, they often have a precise memory that makes sense of their reactions and they
may be able to articulate the implicit beliefs it created.
(6) the process may cycle through emotions, associations, insights, memories, deeper
emotions, more associations, and so forth.
11. Missing Experiences
(1) certain powerful formative experiences required painful but necessary adaptations.

(2) for some of these experiences, the elements that might have promoted healing were
missing. (Janet says, they couldn’t be made sense of and as a result, they didn’t get
integrated. They remained “an irritation” unconsciously affecting feelings and behavior
in a negative way.)
(3) some aspects of those unintegrated experiences express themselves through habits and
implicit beliefs that help manage the difficulties they are still causing. These habits are
functions of the adaptive unconscious.
(4) there is one fundamental missing experience: the presence of someone calm,
sympathetic, patient and understanding to care for the suffering person and support
healing process.
(5) beyond this fundamental missing experience, there are a great variety of other healing
experiences that can be created for the client.
(6) during the healing process, the client, often relives an old painful event. Quietly
comforting the client is one of the main components of the missing experience.
12. Integration
(1) slowly, resolutions are accomplished. New, more realistic beliefs are formed. Energy is
drained away from the long struggle and becomes available for living this very moment.
Confusion yields to clarity. A delicious joy is felt and the pleasure of seeing new positive
possibilities arises
(2) this is the process of integration, the natural course of things.
18. All the above elements help make the work simpler, faster, easier and more effective.
Recent Thinking That Has Refined the Method
There is now convincing evidence that much of our behavior happens without conscious
awareness. On this subject, I can recommend four books two articles.90 The words used to
describe that part of the mind which carries out these behaviors is the “adaptive unconscious”.
My study of and application of this idea is the first of four ideas which are the topics of this outline
and the most important additions to my thinking over the last few years.
The Adaptive Unconscious.
a. the actions of the AU are generally unnoticed, habitual, and many are indications of early
adaptive learning, such as learning the grammar of ones native tongue.
b. some characteristics of the operations of the AU, according to Wilson are, it is
nonconscious, fast, unintentional, uncontrollable, and effortless.
c. the operations of the AU can be observed when a person is in a mindful state.
d. the paper on Cognitive Load by Swiller discusses the limitations of consciousness, as does V.
S. Ramachandran in his book, Phantoms in the Brain.
90
Strangers to Ourselves. Wilson, T.,
The Illusion of Conscious Will, Wegner, D.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Gladwell, M.
Making Up The Mind, How the Brain Creates our Mental World, Frith, C.
Bargh, J. and Chartrand, T., The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, available on the web at:
Cognitive Load Theory. Swiller, J. available on the web at : http://tip.psychology.org/sweller.html

e. understanding the importance of the AU and its operations is basic to an understanding
of the Refined Hakomi Method.
The Healing Process.
a. Healing, in general, is an inner-directed process. Early in the development of Hakomi, I
stated this quite clearly, I wrote “The answer is within.” Meaning, within the client. I
have also written, “The impulse to heal is real and powerful and lies within the client. Our job is to
evoke that healing power, to meet its tests and needs and to support it in its expression and development.
We are not the healers. We are the context in which healing is inspired.”91
b. mental-emotional healing is “coordinated and controlled” by the AU.
c. often, our experiments, done with the client in mindfulness, initiate a healing process.
This is marked by spontaneous thoughts and memories and/or the sudden experience of
an emotion.
d. we support the healing process in several ways:
i. when the client becomes sad, we offer a gentle physical contact
ii. when the client goes inside and shows external signs of processing—like eyes closed,
little nods, quick changes in facial expression—we remain silent. This is because…
iii. an emotion will draw associations to it, like memories and thoughts that help explain
the presence of the emotion. A good thing to read about this is in a book called,
Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio (the key pages are 67-69).
iv. all the attributes of loving presence are important during the healing process
v. when spontaneous management behaviors arise, we support them if we have
permission to do so. (The short term for this is “taking over”.)
vi. we pay particular attention to the emergence of spontaneous events, like impulses,
memories, thoughts and emotions. These are often clues to the direction the process
should take and are signs of the operations of the AU. When such events occur, we
try to utilize them in what we do next, like another experiment. This aspect of the
process is called Following.
Note: The work from the beginning was experiential, focused on the present and using reactions
evoked by little experiments with a person in a mindful state. Those experiments in remain the
core of the method. Sixteen years ago, I introduced the idea that loving presence is the appropriate
state of mind for the practitioner. More recently and equally significant, I came to see the work
as assisted self-study. Seen in this light, it is closely related to the Buddhist and Taoist principles
that were my original inspirations. As assisted self-study, the work is, in some fundamental way,
quite different from those therapies that find their foundations in medicine and place themselves
within that paradigm.
This method can be part of any method of psychotherapy. And, it is much more than that. It is
basic to all human relations. It is a natural part of the universal human endeavor to understand
ourselves, to free ourselves of the inevitable suffering that follows from ignorance of who we are
and “how the world hangs together”. It is the path taken by all who work to go beyond the half-
remembered hurts and failed beliefs that linger unexamined in the mind and body, and the hurts
that act through barely conscious habits and reactions. This work is a part of that heroic labor, a
cousin to sitting meditation, singing bowls and chanting monks.
Anyone who is capable of a few moments of calm will have no trouble pursuing self-study using
this method. And just as exciting, assisting in that process is well within the reach of any good-
hearted, intelligent person who takes the time to learn the method.
91
In the Update Handbook of 2006

The Process in Graphic Form
1. Loving Presence Search & Enter State (Maintain Throughout)
2. Indicators Find One to Use
3. Modeling Guess About Meaning
4. Experiment 1 Decide How to Use the Indicator
5. Experiment 2 Create & Implement
6. Outcomes Healing Process or New Information
Follow & Support Back to Modeling ••
7. Complete Create a Missing Experience

The Process as Three Phases and Six Skill Sets in Detail
Three Phases
1. Preparation
2. Assisted Self-Study
3. Mental-Emotional Healing
All three phases operate within a context characterized by an embodiment within a set of well-
defined Principles.92
Phase One: Preparation Phase
1. loving presence
a. this phase is highly dependent on your own state of mind skills.
b. search for inspiration (for compassion, appreciation, love)
c. search for signs of the person’s present experience
d. make initial observations of the person’s “qualities”.
2. develop a healing relationship

a. this phase requires good relational skills.
b. this phase requires relating to the adaptive unconscious
c. look for signs of cooperation and non-cooperation
d. make adjustments to the person’s unconscious needs
e. make contact statements about present experience
3. When the person seems ready for it, proceed to the…
Phase Two: Assisted Self-Study Phase

1. Search for non-verbal indicators as expressed by:
a. posture e. qualities that describe the person

b. facial expressions f. tone of voice
c. pace
d. gestures
2. if possible, develop an hypothesis about the person’s models of self and world, based on the
indicators you’ve observed.
3. develop and do an experiment with the indicator you’ve chosen to work with.
a. these experiments are done with the person in a state of mindfulness93 in order to bring the
actions of the adaptive unconscious into awareness
b. the goals of such experiments are two-fold:
i. bringing the person’s unconscious models into consciousness
ii. initiating phase three: mental-emotional healing
c. experiments can be attempts to offer a kind of mental-emotional nourishment that your
hypothesis predicts the person will either have difficulty accepting or will experience as
very nourishing, or...
92
The Principles are described in detail on page ???.
93
Mindfulness is described in detail starting on page 20.

d. the experiment can be a way of working with an indicator for which you have no
hypothesis.
e. there is a form for doing experiments that is also described in detail starting on page 45.
f. get information about the outcome of your experiment
i. either by observing it, or…
ii. by getting a verbal report from the person
4. given the outcome of the experiment:
a. refine or reject your original hypothesis about the person’s models

b. do another experiment based on the outcome of the previous one.
c. follow up each time with the getting information about the outcome
d. keep refining your hypotheses, until…
5. the person’s models of self and world become conscious and clear to him or her, or…
6. the process moves spontaneously into the mental-emotional healing phase.
Phase The Healing Phase94

1. this phase requires support for healing skills
2. this phase is marked by emotional expression, strong beliefs, early memories and…
3. behavior controlled by the adaptive unconscious
a. such behavior is sometimes described as “being hijacked”. it is:
i. “nonconscious, fast, unintentional, uncontrollable, and effortless.”95
ii. adaptive and usually learned early or under extreme conditions
4. during this phase, the primary tasks for the practitioner are:
a. support the person’s spontaneous management behaviors, such as:
i. changes in posture, such as closing up and/or dropping the head, spontaneous

“protective” thoughts
ii. tightening certain muscles, such as the shoulders, chest and stomach
iii. holding the breath
b. provide signals of safety and caring, such as:
i. gentle touch
ii. being calm, softening the voice and having a natural sympathetic facial expression
iii. supplying Kleenex for tears
iv. providing physical support where needed and accepted
c. contain the unfolding process by taking charge and directing the person’s behavior where
necessary
d. follow up on the person’s spontaneous images, memories, impulses, and ideas as if these
were signals from the person’s adaptive unconscious as to where the process “wants to
go”.
94
Please refer to the paper entitled To Heal Is To Be Whole Again which follows The Six Skill Sets. It
discusses the spontaneous re-adaptation towards wholeness and integrity.
95
“…we can define automaticity as thinking that satisfies all or most of these criteria.” Wilson, Timothy
D. (2004). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Belknap,
Harvard University Press. (pg. 53)

e. recognize periods when the person needs you to be silent, by…
i. watching for signs in the face that the person is doing internal work
ii. waiting while the person has his or her eyes closed
iii. when the person does open his or her eyes, wait until he or she looks directly at you
and speaks, before you speak96
iv. listening to the person’s report about his or her insights, feelings and memories.
f. avoid interrupting the process by encouraging conversation
4. provide physical and verbal comforting and nourishment
5. provide the “missing experience”, that is the experience that was blocked by the person’s
adaptations and distorted and/or unrealistic models of self and world.
6. allow the session to come to completion in a natural way when it feels right and/or the person
signals that he or she feels complete, perhaps by saying “thank you” or by a few nods of the
head or something similar.
The Six Skill Sets

I asked him, Do you know what gyroscopic precession is?
He replied, No!
So I said, But you can ride a bicycle, right?
He said, Yes, of course!
Well, I told him, That’s my point.
Riding a bicycle is a skill. One theory that explains certain behaviors of a bicycle in motion is the
theory of gyroscopic precession. It tells you about the behavior of gyroscopes and why the wheels
of moving bicycles are similar. It explains why a moving bicycle turns when you lean. But, you
don’t need to know the theory at all in order to ride well. You only have to know how bikes act,
which is very easy to learn from experience. With experience, you build a model that predicts
how the world acts. Habits are expressions of these models and they are functions of procedural
memory and the adaptive unconscious. To ride you need skills, not theory.
I’ve summarized the skills needed for the Hakomi Method and organized them into six basic skill
sets. If you learn and practice these, you have a very good chance of becoming competent in the
method. Although each skill is unique and can be learned and practice separately, they function
within a session as an integrated whole. Here are the six sets in outline:
The Six Skill Sets
a. I have begun to see learning skills as much more important than learning theory. I see the
process as requiring six sets of skills, as follows:
i. State of Mind
ii. Relational
iii. Observational
iv. Modeling
v. Experimental
vi. Support for Healing
b. These skill sets are described in more detail below.
96
In some cases, the person will not spontaneously respond. If that happens, help them to recover.

1. State of Mind Skills
The main skill in this first set is a combination of two very important habits which set ones
state of mind. The state of mind is called loving presence and it is an integrated combination of
attitude, emotional state and focus of attention. These skills help a practitioner develop a state
of mind and being that is expressed effortlessly through ones demeanor and actions. This state
of mind has a profound effect on the development of relationships.
a. of all six sets, this is the most important. Reaching and maintaining a present-
centered, loving state is the first task of the therapist. Learning to do this is an
essential part of the trainings. Some people are already good at this and are naturally
drawn to the work. Learning how to look and listen to someone with the intention to
find something that inspires and maintains compassion, as well as the habit of staying
completely focused on what’s happening in the present, are the basic skills.
b. Being present means keeping your mind focused on what is going on for you and the
client right now, moment to moment. To train your mind to be present like that, you
have to train it away from one of our strongest, most common habits, the habit of
gathering information through asking questions and conducting ordinary
conversations. Those are bad habits, if you’re trying to be present.97 So, you have to
train your mind not to get drawn away from present experience by getting overly
focused on ideas, stories and conversation.
c. Other skills in this set are:
i. being patient
ii. being and staying calm
Without these habits of state of being, not much in the way of a connection to a client and his or
her adaptive unconscious will be possible. Without that connection, the process goes very slowly,
if it moves at all.
2. Relational Skills
These are skills that build and maintain a strong connection with people. The principle ones
are all about demonstrating these qualities and attributes:
a. through your behavior and a few short, accurate, non-disruptive contact statements, you
show that you are aware of what the other person is presently experiencing. getting and
staying in contact is the primary skill for connecting and staying connected. It creates the
sense in others that you are with them, aware of their feelings and present experiences. It
makes you able to anticipate their needs and work to provide help.
b. through your tone of voice, pace, posture and gestures, you show that you are patient,
sympathetic and non-judgmental.
c. your facial expressions, head movements and gestures show that you understand what
the person is saying, thinking and feeling
d. you work to gain a general understanding the person’s present situation and history.
You build a model in your mind that makes sense of the way they feel, think and
organize their life
e. you make a habit of keeping silent when the client needs time to think and remember
f. ways to intervene to move the process forward are part of this skill set. They are discussed
later in a section entitled, When and How to Intervene to Move the Process Forward on page 57.
97
See the paper, Habits as Causes of Failure on page 55.

3. Observational Skills
What’s needed most is a good set of attentional and recognition skills. Here’s a few of each:
a. Attentional Skills:
i. keeping your attention focused on present behaviors
ii. regularly scanning the face and body for signs of present experience
iii. regularly scanning the other’s behavior for possible indicators of unconscious
material (Note: A list of indicators appears in this document as Appendix 1.)
b. Emotion and Attitude Recognition Skills:
i. recognizing emotions quickly by subtle changes in tone of voice and/or facial
expression
ii. recognizing statements implied through tone of voice and gestures.
iii. being able to guess at the meaning of postures, gestures, etc.
iv. “feeling” the emotions in others, through limbic resonance and mirroring
v. recognizing the client’s need for silence
vi. recognizing the signs of integration and memory processes
4. Modeling Skills
The bridge between observation and experiment is the ability to create models of the laws
governing the behavior you’re observing. We could call these skills, modeling skills.
a. This is the method of science. Richard Feynman, the Nobel physicist, tells us the
three steps of science are: make a guess; calculate the implications of your guess; and
test your guess on the basis of your calculations.98 “If my guess is true, then if I do
this, this will happen.” That’s the gist of it.
b. we use our ability to observe behavior, especially indicators and our knowledge of
indicators, to make guesses about the person’s beliefs and models of self and world.
c. then we test our guesses by doing experiments. The outcomes of our experiments
allow us to evaluate and refine our guesses.
d. There is a mathematical theorem that describes how perceptions (sensory models of
the world) are continuously updated in the nervous system. It’s called, Bayes
Theorem, after the mathematician who discovered it.99 It describes mathematically
how models and beliefs are changed in the face of new evidence. It helps us
understand how some models can be believed so strongly. It suggests to me how
models (beliefs, e.g.) can become so strong in the face of contradictory evidence or no
evidence at all.
e. The general idea of modeling this:
i. we need to make guesses about what beliefs (models) are organizing the client’s
behavior and we need to do that by observing that behavior. This is a “reverse
engineering” problem.100
98
The book is: Five Easy Pieces.
99
A paper entitled, How Bayesian math can help us understand the brain on this can be found at:
http://www.scientificblogging.com/profile/news It is written about in Making Up the Mind: How the Brain
Creates Our Mental World.
100
Note. Forward and reverse engineering and the method. E.g., forward engineering: 2 + 2 = ? This one is
easy. 2 + 2 = 4. Reverse engineering: a + b = 15. This one is harder. There are many possible answers. 5
+10, 4 + 11, etc. Guessing what beliefs and models are shaping a person’s behavior is a reverse engineering
problem. It could be any one of many possible beliefs. Why is he crying? Could be sad. Could be cutting

ii. we need to be able to sense some general qualities of the client, to get a feel for
who the person is and how he or she learned to be in the world. And we need to
constantly refine our models by continuing to make new observations and to do
new experiments.
iii. modeling and experimenting is how we do it.
5. Experimental Skills
These are the skills you will need to create and execute good experiments.
a. creating hypotheses about core material from your observations of the client
b. helping the client become mindful when doing experiments
c. creating and executing experiments, using this form: describe how you’d like client to
participate, get permission, ask for mindfulness and wait for signs or a signal that
mindfulness is occurring, do the experiment, and observe its outcome or ask about that
d. follow the spontaneous reactions to an experiment and use them to support the unfolding
healing process (not as easy as it sounds)
e. be able to follow up with another experiment, if that seems useful
f. use the outcomes of experiments to think about missing experiences
6. Support for Healing Skills.

a. supporting spontaneous management behaviors
b. allowing time for the other’s internal processing (silence)
c. following the spontaneous behaviors that arise in the person
d. providing comfort and holding when needed and you have permission
e. create and offer missing experiences
Loving Presence: The Therapist’s State of Mind
In this model, what is seen as primary in shaping experience is not external reality—not what is
cognized, not the object of awareness—but rather the properties of that moment of mind itself.
—Daniel Goleman101
The phrase state of mind has much more precise meaning nowadays than it had just a few decades
ago. Neurological research has revealed much about exactly what states the brain can be in when
people interact.102 Many books have been written on the interaction of caregivers and the infants
in their care.103 Adults in relationship also affect each others’ states of mind. For the very intimate
onions. Could be something in his eye. We observe behavior and have to guess about the beliefs and
models. That’s a reverse engineering problem. Guesses are required. Hopefully, educated guesses.
101
Writing on the Tibetan model of what shapes experience; Goleman, Daniel. Tibetan and Western Models
of Mental Health, In: H.H. Dali Lama. (1991) MindScience—An East-West Dialogue, Boston: Wisdom
Publications. (pg. 92)
102
A good example would be the research on limbic resonance. For more about that, see: Lewis, Thomas
(Author), Amini, Fari (Author), Lannon, Richard(Author), (2001). A General Theory of Love. New York:
Vintage Books. For more about social engagement, see the paper: Neuroception: A Subconscious System
for Detecting Threats and Safety, at this web page: http://bbc.psych.uic.edu/pdf/Neuroception.pdf
103
Schore, Allan N., (1994) Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self (The Neurobiology of Emotional
Development), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Gerhardt, Sue (2004). Why Love Matters: How

relationship between a therapist and client, the therapist’s conscious awareness and deliberate
control of his or her state of mind is essential. The effect of the therapist’s state of mind on the
process of this method is without doubt the single most important factor in it’s success.
To best serve others in their self-study, the therapist must be able to sustain both presence and
compassion. The therapist has to maintain a constant focus on present activity and present
experience, both her own and that of the client. That kind of presence is needed. A feeling of
compassion is also essential. When presence and compassion are combined and constant, the
therapist’s state of mind can be called, loving presence. In training people in this method, the
development and practice of this state of mind are primary goals.104
In a very short time, loving presence can establish in the client, a sense of being safe, cared for,
heard and understood. Self-exploration, especially when using mindfulness, places clients in
extremely vulnerable positions. A therapist in loving presence helps clients to allow this vulner-
ability and provides best context for assisted self-study to happen. Here’s a quote:
“Loving presence is easy to recognize. Imagine a happy and contented mother looking at the
sweet face of her peaceful newborn. She is calm, loving and attentive. Unhurried and
undistracted, the two of them seem to be outside of time… simply being. Gently held within a
field of love and life’s wisdom, they are as present with each other as any two could be.”105
For the therapist to develop this state of mind, he or she must first of all look at others as living
beings and sources of inspiration. As one therapist put it:
If you cannot see anything lovable in this person that you can respond to in a genuine way, then you
are not the right person to help this person.106
It is this intention and habit of seeing something lovable in the other that creates the feeling state
necessary for loving presence. The first thing I instruct students to do: create this habit as the
primary thing in any interaction! Create it and sustain it throughout your sessions!
I want to start with the most importing thing I have to say: The essence of working with another
person is to be present as a living being. And this is lucky, because if we had to be smart, or good, or
mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters
is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in
there. Even if it is a cat or a bird, if you are trying to help a wounded bird, the first thing you have to
know is that there is somebody in there, and that you have to wait for that “person”, that being in
there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing.107
There are any number of things that will support this intention. The first goal is to establish a
relationship that will support self-study; the habit of gathering information by asking questions
and considering answers is not the way to do it. First, one must avoid being drawn into a
Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain, New York: Brunner-Routledge, and Cassidy, Jude (Ed.) and Shaver,
Phillip R. (1999). Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications. New York: The
Guilford Press)
104
It should be noted that, in this aspect, the method is solidly aligned with the most universal spiritual
teachings: agape in Christianity, compassion and mindfulness in Buddhism, nonviolence and non-
separation in both.
105
From a forthcoming book on Loving Presence, by Donna Martin and myself.
106
Margaret Brenman-Gibson, (1992) in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogs on Compassionate Action, H. H. H.
Dalai Lama, Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press
107
Gendlin, E. T. The Primacy of Human Presence: Small Steps of the Therapy Process: How They Come
and How to Help Them Come, In G. Lietaer, J. Rombants and R. Van Balen eds. (1990) Client-Centered
and Experiential Psychotherapy in the Nineties, Leuven/Louvain, Belgium: Leuven University Press,

conversation about abstractions—ideas, explanations, the meaning of the past and such. The
therapist’s words and actions must demonstrate that he or she is paying attention to what the
client is experiencing right now, cares about what the client is feeling, and understands what that
means for the client. This connection through present experience is the key to limbic resonance.
So, the therapist searches for what there is about the client that is emotionally nourishing or
inspiring of appreciation and connection. Another thing that helps build the right relationship is
realizing the process as a collaborative enterprise where feelings of partnership, teamwork and
mutual respect are basic. The idea that we are not separate, that we are inescapably parts of a
whole greater than each of us alone, is the root of loving presence.
Nonverbal Indicators
Accessing the kinds of beliefs that pervasively and unconsciously influence experience requires
that the therapist get ideas about what the client’s formative early experiences were or what
implicit beliefs the client’s behaviors are expressing. To gather this information, the therapist
focuses attention on the qualities of the client’s habitual posture, tone of voice, facial expressions,
gestures, eye contact, speech patterns and such.108 Many of these qualities are habitual nonverbal
expressions of implicit beliefs. We call them indicators. (In the vernacular: “clues.”)
As you may imagine, there are many such indicators. Some can be completely obvious as to what
they say about the client. Others require that the therapist learn them over time. In Bioenergetics,
for example, the indicators are often postural. A sunken chest and locked knees for a Bioenergetic
therapist would be indicators of “an oral pattern”.109 Given that pattern, the therapist has both a
diagnosis and a way to proceed with treatment. Almost all methods of psychotherapy use
particular sets of indicators this way and usually refer to them “symptoms”. In this method, we
use indicators differently. We use them to get ideas for experiments.
As we interact and relate to others, we don’t normally focus on their little, seemingly insignificant
habits. In an ordinary interaction, conversation is most important; we might not consciously think
about a person’s subtle nonverbal behaviors. We might ignore a slight feeling of discomfort (about
not being believed) which results from the way the other person is looking at us with her head
always turned to one side. Odds are she won’t be consciously aware of either the angle of her
head or the skepticism it indicates. This level of interaction is usually handled by the adaptive
unconscious. In Hakomi, we consciously search for indicators and the turning of the head is a
common one. Through experimenting with it many times, I have come to expect that it can
indicate formative experiences of not being told the truth or not being understood. The emotion
associated with it is usually hurt. Though the hurt is not being felt at the moment, it is an
expression of the implicit belief: “I must be careful about what people are telling me! I could get
hurt again.” Though not conscious, this belief is controlling present behavior and experience.
Indicators are the external expressions of this process.
In Hakomi, we use indicators to create experiments, experiments designed to trigger reactions.
This is a vital piece of the method. It is our clear intention to study a client’s behavior not for
symptoms of disease but for sources of experiments. We anticipate that the experiments we carry
out will bring the unconscious, adaptive processes driving that behavior into the client’s
awareness. A therapist using this approach is thought of as having an experimental attitude. We
are evidence seekers, evidence which is gathered on the spot, evidence that clients can use to
understand themselves. The basic idea is this: (1) indicators suggest experiments; (2) experiments
108
A few examples would be: ending verbal statements with the inflection of a question or an habitually sad
looking face or tilt of the head.
109
One book precisely about this is: Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality by
Alexander Lowen.

create reactions; (3) reactions are evidence of implicit beliefs. Gathering evidence is what
experiments are all about and that’s exactly why we do them.
For instance, if the client’s habit is to hold her head a little bit off center and turned slightly away,
we might do an experiment where the client, while in a mindful state, slowly turns her head back
towards center. Most such clients, when doing this movement deliberately and carefully will react
with fear. This fear is about being emotionally hurt and it is associated with memories of that
happening and beliefs about how to avoid it. The habitual turning of the head is only one
indicator and the experiment only one that could be done. There are endless numbers of possible
indicators and the experiments that can be done. Finding indicators and devising suitable
experiments is one of the things that makes this work so interesting. It is a combination of
searching for clues like a detective and testing them like a scientist. It is a long way from “the
talking cure”.
Experiments110
The method is designed to lead clients towards greater consciousness of the implicit beliefs
that organize their reactions and experiences. That kind of information is not readily available to
consciousness. So, we don’t just ask for the information. Questioning doesn’t usually yield the
kind of information we’re after. What we do is: we create experiments using our guesses about
what the unconscious material might be. We get our guesses from behaviors that the surface
expressions of those deep structures. We call them indicators. Good experiments almost always
evoke the memories, images and beliefs that exist at the deeper levels. In order to make conscious
what was unconscious (and to satisfy our curiosity by being detectives and scientists), we think,
guess and we experiment. All our techniques serve that end.
The discoveries that clients make are the outcomes of experiments. It’s what this method does
that other methods don’t do. This is the only method I know of that does experiments in
mindfulness. These experiments create moments of insight, you could say, assisted insight. Here’s
the sequence: (1) once our relationship with the client is in place and the client understands what
we’re doing, we study the client for indicators and make our guesses about what they might mean
and/or what experiment we might do to both test our guesses and possibly bring unconscious
material into the client’s consciousness. (2) We set the experiment up carefully: we prepare the
client; we help the client become mindful; we explain what we’re going to do. (3) We wait for the
exactly right moment and when everything’s ready, we carefully do the experiment. (4) Then we
watch for and/or ask for the outcome: the client’s immediate reaction.
The process starts with loving presence and loving presence is maintained throughout. Still,
you have to switch gears at some point so that you’re doing two things at once. You’re in loving
presence which should be an habitual state of mind that shapes all your behavior (your pace, your
tone of voice, the way you look at people). At the same time, another habitual part of you is
looking for indicators. You’re also listening for key words and phrases. You’re thinking about the
client’s belief system and childhood. All this is going on in the early phases of a session. Loving
presence, however is the priority. Some part of you has to maintain loving presence even while
you’re doing all this gathering of information. You need information… so you can experiment!
Given that loving presence has been established, you search for indicators. When you find
one, you create an experiment using it. You have to have the idea that the indicator is one that
will probably lead to deeper material. You have to imagine what kind of experiments you could
do with that indicator and maybe even what reactions they might lead to. Your experience with
the method over time will help you do that. You do all this in your mind because you have to
110
Talk given in class, August 2003

know what you’re going to do. Since therapy is a real time process, you want do this part rather
quickly. Don’t start to set up an experiment before you know what you’re going to do. Then, set it
up. Experiments have to be set up in certain precise ways.
Here’s what I mean: There are three essential parts of the set-up. The first is: you describe the
experiment to the client. You give clear instructions. You say something like, “I would like to do
an experiment where you go into mindfulness and I will…blah, blah, blah. If it’s going to be a
probe, you might say something like, “In this experiment, you’ll become mindful and when you’re
ready, you give me a signal and I’ll make a statement and we’ll notice what happens. Okay?” It
helps clients relax a little when they have an idea about what the experiment is going to be like.
You don’t tell them what your statement is going to be—though you could do that and I have
done it, without losing the power of the experiment. So, you give them a clear idea of what’s
expected of them and what you’re going to do.
After describing what you’re going to do, you get permission to do it. “Is that okay with you?”
Track for whether it really does seem okay. A client may say okay when they’re really afraid or
want to do something else. If you get clear, sincere permission, then you ask for and wait for
mindfulness. You say, “Please become mindful and give me a signal when you’re ready!” You
track for signs that the client actually went into a mindful state. Watch for the signs of mindfulness
and wait for the signal. The signs are: (1) the client becomes very still and (2) his or her eyelids
flutter up and down over closed eyes. This movement of the eyelids is almost always an accurate
sign that the client is in mindfulness. I use it all the time.
Of course, mindfulness is a radical shift in the way we pay attention. If you’re working with a
new client, you may have to teach him or her about what mindfulness is and you may have to
help them get into it the first time.
Then, you do the experiment.
If it’s an effective experiment, you’re going to get results. You’re going to get useful outcomes.
There are two kinds of useful outcomes: (1) there are emotional outcomes and there are (2) insight
outcomes. Sometimes these are combined. If the emotions are intense, your path is to offer and
provide comfort, if it’s accepted. Maybe you take over some of the spontaneous management
behaviors, if they allow that. You offer to support the client’s spontaneous changes in posture and
tensions. These are ways in which the adaptive unconscious attempts to manage strong emotional
experiences. Whatever the client is doing to manage his or her emotions, you support that. For
instance, if the client covers her face with her hands, you can have an assistant put her hands over
the client’s. That’s if the emotion is intense.
If it’s a mild emotion, you can still get reports about the experience or set up a second
experiment based on the emotional reaction that occurred. When a client becomes sad after an
experiment, or anytime during a session, I offer to have an assistant sit by the client or put an arm
around her or a hand on her. It that is accepted, I sit silently and give the client time to feel the
emotion and allow associations to arise. This very often leads to memories and/or insights. If it’s
an insight, if the client is quiet and you can see from her facial expressions that she is having
thoughts and realizations, then just be silent and watch. I learned to do that late in my career. When
the client is having insights, the best thing to do is to do nothing. Don’t interfere! There’s nothing
you have to do. Insight is a very legitimate outcome of a good experiment. Just wait! You’ll notice
when the client is ready to interact again; he or she will come back into contact with you. Then
you can say something like, “Had some insights, huh.” Or, just look quietly at the client and she
will probably tell you all about it.
We provide comfort and we provide silence in support of emotional reactions and insights.
Now, it doesn’t always go that smoothly. Sometimes there’s no reaction to an experiment.

Sometimes, the client has an immediate thought or an image or a memory. You have to know
what to do with those things. With a thought, you might have an assistant take it over. That kind
of taking over is a follow up experiment. Set it up the same way. There are experiments you can
do with images and memories, also. Sometimes an experiment will evoke a child state of
consciousness. Sometimes strong memories. There are ways to work with all of these. I won’t go
into the details on that now.
I want to emphasize two things about experiments. One is that they’re central to the process
and they require a certain precise care when you do them.
You can create experiments not only from physical indicators but from deductions about
what the client is saying or doing. For example, a client may have insights and not share them
with you. That’s a kind of indicator. You can think about things like that by asking yourself,
“When does someone create a habit of not sharing?” “What kind of childhood did the person
have?” “Why not share?” “What kind of belief system is behind that kind of behavior?” You do
some of that kind of thinking. We can speculate that the person who doesn’t share probably
doesn’t expect any help from others. It’s one hypothesis we could have. So, we can then test that
idea. Experiments are first of all tests of ideas. That they’re evocative is part of it for our kind of
work, but basically they are ways to testing your ideas about the client.
The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." —
Richard Feynman
You set up experiments to test your ideas about the client. And the experiments you set up
are also designed to evoke something. The reactions evoked give you answers to your questions
and, if the experiments are good ones, they move the process towards insight and change. If you
think not sharing is the result of a core belief that says, “don’t expect help”, then you do a probe
like, “I’ll help you.” Or, you ask the client to fall backwards without looking back and you catch
them. If falling back is difficult for the client or if saying “I’ll help you” triggers crying and
sadness, then you’ve tested your idea and you’ve moved the process.
I have one more very important thing to say about experiments. When you do an experiment,
be sure to get the data. Get the data! Get the results! Your asking the client to, “Please notice your
immediate reaction when….” You want to know what happened. If you can’t see and hear what
happened, get a report! That’s one reason you did the experiment. To find out what would
happen. You’re not just curious, you also need that information to move the process. Of course,
many times you will have noticed what happened. In that case, you don’t have to ask for the data;
you’ve already got it. Make a contact statement or something!
Well, what if they don’t tell you their immediate reaction? What if they get dreamy and start
saying something like, “You know, my mother used to make these cookies.” Do you want to hear
about cookies or do you want to know what the client experienced when you did the experiment?
You’re not there to listen to stories. An experiment can lead to diversions. If it seems to doing
that, interrupt. When you get a chance say, “So, you’re remembering those great cookies, eh. I
get that they tasted really good. But, you didn’t tell me what happened with the experiment. Can
you tell me that.” Get the data!
To summarize: by noticing indicators and making deductions, you get ideas about the client.
Then, you test those ideas by doing experiments. So, it’s get ideas and test. Get ideas and test.
That’s the information gathering operation within the therapy process. Experiments often evoke
strong emotions and insights. That’s another good thing that can happen. When it does happen,
you follow through by working with the management of the emotion. All of this leads to
discoveries. The process works when the client discovers something about his or her deepest
convictions and models of the world. Because we’re looking for that same information, we’re

leading the client to exactly what they need to get for themselves.
So, do experiments and get the data. The data can lead you to the next step in the process.
What you do next depends on what was evoked. That’s also going to tell you whether your ideas
are right or not. If you really wanted to practice the one thing that will give you the hang of the
method, it’s this: get ideas and test them. You’ll not only be doing therapy, you’ll be doing
science. It’s also fun. It’s why people go hiking in the woods. It’s why people read detective stories.
It’s why scientists stay up at night.
The Healing Process: To Heal Is To Be Whole Again

Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again, beyond confusion.
— from Directive by Robert Frost
1. Wholeness is there from the beginning.
Because humans arise from a single fertilized cell, our body is never composed of separate systems, but
rather of wholeness which is our underlying origin and maintaining force. Dr. Blechschmidt
understood the embryo as perfect, whole and fully functioning within its environment at every moment
of its development. Each tissue is a participating and integral part of the whole. Rather than a
possibility of becoming something significant, it is always significant.111
2. How wholeness is damaged
a. the vulnerability of complex systems
b. parts opposing other parts
c. automaticity
d. string
3. Mental-emotional healing
a. adaptations, habits and implicit beliefs
b. m-e healing processes
c. initiating, supporting, completing
d. changing beliefs
e. the role of consciousness, choice, Ramachandran
f. grief, sadness, anger, frustration, fear and terror: the emotions of healing
g. sharing, being known, trusting, belonging
4. Supporting the process
a. demonstrating: awareness, wakefulness, warmth (Trungpa), intelligence and nurturing
(said of Feldenkrais), loving presence (Kurtz), trustworthiness
b. initiating (evoking) an e-m process
c. touch, holding, comforting, nourishment (see Feldenkrais story about baby crying)
d. peace, patience, calm and silence
5. Healing is a spontaneous, organic process, it takes its own time. And, it’s important to
understand how to support it without interfering.112
“The impulse to heal is real and powerful and lies within the client. Our job is to evoke that healing power, to
meet its tests and needs and to support it in its expression and development. We are not the healers. We are the
context in which healing is inspired.”113
111
Blurb, on the back cover of: The Ontogenetic Basis of Human Anatomy: A Biodynamic Approach to
Development from Conception to Birth by Erich Blechschmidt. 2004, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA.
112
See the section on Following, page ……..
113
Quote from the 2006 Update Handbook.

a. Lines from the poem What I Learned from My Mother by Julia Kasdorf114
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
Logic of the Method

1. Observe the person’s nonverbal behaviors and make a guess!
a. observe: indicators (habitual, adaptive qualities)
b. guess about the person’s models of self and world,
c. models which may be causing unnecessary suffering.
2. Calculate (reason) the implications of your guess!
a. (If I am right about this , then if I do such and such, the person will probably do …. )
b. This is(are) your prediction(s) about the person’s behavior,
c. given your guess about the person’s models of self and world.
d. Prediction is the basic function of the brain. (Llinás: i of the vortex).
3. Test your prediction by setting up and doing an experiment!
a. Offer some kind of nourishment which,
b. on the basis of your guesses about the person’s model,
c. you predict will evoke a reaction.
4. Observe (and/or get a report about) the outcome of the experiment! (See # 7 below!)
5. Refine your ideas about the person’s models
a. and recalculate your predictions, based on
b. the errors in your previous predictions!
6. Test the new prediction with a new experiment!
7. Recognizing evidence of a correct prediction.
a. main evidence: a reaction to an experiment which is either:
b. emotional and/or surprising, and/or…
c. rejects the offered nourishment in some way, and/or…
d. initiates a healing process.
8. If a healing process begins:
a. support the process, and
b. follow the clues offered by the adaptive unconscious.
c. those clues are: spontaneous, possibly surprising, and
d. of interest to the person in the healing process.
9. Support the person’s spontaneous emotional management behaviors!
Note. Forward and reverse engineering and the method:
a. 2 + 2 = ? (forward engineering. no problem)
b. ? = 15 (reverse engineering. lots of problems. could be many different answers.)
c. behavior = result of what model? (reverse engineering problem, many possible causes)
(why crying? could be sad, could be cutting onions, could be something in eye.)
d. known model = predict behavior (forward engineering problem, easy)
e. behavior (indictors, etc.) + guess about person’s model + design of experiment to test your
guess is reverse engineering (not so easy).
f. your guess is your tentative model of the other person’s models.
114
In Good Poems, selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor (pg156)

g. outcome of experiment = opportunity to confirm, check for errors and refine your model,
and…
h. opportunity for other person to discover their models.
Some Essential Aspects of the Method115

Introduction
I am writing here about how I work and how I understand the method now, in 2008. I’m fairly
sure that what I do is similar to what other Hakomi Therapists do. Still, I began to develop and
teach the work over thirty years ago. (Some of my original students have themselves been
teaching it for twenty-five years or more.) Each of them has modified the work in some ways. I
certainly have. Still, the most essential elements have changed little. Those elements are what this
paper is about.
Though based on the best science available, the method is not only science. The intimate and
delicate exchanges the work gives rise to can be as beautiful as poetry or song. The skills needed
are as much those of the heart as of the head. As science, the method is reason, rules and tools.
The use of these, however, is an art. As in any art, there is both freedom and constraint. I am
grateful for both. They have led me to whatever understanding I now enjoy. They have kept me
interested and productive. They are a blessing. I also value the creativity and understanding of the
other contributors to this book. And while I honor their independence and creativity, I can only
write with confidence about my own vision and how I implement it.
For me, the method is a living thing. For over thirty years, my vision of the work has continuously
evolved, shifting, slowly, like tectonic plates, carrying the whole endeavor. Occasionally, an
earthquake of an idea radically alters my understanding. Three of these ideas were: (1) the
realization of the importance of the therapist’s state of mind; (2) an understanding of the method,
not as working to cure disease, but as assisting another in his or her search for self-knowledge
(The method can be described succinctly as: assisted self-study.); and (3) an understanding of the
unconscious as adaptive,116 that is, intelligent, aware, working to benefit the whole and, without
our conscious knowledge, automatically handling most of our daily actions.
The adaptive unconscious operates on the basis of assumptions, expectations, habits and implicit
beliefs about ourselves, others and the world of which we are part.117 These assumptions were
created by our earliest and strongest formative experiences. They are not available to
consciousness through the usual processes that retrieve memories. They must be accessed using
special techniques. The Hakomi Method employs unique techniques, developed over the past
thirty plus years, to accomplish just that.
In a very real sense, we start out ignorant of who we are. To gain understanding and control,
requires deliberate effort. Self-study is a powerful path to change and it is most powerful when we
can discover our unconscious assumptions, when we can examine them with a more mature,
experienced and reasoning mind. The whole world is not the same as the limited one we spent
our childhood learning to live in. To act as though it is usually results in suffering. The kinds of
115
Chapter 1 of a forthcoming book by the Hakomi Trainers. Please do not reproduce!
116
The book to read is: Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson.
Belknap Press, May 15, 2004
117
“Whatever particular theory is subscribed to, all agree that expectations of other people and how they
will behave are inscribed in the brain outside conscious awareness, in the period of infancy, and that they
underpin our behavior in relationships through life. We are not aware of our own assumptions, but they are
there, based on these earliest experiences.” —Sue Gerhardt, in Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a
Baby's Brain, Brunner-Routledge; December 20, 2004

assumptions that cause such suffering are inaccurate, usually over-generalized, and emotionally
charged. Because of this, the suffering they cause is, in principle, unnecessary. It can be lessened
or even completely eliminated by changing the assumptions.
Not all formative experiences cause suffering. Positive experiences of love, protection, caring, and
enjoyment can also be formative. And, of the negative ones, not all are inaccessible because they
occurred too early in life. Some simply happened when the person was vulnerable. They
overwhelmed the nervous system. The person simply lacked the inner resources and the external
support needed to integrate them. The experiences were “encapsulated” and repressed. 118,119 The
Hakomi method is designed to access these ‘undigested’ experiences and the habits that keep
them outside of consciousness. We bring these experiences into consciousness and we find ways to
integrate them. And, though the process is at times emotionally painful, it consistently accesses the
adaptive unconscious. Doing so makes completion and transformation possible. And this reduces
unnecessary suffering.
These ideas have reshaped my vision and the way I work. And while there have been radical
shifts, some things have not changed at all or at least not very much. Though new techniques
have been added, the old techniques remain central. The original underlying principles—of unity,
organicity, mindfulness, mind-body wholeness and nonviolence—also remain, though my
understanding and appreciation of them have deepened. The core of the method has not
changed. It is this:
The essence and uniqueness of this method remains a simple combination of two things: the
client’s state of mind (mindfulness) and the therapist’s ability to create experiments that trigger
reactions while the client is in that state of mind. These reactions are indications of unconscious
assumptions.120 The therapist looks and listens for signs of these assumptions and tries to discern
the nature of the emotionally nourishing experiences the assumptions are preventing. The
therapist makes a guess about this and uses it to create an experiment that will trigger a reaction.
The experiment is simply an offering of some potentially emotional nourishing statement or
action, something the therapist guesses will be automatically rejected. The experiment is done
while the client is in a mindful state. The client notices the reaction. The reaction, when it is
allowed to unfold into an integrative process, provides an opportunity to access and examine the
operations and assumptions of the adaptive unconscious that produced it. It provides an
opportunity to complete, in a positive way, the old, painful experiences that led to those assump-
tions in the first place.
Mindfulness entails a change in the quality of attention. Attention is directed inward, towards the
flow of present experience; it is receptive, open and allowing. This quality has been described as
“a change in the quality of attention, which passes from the looking-for to the letting-come.”121
This combination of an open, vulnerable client and a therapist who is attempting to trigger re-
actions is exactly what makes the method work. Of course, clients know that this is the process.
They understand what can happen. The procedure is voluntary and a completely cooperative
118
“During these periods of abaissement [a lowering of psychic energy], Janet found, our psyche seems to
lose some of its capacity to synthesize reality into a meaningful whole. It we encounter a traumatic or
strong emotional event during these periods, the mind lacks its usual ability to make sense of it and fit it
properly into a meaningful, secure whole …. During abaissement, we tend to be emotionally vulnerable
and easily overwhelmed; we can register the life experiences, but we cannot properly ‘digest’ them. The
emotional experience floats in our unconscious, unassimilated, in effect, jamming the gears of the mind.”
—E. Rossi
119
The book to read is: The Symptom Path to Enlightenment by Ernst Rossi, especially pg 125.
120
These assumptions are not verbal, but are implicit in the habits which express them.
121
Natalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela and Pierre Vermersch; In: M.Velmans (Ed.), Investigating
Phenomenal Consciousness, Benjamin Publishers, Amsterdam, 1999

effort. If the therapist is adroit enough, a client’s reaction will be a source of insight—long buried
feelings and memories will emerge. If the therapist is compassionate, then new experiences, of
comfort, safety, hope and happiness, may become possible.
An example of an experiment might be a simple statement such as: “You’re completely safe
here”. Or, it could be the client looking away and then looking directly at the therapist. The
variety of such experiments is effectively infinite. The statements or actions made as experiments
are always positive and are meant to offer something emotionally nourishing. “You’re a good
person” would be another example. If the therapist has guessed well, the statement will run
counter to the client’s implicit beliefs and foundational experiences. It will be the kind of
emotional nourishment that the client has never been able to receive. It can evoke a longing that
the client suppressed (another word is encapsulated) long ago. Offering such a statement can
trigger strong, painful memories and the realization of what’s been missing. At this point, new
beliefs about what is possible can be entertained and new experiences—the missing ones or
something close to them—become possible. This simple process is the core of the method.
Several other important elements of the method support this core process. These include:
(1) the client’s commitment and ability to enter into the process consciously and willingly,
and…
(2) the therapist’s ability to be present and compassionate, and to…
(3) understand nonverbal expressions as signs of present experience, and to…
(4) notice and understand the client’s non-conscious, habitual behaviors as indicators of
implicit beliefs and formative experiences, and to…
(5) create experiments which will trigger reactions that can lead to emotional release and self-
understanding, and to…
(6) enable positive emotional experiences previously rare or entirely missing.
The Client’s Commitments: Mindfulness and Honesty

I give prospective clients a document that makes clear what will be expected of them. It says in
part: This method is not about talking out your problems. There won’t be long, speculative
conversations about your troubles or your history. This method is designed to assist you in
studying the processes which automatically create and maintain the person you have become. It is
a method of assisted self-study. It requires that you enter into short periods of time where you
become calm and centered enough to observe your own reactions, as if you were observing the
behavior of another person, a state called mindfulness. The therapist assists your self-study by
creating “little experiments” while you are in mindfulness. These experiments are always
nonviolent and basically are designed to evoke reactions that will be reflections of the habits and
beliefs that make you who you are. The implicit beliefs and relationship habits with which you
meet the world automatically shape your present behavior. Aspects of your behavior, the aspects
that reflect your deepest beliefs, are what the therapist uses to create the experiments.
The document goes on to say: The process works best: (1) if you can follow and report on your
present experience; (2) if you’re able to get into a calm inward focused state and are relaxed
enough to allow reactions; (3) if you’re willing to experience some painful feelings and speak about
them; and (4) if you have the courage and be open and honest about your experience. That
courage will be your greatest ally.
I have come to recognize that the method requires these four things of a client. Of course, some
clients won’t be able to do all this at first. There will have to be a “pre-study” phase in which
other methods will have to be used. Such methods might be simply listening sympathetically
without talking much, just indicating that you understand what the client is going through. It may
take some time doing things like this to build the client’s trust and to gain the cooperation of the

client’s adaptive unconscious, enough time to bring the client to the stage where he or she can
enter mindfulness and allow reactions. I also tell clients about the rewards that are there for those
who practice self-study. Zen master Dogen said, "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to
study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand
things." Of course the work we do is only a small step on that journey. And though the method is
different, the attitude and direction are the same. Release from unnecessary suffering is release
from an identity which includes habits and ideas which are not only old and outworn, but
fundamentally flawed as descriptions of reality.
The Focus on Present Experience
Implicit Beliefs and Procedural Memory
A picture has emerged of a set of pervasive, adaptive, sophisticated mental processes that occur
largely out of view. Indeed, some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that the unconscious
mind does virtually all the work and that conscious will may be an illusion.122
Every creature with a brain has myriad predictions encoded in what it has learned123
All living organisms from the humble amoeba to the human are born with devices designed to
solve automatically, no proper reasoning required, the basic problems of life.124
The one thing we most want to help clients discover and change is the habitual ways they create
unnecessary suffering for themselves and others. The logic is this:
(1) Experience is organized by habits that function outside of consciousness.
(2) The most significant of these organizing habits are those that were learned early in life and
developed in reaction to compelling, formative experiences.125
(3) Such habits are stored in implicit memory and are not normally accessible to con-
sciousness.126
(4) They are automated procedures, triggered by perceptions of internal and external realities,
perceptions which themselves are influenced by organizing habits. (Given all this, it’s easy to
see how the whole system can regress so easily into unsupported virtual realities.)
(5) They are the functional equivalents of implicit beliefs 127
122
Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy Wilson, pg 5
123
John Holland, quoted in the book Complexity by Michael Waldrop, page 147
124
Damasio, A. 2003, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
125
The book to read is Sue Gerhardt’s book, Why Love Matters and, for the relevant research, read Schore,
A. (1994) Affect Regulation and the Self: The Neurobiology of Affective Development. Oxford Press, and
the Handbook of Attachment (1999), Eds. Cassidy, J. and Shaver, P.R., New York, The Guilford Press
126
Implicit memory [sometimes called, procedural memory, sometimes, emotional memory] involves parts
of the brain that do not require conscious processing during encoding or retrieval. When implicit memory
is retrieved, the neural net profiles that are reactivated involve circuits in the brain that are a fundamental
part of our everyday experience of life: behaviors, emotions, and images. These implicit elements form
part of the foundation for our subjective sense of ourselves: We act, feel, and imagine without recognition
of the influence of past experience on our present reality. —Daniel Siegel, The Developing Mind, pg. 29.
Also, to at least one great neuroscientist: “The brain is a virtual reality machine.” “Consider, that the
waking state is dreamlike, in exactly the same sense that dreams are wakelike.” —Rodolfo R. Llinás, i of
the vortex: From Neuron to Self .
127
“ Prediction is the ultimate and most pervasive of all brain functions” —Rodolfo R. Llinás, ibid.
“Fitness constrains regulation to be efficient, which implies preventing errors and minimizing costs. Both
needs are best accomplished by using prior information to predict demand and then adjusting all parameters

These implicit predictions and beliefs exert a profound influence over everyday life without any
simple, direct way to modify them. They influence all ongoing experience, whether it originates
internally or externally, by producing the habitual reactions that result. They shape all manner of
experience—perception, mood, thought, feeling and behavior. Thus, present experience is a
reliable, immediate expression of nonconscious habits and beliefs. For that reason, we focus on
present experiences and use them to bring what is normally unconscious into consciousness.
Indicators
A therapy session requires that the therapist be doing many things at once. Besides following the
conversation, getting and staying in loving presence, tracking the client’s present experience and
making contact statements, there’s searching for indicators. We all need to train ourselves to the point
where the adaptive unconscious will handle most of it. This need to multi-task is why it takes
deliberate practice for thousands of hours to become expert in anything.128,129 When the adaptive
unconscious handles things, it leaves you time to think. In this case, to think about what a new
indicator might mean and what experiment you can use to deal with it. Given that…
Working with indicators means: you are studying the client’s behavior for something interesting,
something that might be connected to a core belief. Some indicators, you’ll already know about,
from reading, practice, watching sessions and studying tapes. Others, you’ll discover as you go
along. You get a feel for what’s interesting that way. You get to know what deeper material might
be connected to the indicator.
This is how the process starts: conversation, loving presence, tracking and contact, getting a feel
for the client’s personality and searching for indicators. This first phase continues for awhile
(awhile being anywhere from a few minutes to several sessions). The process can’t proceed to the
next step, finding indicators and thinking little experiments, until the first phase has done two
things, (1) the client feel safe and has confidence in the therapist. And (2), you’ve gotten an idea
about an indicator and an experiment to do with it. While you’ve been establishing that sense of
safety and understanding for the client, you’ve been searching for an indicator. With a little
experience doing this, you’ll be able to find lots of good indicators. The more experience, the
easier it becomes. It’s mostly an intuitive process, sensing that there is a message in a piece of
behavior and learning to read those messages.
Early in the process, the therapist must focus attention on the client’s habitual posture, tone of
voice, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, speech patterns and such.130 Many of these
qualities are habitual nonverbal expressions of core material. They’re clues as to what sort of
situations they were created to deal with, what adaptations the person made, deliberately or
procedurally. I call them indicators.
As you may imagine, there are lots of possible indicators. Some of them can be completely
obvious as to what they say about the client. Some of them are, like language, learned through use
over time, In Bioenergetics, for example, indicators are often postural. A sunken chest and locked
knees for a Bioenergetic therapist would be indicators of “an oral pattern”.131 Given that pattern,
the therapist has both a diagnosis and a way to proceed with treatment. Almost all methods of
to meet it.” — Peter Sterling from his paper: Principles of allostasis: optimal design, predictive regulation,
pathophysiology and rational therapeutics.
128
Brooks, David, Genius: The Modern View. New York Times, May 1, 2009.
129
Gladwell, Malcolm (2008) Outliers: The Story of Success New York: Little Brown
130
A few examples would be: ending verbal statements with the inflection of a question or an habitually sad
looking face or tilt of the head.
131
One book precisely about this is: Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality by
Alexander Lowen.

psychotherapy use particular sets of indicators this way, often referring to them as “symptoms”.
We use them differently. We use them to get ideas for experiments.
As we interact and relate to others, we don’t normally focus on their little, seemingly insignificant
habits. In an ordinary interaction, conversation is more important than shrugged shoulders or the
angle of the head. We might not consciously think about such nonverbal behaviors. But often, at
some level, they effect us. Though we might ignore the slight discomfort we feel when someone
looks skeptical (head always turned to one side), odds are, even if we react to it, we probably will
not consciously notice or think about it. That level of the interaction is almost always handled by
the adaptive unconscious.
In Hakomi, we consciously search for such indicators (and the turning of the head is a common
one.) Through experimenting with it many times, I have come to expect that this indicator can
suggests that the client had important, formative experiences of not being manipulated through
false statements. Associated with that usually is a constant, underlying sense of doubt. The
emotions it can evoke are hurt and anger. The belief is, “People can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
So, I’ve got to remain vigilant about believing them.” Though their hurt is not being felt at the
moment, the avoidance of it is one of the things that reinforces the behavior. The whole pattern is
an adaptation which serves to keep the client skeptical about what people are telling her! The idea
is don’t get hurt again. Though it’s not conscious, this belief is controlling present behavior and
experience. Indicators are the expressions of process like this.
In Hakomi, we use indicators to create experiments that are designed to evoke reactions. This is a
vital piece of the method. Our clear intention is to study a client’s behavior not for symptoms of
disease, but for sources of experiments. We anticipate that the experiments we carry out will bring
the unconscious, adaptive processes driving that behavior into the client’s awareness. A therapist
using this approach is thought of as having an experimental attitude. We are evidence seekers,
evidence gathered on the spot, evidence that clients use to understand themselves. The basic idea
is this: the indicators suggest experiments; the experiments have outcomes (they evoke reactions);
the reactions are evidence (for us and for the client) of the client’s way of organizing his
experience and his interactions with the world and other people. Gathering evidence for this is
what our experiments are all about and that’s exactly why we do them.
For example, with a client whose habit is to hold her head a little bit off center and turned slightly
away, we might do this experiment: with the client in a mindful state, she slowly turns her head
back towards center. When consciously doing this movement and noticing her experience, most
clients with this indicator will experience a feeling of fear. This fear is about being emotionally
hurt and is associated with memories of that happening. The deliberate turning of the head
toward an upright, centered position is only one experiment that could be done.
Everyone has some indicators and with a large population of people, there are many possible in-
dicators. And, there is an equally large number of experiments that can be done. Finding indica-
tors and devising suitable experiments is one of the things that makes this work so interesting. It is
a combination of searching for clues like a detective and testing them like a scientist.
Working with Indicators
Indicators are embedded in the flow of nonverbal expression. The key is: they’re habitual. They
are repeated many times in a conversation. (In contrast, there are the microexpressions described by
Paul Ekman.132) It’s not just what kind of experience the client is having right now. It’s something
about what qualities define the client’s way of being and doing. It’s more general than those
temporary signs of present experience. It is about the client’s individuality.
132
A good place to look is: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-look-tells-all

The way a man walks, the way he talks, the timbre of his voice, the cadences of his speech, his little variations
in phrasing a thought — all have so much to do with individuality. The same thing is true of a man's playing
in jazz... his tone, the way his sound moves, his feeling for time. That's why jazz is consistently fascinating.
You could ask six guys to play an identical solo, but when you heard the results, you'd hear six different
solos.133
Someone with a lot of experience listening to music can tell musicians their styles. Ben Webster,
tenor sax player, for example, has a unique breathy style. You only have to her a few bars to
know it’s him. Does that breathiness say something about Webster’s personality? Could be. That’s
his indicator. There might even be an experiment that would evoke the memories and emotions
behind it. If we could do it. If he was still with us.
When you find an indicator to work with and have an experiment in mind, the next thing to do is
shift the client’s attention to the indicator and set up an experiment. To make the switch, you may
have to interrupt the client.134 You may be switching to something that the client isn’t aware of
and that could be disorienting. It helps if the client has experience with the method and
understands about doing experiments. I always make sure that clients do. When the client knows
that the goal is self-discovery and that the therapist is there to support that, then switching
attention to an indicator is not experienced as an interruption. Remember, don’t switch to an
indicator until you have an experiment in mind! Otherwise, the whole process just hangs there.
The keys to switching are timing, tone and topic. Timing is about finding an easy opening, a place
in the conversation where you have an opportunity to switch. Tone is about your sensitivity to the
possible disruption you might cause, using soft tone and gentle language. Topic is about finding
something that’s probably going to be interesting to the client. That usually depends on how
significant it really is and how surprising for the client. Again, practice makes this step easy and
useful.
There are many indicator-experiment combinations already established. There’s a list of the
indicators, but no list of the combinations. (That’s a job for another day.) It’s also possible to think
of several different experiments to do with the same indicator. With experience, you learn how to
choose among them. All along, you’ll also be getting a feel for creating experiments on the spot.
To shift attention to an indicator, you can say something like: ‘You know what I notice about
you?’ Or: ‘There is something I’m finding really interesting about you.’ Something like that.
Whatever the conversation is about, when it seems right, shift attention to the indicator.
Here’s an example: you notice that the client always keeps her head tilted to one side or the other.
You think it’s interesting and if you’ve had some experience with it, you know it’s a good
indicator to work with. It’s usually about doubt and mistrust, with some memories of being
betrayed and emotionally hurt. As an experiment, you decide you’ll ask the client to move her
head slowly into the vertical. So, at the right time, you say to her, ‘You know, I’ve noticed
something about you that might be interesting to experiment with. It’s that you always hold your
head tilted to one side or the other. Can we do an experiment with that?’ She says, ‘Yes.’ You ask
for mindfulness and a signal and you do the experiment.
With the woman I worked with recently, I noticed she was moving her hand, her left hand, with a
jabbing motion, as she talked about her father. I pointed that out and as an experiment we took
over holding her hand back. This technique, blocking an impulse, brings more awareness to it.
That’s how we accessed her anger. That was our experiment: holding her hand back. The result
was, she felt her anger and suddenly became very fearful, and she remembered being terrified of
her. With that in consciousness, we helped her calm down and realize, she was no longer in
133
The late Art Pepper, jazz saxophone player.
134
For different cultures, like the Japanese culture, you may have to go more slowly and take a few other
steps first, like acknowledging the theme of the client’s presentation, before switching to an indicator.

danger from him. He had passed away years before. He was still living in my client’s mind and
habits, still making her afraid of her own anger. So, the rule was: don’t allow anger. The belief
was: it will get you a terrible beating.
Before you shift the client’s attention to an indicator, your have to shift your own to the “realm”
of the indicators: the client’s present behaviors and nonverbal expressions. There are indicators
that appear in the client’s story, like themes, attitudes, reports of intense experiences. But these are
very likely to be well known to the client and very likely not the best routes to unconscious core
material. Habits, which lie outside of conscious awareness and which are not controlled by
conscious intention, are much more likely to reflect core material.
Therefore, some of our attention is on the story. We need to follow what the client is saying. To
not do so to would have a disastrous effect on the relationship. You want to note highly charged
words or phrases, and emotionally significant beliefs and memories. So, attention to the story is
necessary and useful at times. It’s also something you can leave to your adaptive unconscious. It
can be trained to give you a “poke” when something like that comes up in the conversation. We
do this all the time. It’s natural. But more useful and absolutely necessary, are attention to the
nonverbal aspects and microexpressions of the client. Microexpressions, those facial expressions
and gestures that take place very quickly, some in less than half a second, can be indicators of at
least of two things: one, they can be signs of the client’s present experience.135 As such, they are
very useful for making contact statements. The second thing they can express is a conscious or
unconscious nonverbal “comment” on what’s being said. Again, they’re good for making contact
statements, but they can also be clues to deeper material and useful in experiments.
It’s especially important to attend to those nonverbal behaviors that seem to be habitual and a
little unusual. These almost always have links to unconscious material. Because they’re habits,
they operate outside of awareness. Since they do, the client won’t bring attention to them. The
therapist has to do that, before an experiment in mindfulness can be done with them. That’s why
we have to shift the client’s attention. But, before we can do that, we must have seen or heard it
ourselves. So, our own attention can’t just be on the story. We’ve got to pay attention to the
nonverbal behavior of the storyteller.
This kind of attention is exactly the kind one needs to create harmonious relationships. It’s being
more concerned with the person, more attentive to the present, lived experience of another being.
It is the foundation of limbic resonance and loving presence. It is concrete, timely, rich with
feeling and direct understanding, and it is a primary source of compassion, humor and delight.
It is worth mentioning the prodigious work of Paul Ekman on microexpressions. For us, these
would be signs of present experience and behaviors, both conscious and unconscious. When these
microexpressions are habitual, occurring repeatedly in given situations, we would consider them
indicators.
135
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression

Examples of Signs and Indicators
Signs of Present Experience Possible Meaning(s)
Eyes closed or defocused integrating, needs time, needs you to be silent

Blushing shame, embarrassment, feeling exposed, excited,
angry
Sucking Air sudden realization
Face presented Forward paying attention, wants to hear,
Knitted Brows concentration
Tilting Head curiosity
Tilting Head w/ Raised Lip disagreement
Raised Lip, One Side contempt
Head Turned to Side skepticism, disbelief
Slight Reddening of Nostrils beginning of feeling sad
Eyes Become Damp beginning of feeling sad
A Few Common Indicators Possible Meaning(s)
Head nodding - Eyes checking Do you get it? Reaching for understanding
Head turned to one side or tilted Doubt, disbelief, mistrust
Chin thrust forward challenge/ stubbornness/
Chin held high unaffected, “above it all”, superior
Eyes always searching vigilance, fear, trauma
Eyes focused on therapist not sure of having people’s attention and/or
understanding
Eyes usually closed not wanting to be interrupted
Pace of speech fast not sure attention will last
Many Self-Interruptions fear of making mistakes
Voice very soft low energy, blocked emotions
Facial Expression (when relaxed) general mood, usual emotion or basic attitude
Following
“The best leader follows.” I first read that in the Tao Te Ching some 43 years ago. I’m still learning
what it means. Here are my thoughts on it this morning, May 23, 2007:
The keys to following are a present-centered awareness and an openness to changing direction
when the moment calls for it. These are the qualities I look for in students’ work. When these
qualities function in a fully integrated way, they create a sense of spaciousness and grace for
everyone involved. Those who learn to do this, find their work not only successful, but effortless
and pleasurable. Let’s look deeper!
It’s effortless because the skills involved have been learned and incorporated. They are habits
now, and are controlled not by conscious intent, but as adaptations to recognizable situations.
Simple automatic actions and simple guiding rules for those actions are the business of the

adaptive unconscious.136 No matter how you first learned them—through experiences or more
formally—when they work, it’s because you have made these qualities truly your own.
In keeping with a bad habit of mine, I’d like to introduce a couple of quotes, pithy bits of wisdom,
much like the simple rules of adaptation. Please take another look at the Otto Scharmer quote on
the cover of this handbook! 137
I love that quote so much, I use it over and over again. It’s the best description of following I’ve
ever found. It lays it out in detail. Lao Tzu—May his light ever shine—leaves it up to the reader to
ponder his meaning, so we can make one discovery after another. Sometimes, as in my case, over
more than half a lifetime.
Following involves recognizing that often, certain spontaneous behaviors that occur during the
course of a session, behaviors like the many nonconscious, unintentional gestures and emotional
expressions that can occur, are signs of where the adaptive unconscious wants to go. Or as
Scharmer calls it, what is coming.
That’s the kind of awareness that’s needed, an awareness that is able to catch these sometimes
fleeting actions on the part of the client. It is these that we must be ready to follow, sometimes
naming them and doing an experiment with them. I’ll have some examples for you in a bit. Once
you become aware of something to follow, you may have to change direction. Like a surfer or a
really good race car driver, as Scharmer puts it, you need a present-centered awareness that can deal
with the a moving, changing pattern of interaction.
Following is essential because it leads to and supports the natural unfolding of the healing process.
It is a recognition that healing is an internally guided process, that unconscious design is at work.
It recognizes that our job is to contain and nurture that process, to help it find its way home, not
by leading it, but like a man riding a horse in the dark, letting it lead us. By following.
Okay, here’s an example:
I was leading a workshop in Boulder a couple of months ago. (Sometimes you also have to lead.)
After an exercise, as we were debriefing, a woman in the circle started crying softly. I stopped the
discussion and turned my attention to her. I made contact, asked her a question or two, and
began a working with her. I listened to her and soon came up with a probe. I delivered it and
here’s what happened. She said her reaction to the probe was an impulse to raise her arms
straight up above her head. I recognized that as something important. It showed the signs of the
adaptive unconscious at work. It was spontaneous. It surprised her and it was something she
didn’t understand. It was the kind of thing that should be followed. Without asking anything
about it, I asked a few people to go over to her and to lift her up. I was thinking it was the impulse
of a child who wanted to be picked up. No discussion. No questions, except for permission.
They went over a lifter her into their arms. In a moment, she was sobbing intensely. I instructed
the people holding her to keep holding her but to get down with her on the rug and just wait,
silently there with her. They did that in silence for a while, maybe four or five minutes. While this
was going on, the entire group and I remained silent. I then asked the people holding her to
whisper things like “shhh” and “it’s okay”. In another minute or two, she suddenly told us that she
was an orphan, raised in foster homes and that, “they never picked me up”. She cried some more then.
After another five minutes or so, she had a powerful insight. She said aloud, “It wasn’t my fault! It
wasn’t my fault!” And that was pretty much it.
136
Effortlessness is one of five defining features of actions performed by the adaptive unconscious. The
others are: such actions are nonconscious, fast, unintentional, and uncontrollable. You can read about this
in Wilson, Timothy D. (2004). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge,
MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press. pg. 53.
137
quoting the economist, Brian Arthur, in the book, Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in
People, Organizations, and Society by P. Senge, Scharmer, J. Jaworski, and B. S. Flowers

I should add that the silences were part of the following and just as important. It was in those
silences, while she was being led by her emotions to memories and insight—while the people
around her held and comforted her—that the healing was happening. We followed her and she
followed her own healing process. And things took their natural course.
Habits as Causes of Failure
“ .... the famous first sentence of Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina: ‘Happy
families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ By that sentence,
Tolstoy meant that, in order to be happy, a marriage must succeed in many
different respects: sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline,
religion, in-laws, and other vital issues. Failure in any one of those essential respects
can doom a marriage even if it has all the other ingredients for happiness.”
“This principle can be extended to understanding much else about life besides
marriage. We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most
important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible
causes of failure.”
—Jared Diamond138
This principle can certainly be applied to doing psychotherapy. A general version of the principle
would be this: “Any complex system has many ways it can fail.” The method is certainly a complex
system. For it to succeed, the practitioner must have an array of useful habits and must avoid
some important ones that tend to disrupt the process. There are three habits, based on very
common attitudes, that inevitable cause the method to fail like a bad marriage.
What might be a good habit in one situation can easily be a bad one in a very different situation.
For the refined method, there are three all too common habits that have seriously damaging
effects on the process. These are: (1) having to be in control; (2) focusing on figuring everything
out; and (3) getting stuck in conversations. Although these three are related, I’ll discuss them one
at a time. I’ll discuss their sources in western culture and the effects they have on the process.
Habit One: Having to Be in Control
Mastery of the world is achieved by letting things take their natural course.
—Tao Te Ching139
Newton’s laws state that an object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an external force.
He also stated that an object in motion continues in motion, unless acted upon by an external
force. In other words, things don’t move on their own. An external force is always necessary.
That’s a good definition of a “thing”. It’s a serious mistake to think that living things operate the
same way. Newton’s laws work really well for objects possessing only mass (if there are such
things140), but humans and other living things are not simply mass; they’re also, to varying
degrees, self-determined, aware and intelligent. They move on their own. Newton had a powerful
influence on the images of reality and the philosophy of the western world. In that image, reality
is made up of atoms —solid, separate, isolated, indivisible objects. Billiard balls that only move
when acted upon by an external force. And who or what is that force? Well, when practitioners assume
138
Diamond, Jared (1997) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton &
Company, ISBN 0-393-03891-2 (pg. 157).
139
Chapter 48, Patrick M. Byrn translation. Found at: http://wayist.org/ttc%20compared/byrn.htm#top
140
For a good review of the consciousness of everything, including non-living matter, see Ervin Laszlo’s
Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything. 2004. Inner Traditions. Rochester, VT

it’s themselves, the process goes astray. Newton also postulated that, for every action, there’s an
equal and opposite reaction. Use force, even if it’s subtle, you’re likely to get resistance. That’s
what makes the attitude of having to be in control a sure deal breaker. It might be a good idea to
keep an eye out for defining other people’s behaviors as resistance, rather than, as I prefer to see
it, management.
Contrast this with the Zen Buddhist saying, Spring comes and the grass grows by itself or the quote from
the Tao Te Ching above. There is a natural way that needs no interference from another person.
The influence of Newtonian model on the practice of medicine was for the most part a good
thing. It’s just not a good model for psychotherapy, especially the assisted self study version that is
Hakomi. The application of a medical model to that work leads to situations where “patients” tells
their stories, describe their symptoms, are questioned, get diagnosed and are then “treated”. In
this model, the patient’s participation is small and amounts to little more than following orders.
Except of course for the very organic healing that occurs.
In most forms of psychotherapy, there is more or less of this underlying philosophy. The client
needs to be moved and the moving force is the therapist. Consider the concepts of resistance and
defenses. What’s left out of this philosophy is the whole notion of people as self-organizing and
self-healing. What stands in contrast to the external force concept is the internal force of the
client’s own healing impulses and powers. In the newer organic models and in , the therapist
provides support for those inner processes. The practitioner in the self discovery model is
someone who provides support for the organic healing processes of the client, rather than being a
force controlling the actions of an object. A good book to read is: The Heart and Soul of Change:
What Works in Therapy.141
Negative Effects of Habit One:
When the therapist has the belief, conscious or implicit, that he or she has to control the process,
this can easily result in overt or covert resistance or contrarily, in submission and passivity on the
part of the client. Whichever happens, from that point on the client’s natural healing processes are
not guiding the process. The result is a drawn out process that wastes time and energy.
Alternatives:
A therapist’s belief in the client’s power to heal through an inner directed healing process, and the
therapist’s knowledge of how to set the stage for that process to unfold will lead to much better
results. (Please see the Brian Arthur quote on the cover of this document.) There is a dance that
takes place between the whole practitioner and the whole client, based to a large degree on the
beliefs and emotional underpinnings of each person’s motivations. As Arthur says, it depends on
where you’re coming from. “Operating from this larger intention brings into play forces one
could never tap from just trying to impose our will on a situation.”142 It’s a dance of mutuality.
Control flows both ways. Acceptance is present in each dancer. This kind of therapy is not run by
the emotional operating system for dominance. It’s run by the ones for social bonding and care.143
That’s when it works best. This approach is not for everyone. It’s only for people with enough
emotional maturity and self awareness to operate within such a framework.
The key to working without having to be in control is recognizing what will initiate and support a
person’s healing, supplying just that, and then letting things take their natural course. That means
anticipating that a natural healing process will emerge and knowing how to help it emerge. It
means observing, following and supporting that kind of process and operating from this larger
intention. To let things take their natural course, one must come from loving presence, loving,
attentive, patient, observant and present for the other. And, when you’re really on, it means being
141
1999Mark A. Hubble, Barry L. Duncan, Scott D. Miller Eds. American Psychological Association
(APA)
142
Ibid, page 91 See also: Science and the Akashic Field and William Tiller’s Adventures in Real Magic.
143
See Jaak Panksepp’s book, Affective Neuroscience.

at one with the situation. It means being with another while holding the clear, durable intention
to dance a healing dance.
Habit Two: Focusing on Figuring Everything Out
Meditatio
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs,

I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man,
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
—Ezra Pound
Well, I’m more than a little puzzled myself. I mean about the idea that humans are, or even could
be, rational animals. Damasio wrote a whole book about how useless reason is without emotions
to give values to its application.144
There are many good reasons for peace in the world, but reason won’t suffice to bring it. It will
take feeling and motivated effort, and enough love for ourselves and for each other to be kind and
caring towards all humanity. That’s a tall order, I admit, but it’s also not something we can afford
to fail at. So it’s worth a serious look at the possible causes of failure.
Negative Effects of Habit Two:
Anyway, after rambling on a while, here’s the point: when we start with the implicit belief that the
client’s behavior is a puzzle to unravel. When we act like we have to figure it these things out,
before we do anything, we generally ask questions and follow up questions and, in our minds, we
search for the sources of the client’s suffering in the answers, explanations and stories the client
responds with. When our approach is mostly thinking like this, the whole process gets skewed into
the abstract. The whole idea that thinking is our primary tool and our primary job is wrong and
detrimental to the process.
Alternatives:
This approach is sometimes called, “leading with your head”. For the kind of intimate and subtle
connection that encourages another’s healing, more than thinking is required. Our job is to
provide two things: (1) a context that stimulates and supports the client’s natural healing processes
and (2) a way to help initiate that process. For the first, loving presence, careful observation and a
lot of experience with nonverbal indicators are what’s needed. The focus of attention needs to be
constant, careful observation. The habit of figuring things out takes too much consciousness away
from that. For the second thing, stimulating a healing process, setting up and doing little
experiments in mindfulness is just the thing. Doing good experiments is a very effective way to
bring feelings, beliefs and memories out of the unconscious, so that healing old hurts can begin.
When the client realizes how and why he habitually organizes his experience the way he does,
change becomes possible.
Habit Three: Getting Stuck in Conversations

This habit is related to the other two. They’re both part of a larger pattern, which Francisco
Varela called, the abstract attitude. I believe he meant the general bias towards thinking rather than
sensing and feeling and not focusing on present experience.
144
Damasio, Antonio R. (1995) Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Harper
Perennial ISBN-10: 0380726475, ISBN-13: 978-0380726479

We have moved out of our long history of living in small groups, knowing everyone and
communicating face-to-face. We now communicate, to a large extent by phone and even more
perhaps, by email, and very often with people we’ve never met or don’t know very well. Com-
munication in these cases is generally limited to words. This limitation helps create our habit of
nearly complete reliance on language as a means for gathering information about people. We’re
not the only social species. Others, like wolves, ants, bees and musk oxen, communicate
successfully without words. It is our habit of relying on questions and answers and talking about
what is not present that is, in the context of assisting in anther’s self discovery, a bad habit.
Negative Effects of Habit Three:
The main negative effect engaging in a lot of conversation with our clients — especially
conversations where the therapist asks a lot of questions and the client mostly just answer them —
has the effect of preventing rather than promoting the client’s natural healing process. It may
even keep it from happening at all. Consider this example: the client starts to feel sad and says so.
To which the therapist replies, “What are you sad about?” Or even, “Why do you feel that way?”
Whereupon, the client starts to think about reasons or some kind of explanation for his sadness
and loses contact with it. This kind of thing happens all the time. I see this in ordinary
conversations people have. I see it in the kind of psychotherapy portrayed in movies and on
television. I sometimes see it when I supervise Hakomi students and practitioners who haven’t
trained with me personally. The sadness the client feels is the beginning of a healing process. The
proper response to it can lead to a the emotion deepening into memories, release and the
possibility of resolution and integration. Ordinary conversation interrupts an emotional healing
process.
When the therapist asks one question after another, the client become passive, answering each
question and then waiting for the next one. This approach rarely leads to healing. Mostly it ends
up as a conversation and not much else. Explanations and conversation rarely initiate a healing
process and are not particularly designed to do so, as assisting in self discovery is.
Alternatives:
All of these habits are the outcomes of a culture that promotes ego, power and control. The
alternative is the method, the therapist’s state of mind and attentional skills, and all the techniques
that make up the method. Here then are some last words of wisdom, from a man with knowledge
of his body, star acting talent and a world class sense of humor:
Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you're sitting on the couch and you get up and
make a triple-decker sandwich. It's on the other side of that, when you don't make the sandwich. It's
about sacrifice... It's about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That's what I
believe, anyway. I'm always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel.
—Jim Carrey145
Here is an outline that should be helpful in overcoming these habits:
When and How to Intervene To Move the Process Forward

1. When to Move It Forward
a. when the interaction becomes conversational
b. when the client is continuously talking about anything but his or her present experience.
2. How to Move It Forward
a. contact something in the present:
i. client’s experience
145
from a Michael Fleming interview in the March 2004 issue of Playboy magazine

ii. client’s behavior
b. talk about noticing an indicator
c. suggest an experiment
d. interrupt the client’s:
i. storytelling
ii. explaining
iii. questioning
iv. abstract discussions
v. conversations
e. talk about your own experience
f. do some housekeeping
3. When Not to Break a Silence
a. Do not interrupt when the client is processing internally. The signs are:
i. eyes closed, and…
ii. facial and head movements, like nodding
iii. client is deep in concentration, or
iv. in an emotional state
b. when client is describing his or her present experience.
Evoking Emotional Reactions146
The procedure that is used is this:
(1) find an indicator;
(2) imagine and decide what experiment to use;
(3) in a gentle way and at a suitable time, shift the client’s attention to the indicator and ask if an
experiment would be okay to do; if that idea is accepted, set up the experiment by asking for
mindfulness and a signal from the client when he or she is ready;
(5) when the signal is given, do the experiment and of course,
(6) watch for and, if necessary, ask the client about the outcome. (I often have to remind new
students that: It’s an experiment. Get the data!
Several general types of outcomes are possible:
(1) the experiment could have no effect whatsoever. In that case, either the indicator wasn’t
significant, there was something wrong with the way the experiment was conducted, or in
some sense, the client wasn’t ready; or
(2) the experiment evokes an image or a memory or an idea, but without an accompanying
emotional reaction; or
(3) it evokes an emotional reaction. For each case, the process unfolds differently. This
procedure is how we assist clients to study themselves. The experiments we do are meant to
evoke reactions that will lead to discoveries. The most important discoveries are those that
tell a client about herself—who she has become; that much of her suffering is unnecessary;
how her old habits and hidden beliefs are preventing positive emotions and nourishing
relationships; that these habits and beliefs that shape her everyday experiences began in
childhood; and that there is a path that leads out of that past into an easier, more fulfilling
present. With good experiments and the right follow through, all that becomes possible.
A frequently used experiment is one in which the therapist offers a simple statement. The
statement is designed to offer a nourishing idea that will be automatically rejected by the client.
146
I like to think of it as “triggering people,” something like pushing them off the high diving board. A
detailed description of doing little experiments is given below in the section entitled Experiments.

For example, with the indicator mentioned above, the head turned slightly away, the therapist
might offer a statement like: “You can trust me.” Or, “I won’t betray you.” In experiments like
that, the first reaction might be a thought like, “I don’t believe it!” Often, it will be followed by a
feeling of sadness and tears will come.
Experiments like this, reveal the connections between beliefs, memories and habitual behaviors.
When clients experience such connections, accessing the unconscious material becomes possible.
Mindful observation of triggers and reactions accesses memories of formative events, the
experiences they created, and the habits that still manage those experiences.
Papers & Appendices

The Hakomi Way
by Donna Martin147
The Hakomi Method of psychotherapy has been recently described by its creator, Ron Kurtz, as
a method of assisted self-study.
What Hakomi is interested in studying is the organization of experience.
To do this, Hakomi uses mindfulness – a kind of quiet, non-interfering attention to present moment
experience – and little experiments to evoke experiences to study. The attention in Hakomi is on
present experience.
The Hakomi practitioner is trained to pay attention to two things about present experience: first,
what it is (i.e. what is happening now); and second, how it is being organized. We call this way of
paying attention “tracking”. First, we are tracking signs of the client’s present experience.
Secondly, we are tracking for indicators of how the client is organizing present experience.
Experience is organized by habits. Some habits create experiences of suffering, suffering which is,
in effect, unnecessary. This is the kind of experience that we can actually help the client with. We
can also help with the kind of suffering that is normal, like grief for the loss of a loved one. If the
client’s present experience is painful because of difficult life events happening in present time, we
can offer compassion and comfort. We also offer comfort when the client is experiencing
emotional pain related to some past experience that has been brought to consciousness by the
therapeutic work. But normally, we are mostly interested in helping the client become awake in
the present moment and aware of the possibility that some kind of nourishing experience,
formally unavailable, is available right now.
So, in Hakomi, we are not working on the person’s history. We are, after all, only able to guess at
someone’s history. Even someone’s memory is not a reliable source of information about their
history. Remembering, however, is a present time experience and, as such, it can reveal how
someone organizes experience. It is this organization of experience that we want to address as this
is what causes unnecessary suffering in present time.
The Hakomi Way is grounded in spiritual understanding from Taoism and Buddhism. Taoism
teaches us that what happens is what happens. There is no should or should not about what
happens… or what has happened. We rest into things as they are and as they are unfolding.
Buddhism teaches us about wisdom and compassion. As in Buddhism, we understand that the
only reality is the present. The past is a dream. The future is a dream. Only the present moment
is real. This is wisdom. However, many of us continue to experience the present as if in a dream.
147
Donna Martin, a long-time Hakomi Trainer, is one of my very closest colleagues. She can be contacted
at www.hakomi.ca

We are not fully awake to life as it is. This ignorance and delusion also causes unnecessary
suffering.
Experience is organized by habits and ideas. When the ideas that organize our experience are
operating outside of consciousness, they are called implicit beliefs. When our actions are
organized by behaviors that are on automatic, outside of conscious awareness, they are called
reactions.
In Hakomi we want to assist clients to study present experience for clues about their implicit
beliefs and the reactions that influence how they organize life experience. We want to help clients
discover nourishing experiences that they are not having in present time because of how they are
organizing their experience.
There is some misunderstanding about what is meant by the “missing experience” in Hakomi. Let
me try to clarify.
Since Hakomi is a method that focuses on present experience, even what we mean by the missing
experience is something happening (or not happening) in present time. This might be related to
childhood experiences, but those are outside our sphere of influence (unless we are working with
an actual child). The only place where we can realistically intervene is in present time.
When the adult client seems to be recalling a childhood experience, or accessing what we might
call a child “part”, (as Richard Schwartz’ Internal Family Systems, IFS, refers to parts), we are
still focusing on present experience. What is the person experiencing now as they are
remembering? How does the person seem to be organizing his or her experience based on
behaviors or ideas that are outside of conscious awareness? And what positive or nourishing
experience is missing for the person, right now, because of how she or he is organizing
experience?
Memory is one source of information about how someone is organizing experience. Nonverbal
behavior is perhaps a more accurate source. Memory is a very unreliable source of accurate
information about the past, but it can be a source of information about beliefs, especially when we
pay attention to the person’s behavior for indicators of those habits and beliefs connected to the
narrative elicited by the memory.
Hakomi was originally referred to as “body-centered” psychotherapy because the information
about someone’s present experience and how someone is organizing experience is more available
from nonverbal expression than from what the person can or does say in words. So we are
tracking nonverbal signs of present experience and indicators of how experience is organized.
In Hakomi, we contact present experience to let the person know that we are following, as well as
to direct attention to present experience. And we experiment with indicators to bring habits and
beliefs that are organizing experience into consciousness.
In Hakomi, we often talk about the therapist following. What we are following constantly are the
signs of the client’s present moment experience. We are accompanying the client on a journey.
Sometimes we follow the client and sometimes we lead (by invitation). But we are constantly
following signs of his or her present experience and where it is going.
The Hakomi Way has four distinguishing characteristics as a therapy method. Two have been
with the method from the beginning; two have evolved more recently. From the beginning, there
was a focus on present experience and the use of little experiments in mindfulness for the purpose
of self-discovery.
What has evolved since is the movement toward a nourishing missing experience. This evolution
has been two-fold: first, there is now more understanding of the missing experience as a present
experience. Though the missing experience may be related to the person’s actual and reported
history, those memories need not be accurate to be useful. As sources of information, reported
memories, along with nonverbal behavior, they can reveal a great deal about how someone

organizes experience and how this way of organizing limits them or causes suffering. We are
looking for indicators of what kind of nourishing experience the person needs now and is ready
for, one that is missing only because the person’s own habits and beliefs make them so.
Secondly, we have more understanding now of how important experience is in shaping the brain,
and how important the new nourishing experience is in changing how the mind perceives and
responds to life. So we want to spend more time on creating the nourishing experience and less
time on the old painful experience. Painful emotions are evoked only long enough to give us the
information about what kind of nourishing experience is needed. The focus of attention and time
in the therapy session is now on providing the nourishing experience needed and of making sure it
is taken in.
One way of doing this, throughout the whole therapy session, relates to the final key ingredient of
Hakomi as it has evolved. There has always been an awareness of the importance of what we call
the healing relationship. In the past ten years, we have realized that the key to the healing
relationship is the state of mind of the therapist. We are calling the particular state of mind that
creates the best possibility of a healing relationship loving presence. This is now seen as the key to the
whole method.
Previously, in psychotherapy generally, the therapist was supposed to be in a neutral state…
somewhat emotionally detached from the client. Now the research shows that the successful
therapist needs to be loving… emotionally connected with the client, full of compassion (without
sympathy) and skillfully responsive to the client in a way that is felt as caring.
In Hakomi, we call this way of being “loving presence”. It means, first and foremost, that we see
the client as a source of inspiration and nourishment. We are receiving the client as a gift. This
receptive and appreciative state is felt by the client as a reminder of their own personal strength
and wholeness.
As Hakomi therapists, we see ourselves, not as professional experts who will heal the client, but as
a kind of skilful spiritual friend who will accompany the client on a healing journey. The quality of
relationship that this state of mind creates is tangible to the client and to observers. It is the
evolved expression of the Hakomi principles of unity, organicity, and non-violence. The method
looks less mechanical, more human. The therapist is relating to the client as a person with another
person. This is the key to most “missing experiences” for most people… this way of being related
to and being aware of how it feels. (* see the Power of Loving Presence in Therapy)
So the four characteristics of the Hakomi way are:
1. the practice of loving presence and all that entails…

2. a constant focus on present experience (both the what and the how, using nonverbal
expression, emotion, memory, etc as sources of information about present experience and
indicators of habits)
3. the use of little experiments in mindfulness for assisted self-study
4. and a movement as soon as possible in the direction of the nourishing missing experience.

HAKOMI SIMPLIFIED
A New View of Ron Kurtz's
Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy
by Randall Keller148
Preface
It is the ability to keep finding solutions that is important; any one solution is temporary. There are no
permanently right answers. The capacity to keep changing, to find what works now, is what keeps any
organism alive.
— Margaret Wheatley, A Simpler Way
The business schools reward difficult complex behaviour more than simple behaviour, but simple
behaviour is more effective.
— Warren Buffett
Since its inception in 1980, Hakomi has always been relatively simple as psychotherapies go: its
theoretical teachings are quite modest; it makes do with only a few simple maps of the
psychological territory; it offers just a handful of techniques. When Ron Kurtz first presented
Hakomi to the world in a formal way, he did so in a textbook just 200 pages in length, which he
has found little need to expand on or modify since its publication some 15 years ago. Training in
the Hakomi method has typically been accomplished in some 300-400 classroom hours (with, of
course, many additional hours of practice required for mastery). By almost any measure, Hakomi
has, from its beginning, been about as simplified as a tool for human transformation can be. And
that simplicity—its uncluttered vision of the human change process—has been part of Hakomi's
wide appeal.
Hakomi was one of the earliest of the body-centered psychotherapies, recognizing in the client's
embodied expression - in her gestures, posture, facial expressions, habits, tone of voice, and
physical structure - an invaluable source of "real-time" information about the largely unconscious
beliefs and assumptions that shape her outlook on life. Hakomi was one of the first
psychotherapies to make use of mindfulness within a therapeutic setting, as a technique for
allowing the client to study her own experience in a careful, non-reactive way. Hakomi was
perhaps unique at the time in basing its entire structure and method on spiritual principles,
including non-violence, interconnectedness, and organicity. And Hakomi introduced into
psychotherapy the whole idea of the "experimental attitude", whereby therapist and client
together conduct “little experiments” with the goal of having the client experience her own
limiting belief structures directly, in her own body.
It isn't my intention to trace the evolution of Hakomi over the last 25 years, or even to contrast
(except occasionally) "classic" Hakomi with the newer Hakomi Simplified. My goal is simply to
describe Hakomi as Ron Kurtz himself is currently articulating it, teaching it, and practicing it.
He has described certain aspects of it himself in a series of short pieces which are collected in a
document named "Readings".
My purpose in this paper isn't to explain how to do Hakomi therapy; that's what the trainings are
for. What I want to explore, from my own perspective of course, is the understanding of the
“human change process” which the Hakomi method and practices imply. I want to examine the
rationale for an endeavor that we all understand is a not altogether rational.
148
Randall Keller studied with me for several years. — RK

Hakomi Simplified: An Overview
As Ron presents it, Hakomi Simplified consists of six major tasks, that is, six activities that the
therapist must perform (or be continually performing) during the course of a therapy session.
These activities are:
1. Creating a positive emotional context through loving presence and contact.
A positive emotional context is one in which the client feels welcome and safe and understood.
This is largely created by the therapist being in a state of "loving presence" and by "contacting"
the client. (Note: we will define all of the terms used in this summary much more precisely as we
go on).
2. Observing, hypothesizing, and noticing indicators.
While resting in our attitude of loving presence and maintaining contact, we must also be
gathering information about the client's emotional state, her beliefs, and her strategies. We do this
in large part by observing her nonverbal behavior. As we listen to the client's story and make our
observations of her nonverbal behavior, we start getting ideas about what one of her “core issues”
may be, and we look for an "indicator" that might serve as the basis for an experiment. We
imagine the experiment we might want to try.
3. Shifting the client's attention to the indicator.
We contact the client as gracefully as possible, though perhaps interrupting her story, and reorient
her attention to the indicator.
4. Establishing mindfulness and doing the experiment.
We outline for the client the experiment we have in mind, and possibly the reasons why we want
to try it. If she is interested in the experiment and willing to try it, we assist her into a state of
mindfulness, and do the experiment.
5. Working with the outcome of the experiment.
The "outcome" of the experiment is the simply client's response: the emotions, reactions,
thoughts, memories, etc. We "work" with the outcome usually by responding in ways that either
help to deepen the experience, or that elicit the meaning of the experience. [We may simply provide
physical contact, like a hand on the client's arm, and wait silently while the client works internally to integrate the
experience. -RK ] At some point, we may help the client to revise an inaccurate, over-generalized
assumption about life, replacing it with an understanding that is more realistic and more nuanced.
6. Offering nourishment to satisfy the "missing experience".
With the client entertaining a new, more hopeful understanding of her situation, it becomes
possible to offer the nourishing experience that's been missing until now, and so we do. We help
the client savor and integrate this nourishment.
An example
Let's follow a simple example through the same steps:
1. Creating a positive emotional context through loving presence and contact.
Therapist: (warmly), "Feeling a little shy, huh."
2. Observing, hypothesizing, and noticing indicators.
The therapist, noting how quiet and hesitant the client is in speaking, imagines she finds it difficult
to make herself heard, or perhaps, to ask for what she wants. He considers the experiment of
offering an appropriate verbal probe.
3. Shifting the client's attention to the indicator.

When she pauses in her story, the therapist shares his observation about her quiet and cautious
way of speaking, and wonders if she would be interested in exploring what that might mean.
4. Establishing mindfulness and doing the experiment.
The therapist explains the concepts of a verbal probe and of mindfulness (if needed). Then,
making a guess (based on his previous observations) as to why the client speaks in the style she
does, he offers the probe: "It's OK to let others know how you feel."
5. Working with the outcome of the experiment.
Many psychologically rich events may occur for our hypothetical client at this point. For
simplicity, let's assume that, in response to the probe, she feels her body tighten and also notices
that her mind becomes vigilant, as though in anticipation of some unclear threat. This would
suggest that she has a belief that, in fact, it can be quite dangerous to let others know how she feels.
The therapist would help her deepen and understand this response and possibly a series of ever-
deeper responses. [Or possibly the therapist would just remain quiet while the client gains understanding by
processing her reaction internally. -RK] At some point, with the therapist's coaching, the client is able to
entertain the possibility that, while it may be dangerous to let some people know how she truly
feels, there are other people who would be quite happy to know how she felt about things.
6. Offering nourishment to satisfy the "missing experience".
The therapist points out that he, for one, is very pleased that she has managed to contact and
express her feelings so clearly. He invites her to think of someone else in her life who might be
happy to know how she is truly feeling, and to imagine this person's positive response. This
nourishment - the experience of others appreciating hearing how she feels - begins to fill in, to
satisfy, the missing experience. The therapist also notices, and "contacts", the fact that her body
seems both more relaxed and more energized right now than earlier, that her voice is stronger. He
encourages her to let herself appreciate the shift that has taken place. End of session.
So that's the big picture: We make our clients feel welcome and safe; we pay attention to what
they're actually doing at least as much as to what they're saying; we help them notice, and then
experience, something about themselves that they perhaps weren't aware of; we help them make sense
of that experiential discovery; and then we offer them the nourishing experience they've probably
been seeking for a long time. How hard can that be?
Three Useful Concepts
Before I undertake a much more detailed examination of the Hakomi Simplified process, I want
to spell out three concepts that I believe are helpful in comprehending its overall therapeutic
framework. These concepts are: virtual reality; limbic resonance; and the missing experience.
Virtual Reality
Ron sometimes invokes this concept to try and elucidate the big picture of our situation as human
beings. I want to elaborate on this metaphor or perspective.
The term itself, of course, comes from the field of computer simulation, and is a technique
whereby complex computer programs (or “algorithms”) generate a simulated (or “virtual”)
physical reality, which a person can then interact with in various ways. The word virtual means
"being something in effect, even if not in fact." A group of people sharing a common interest (in,
say, ruby-throated hummingbirds), who are connected only through the Internet, is a "virtual
community;" they are located near one another electronically rather than, as would be traditional,
geographically. A boy whose friend's dad took more interest in him than his own father died might
say later of the friends' dad: he virtually raised me; he was my father in effect, if not in fact.
Virtualities are real and effective, even if not tangible or visible.

The Star Trek holodeck is the best known science fiction rendition of a virtual reality device; one's
experience while in the holodeck (whether of peaceful, ancient forests or of clamoring, armed foes)
is indistinguishable from the real thing - until you give the command: Computer, End Simulation.
Then you find yourself in the completely empty room which has no features or qualities of its
own. This is that room's (or that space's) "true nature", when no virtual reality is being projected
into it.
The universe also has a "true nature." Our mystics and spiritual traditions generally describe this
underlying reality in pretty favorable terms: blissful; loving; compassionate; peaceful; spacious;
bountiful; inherently self-knowing; infinite in all directions. Sounds like a pretty good place to live,
doesn't it? But, of course, most of us don't experience this blissful dimension of reality directly.
And why not? Because we've all got our own virtual reality simulations running almost all the
time. And these simulations, these personal (and personally constructed) models of reality,
effectively hide or obscure the true nature of the underlying reality in which we live, move, and
have our being. We experience the features and qualities of our "programs" rather than the true
nature of the space upon which (into which) they are projected.
So one clinically useful way of thinking about ourselves or, in this discussion, about our client, is
to imagine that she is living inside a virtual reality of her own devising, a simulated reality that she
has been constructing since birth (and probably before). And this virtual reality is generated by
what, in Hakomi, we call the "core beliefs."
[After this beautiful discussion of virtuality, I feel great admiration for Randall's ability to write. And, I want to
add this: in the words of Rudolpho Llinás, “The brain is a virtual reality machine.” It is inherent in our realization
of the world around us that we are creating that realization with our senses and our nervous systems. We modulate
sensory input and use it - in combination with our habits of perception, thought, and feeling - to create the world we
experience. The world “out there” exists quite differently for other creatures (bees, dogs, elephants, etc.) and even
from our human brothers and sisters. It is this situation that makes therapy necessary in some cases and possible at
all. -RK]
Core beliefs
And where do these core beliefs come from? Well, as infants and young children we try to make
sense of the experiences we are having with mother, with the environment, with our bodies, and
our social groups. Much of this "sense-making" occurs long before we have true cognitive abilities,
and so it is our organism itself which draws certain "conclusions" about life on the planet, and
(gradually) hard-wires these into the impressionable brain. Conclusions reached in this way are
said to reside in "implicit memory", and when they operate they do so without our having any
sense that we are "remembering" something, or of even being aware that we are obeying some
very primitive "operating instructions." These are the pre-verbal, pre-conceptual conclusions that
act "as if" they were beliefs that we (consciously) held. But in fact we are not normally conscious of
these "beliefs" because they reside in a portion of memory laid down in the brain before we had
the ability to reflect on our experience.
When we are a little older, say from age 3 or 4 or 5 and older, we do have other experiences that
we do reflect on, think about, and about which we do reach somewhat more conscious
conclusions. These may also be among our "core" beliefs, but they will be more accessible than
implicit beliefs.
In the example in the brief overview, "It isn't safe to let others know how you feel," is a core belief.
We will discuss some other ones later.
The concept of virtual reality is most useful to us as Hakomi therapists when we are wearing our
"scientist's" hat, and we will explore why this is so a little further on. But the virtual reality model
doesn't shed much light on what actually goes on in the client-therapist relationship, and why the
quality of this relationship is so crucial to the healing process. For that, we need to understand
limbic resonance.

Limbic Resonance
Ron was an "early adopter" of limbic resonance, finding in this neurobiological explanation of
emotional attunement a clarification and confirmation of what he already understood clinically.
He often quotes from the book that first gave this concept and phrase its legitimacy, A General
Theory of Love (Lewis, et al., 2000) because the authors are confirming scientifically what Hakomi
has affirmed from the beginning: healing requires the presence of a sensitive, compassionate,
deeply attuned "other." With the concept of limbic resonance, we can finally say why this is so
with more precision.
Limbic resonance refers to the fact that mammalian brains have a component (the limbic brain)
that allows us to register, within our own organism, the internal, emotional states of other beings.
As an evolutionary advancement over reptiles (which possess only a "reptilian" brain), mammals
evolved a limbic brain, which, amongst other things, makes possible the mother-child bond, and
the general attunement of one mammal to another. Our on-going search for people we "resonate"
with is both motivated by, and made possible by, this natural ability that we mammals possess to
sense how another mammal is feeling.
But this attunement to one another is not simply a passive "reading" of someone else's emotional
state, as valuable as that may be. More important (to our own well-being and to the practice of
psychotherapy) is the fact that this limbic resonance is an open-loop affair: our internal
physiological and emotional states affect the internal physiological and emotional states of those
we are close to, and vice versa. The authors of A General Theory of Love refer to this open-loop
process as limbic regulation. The mother and infant regulate each other; they cause changes in each
other's hormone levels, heart rates, immune functions, neural rhythms, etc. So do husbands and
wives, fathers and sons, pet owners and their pets, and, of course, therapists and their clients. The
calm therapist helps the anxious client regulate the hormonal and autonomic functions within her
body that, at one level, are producing the anxiety.
The mother-infant situation is particularly important because the infant initially has no ability to
regulate himself and must depend completely on the mother to do so. When this doesn't occur in
an optimal way, the infant (child, adolescent, adult) fails to achieve the degree of self-regulation
that is normal for a healthy individual. Their emotional lives are disorganized, chaotic,
unpredictable, out of control. Eventually, if they are very lucky, they end up with a loving,
compassionate therapist for some remedial limbic resonating and regulating.
So the concept of limbic resonance, as I've said, brings clarity to the therapy process when we are
thinking about what goes on in the relationship of the client and therapist. But it doesn't help us
very much when we want to understand what it is that's going on within the client, the "thing" that
initially brings them into therapy and which changes during the session. For this aspect of the
process, the most helpful concept is "the missing experience."
The Missing Experience

In Hakomi (both classic and simplified) this phrase has been used as I used it in the brief overview
and the example above: to refer to what might be more precisely called the missing core
experience. Let me explain what a "core" experience is.
As infant beings, our bodily organisms themselves "anticipate" being received and treated in
certain ways by the world into which we are born. Our utter helplessness as new-born infants
implies an environment that will take care of us: our hunger implies the breast that will nourish us;
our total vulnerability implies the arms that will hold and protect us; our periodic internal distress

implies the maternal presence that will soothe and comfort us. The very fact that we have a limbic
brain implies there will be other near-by sympathetic limbic brains to regulate and resonate with
our own. [These are anticipations in the same sense as the thick layers of fat are a polar bear's anticipation of
arctic weather. -RK]
Later, as toddlers and young children, our being-organisms continue to anticipate or imply being
treated in certain ways: we (our organisms themselves) are expecting to be understood, to be seen
and valued and celebrated, to be supported and loved. All of these ways in which the innermost
"core" of us just naturally assumes it will be responded to by the environment-these constitute, or
ideally, would constitute, our "core" experiences, those experiences that would confirm we had
shown up in the kind of place that our bodies and hearts and souls were obviously “designed” for.
And when these confirming experiences don't happen, our confused and often traumatized being
registers these experiences as "missing."
But these missing core experiences don't simply register as missing in some vague, it-would-have-
been-nice sort of way. Rather, those non-completed experiences continue to live on in us as
implied and anticipated social responses that we are still waiting for. As figurative children of the
universe (whose true nature we mentioned earlier), we come into this life expecting-physically,
emotionally, and psychically-to inhabit a benevolent, life-positive world. If the environment we
find ourselves in isn't one of benevolence and positivity, those absolutely legitimate expectations
continue to exert a pressure on us, an insistence that tends to keeps us, as adults, feeling unsettled,
always aware of an unease, a disquiet, or a longing.
We spend our lives waiting for life to respond to us in a certain way that will finally meet and
satisfy our missing experience; or if waiting isn't our style, then begging, demanding,
manipulating, seducing, or trying to bargain with life to give us what we want, what we
instinctively know we should have gotten. Instead of growing up to become joyful, self-regulating,
flexible, creative human beings, we become "characters" with "strategies." "Character," Ron
wrote, "is growth delayed."
Perhaps it is clear by now why discovering (or naming) the client's missing experience, and then
providing the needed nurturance, the anticipated response, is so central to Hakomi practice. The
experience of safety or of welcome or of making a contribution which the client is waiting to experience
isn't some kind of psychic luxury or middle-class indulgence: it's the one thing that will finally
release her and allow her to move forward in her life.
So that is the usual understanding of "missing experience" in Hakomi. But I think the concept can
usefully be applied more broadly, as one of the defining elements of the entire therapeutic
encounter. Here's what I mean:
Surely one of the most fundamental missing experiences in most of our lives, and probably more
so in the lives of our clients, is that of having someone who really knows how to listen. For most of
us, having a friend who is attentive, who can listen to us without offering advice or false
encouragement, who can gently reflect our moods and feelings back to us, who can help us settle
more deeply into our unclear feeling states, who believes in us-that is a missing experience.
So when a client comes to us, if we can be that kind of person whose very presence feels warmly
supportive, whose relaxed body invites the client's body to relax, whose acceptance and
compassion toward the client encourage her to feel the same way toward herself-then a key
missing experience is already being met. Our way of being with her gives her permission to really
be with herself, to feel herself, to give herself the attention and compassion she knew she needed.
A frozen life process begins to thaw. And this, of course, is why, if we did nothing else as therapists
other than stay in loving presence and make occasional contact, it would be enough.
But it would be slow. And Ron likes to make good use of his time with a client. So, we don't just sit
there loving them. We also notice nonverbal signals, we contact things, we try experiments, and

somewhere along the way, the client becomes emotional. When that happens, we stay there with
her, encouraging her to stay with her feelings, to tell us what they mean. This too, for most of us,
would be a missing experience, having someone sit calmly and attentively with us while we were
upset, angry, sad, hurt.
[One of the major refinements I have made to the method is this: when clients are feeling an old emotional pain, I no
longer encourage them to “stay with their experience” or to “tell me what they mean”. Nowadays, I simply put a
comforting hand on the person and wait in silence while they inwardly process their feelings and gain insight into
them. If the person is very emotional-sobbing or collapsing, for example-I offer to hold them. Holding and comforting
someone who is in emotional or physical pain and needs to express it is perhaps the most common missing experience
people have. -RK]
The point I want to make is that at every stage of the therapeutic process, some kind of missing or
stopped experience of the client is coming into contact with the therapist's nourishing presence,
and the missing experience (of contact, of presence, of being-with) is being met. And this is what
moves the process along.
[One other important aspect of missing experiences is this: people develop habits for avoiding emotional pain. Early
experiences of such pain are handled-when support for them is not forthcoming-of finding ways to put them out of
consciousness and keep them there. For example, when trust has been betrayed, trusting again may be avoided. The
habits that avoid trust also make the pleasure and comfort of feeling trust a missing experience. The external signs of
habits like these are what we call indicators. The implicit belief is, “It is better not to trust.” -RK]
So, with all of that as a background, let's re-examine the six tasks of Hakomi Simplified in much
more detail.
Task One:
Creating a Positive Emotional Context
through Loving Presence and Contact
Ron has always emphasized the presence and personhood of the therapist as the single most
important element in successful therapy, aside from the readiness and willingness of the client
herself. He has stressed the importance of the therapist being warm and accepting, caring and
gentle, patient and understanding. He has reminded us that, with the client before him, a master
therapist rests secure in his knowing that there is no real problem here. The client is not a
problem waiting to be solved by some clever therapeutic intervention or interpretation, but an
able-bodied soul merely needing some kind of recognition or encouragement or clarification. Ron
has insisted that we give our attention to the whole person who is there before us, whose struggles
and griefs are in many ways peripheral to the actual capacity and vitality of this evolving,
embodied being who has come to see us. He has asked us to look deeply enough at the person
before us to feel inspired and nourished by the beauty or courage or shared humanity we behold.
Over the last decade or so, Ron has come to name this constellation of helpful therapist qualities,
attitudes, and assumptions as loving presence. The very first of the workshops in the Hakomi
Simplified Foundational Series is, The Practice of Loving Presence, and consists of a series of talks and
exercises Ron has devised to allow participants to experience this spacious and compassionate
state of being. The paramount importance of the therapist's own person and presence in the
healing "equation" has been central in Hakomi from the start, and has become even more so in
Hakomi Simplified.
Quick Review

First, a quick review.
We said in the section on limbic resonance that healing requires the presence of another person
because, if for no other reason, that's the way we're built. If the other person is sensitive,
compassionate, and attuned to us, so much the better. Our open-loop limbic brains (also called
our emotional brains) are in part "regulated" by the limbic brains of others, and those limbic brains
in turn regulate (calm) our bodies. So being in the presence of someone who is calm and warm
and caring-characteristics of loving presence-is, in and of itself, part of a healing experience.
Being in the presence of such a person is also, all too frequently, the satisfying of a missing
experience. As we discussed in that section, our organism-being itself expects to be greeted and
treated and responded to in certain life-affirming ways. Each time this doesn't happen, each time
some basic need isn't responded to as anticipated, a life process in us gets stopped, and it "sits"
there waiting or, more accurately, "looping", in endless, energy-draining cycles. When that which
was missing does become available through another's loving presence-which is inherently
welcoming, offers safety, values us for who we are-then we can finally stop missing it and get on with
our lives. "Ah, so this is what it feels like to feel welcome!" Or safe, or valued for who we are, or
whatever. We can breathe again, let it go, reclaim that non-productive energy for ourselves, and
move forward. Obviously this too is part of a healing experience.
Loving Presence and The Principles
Loving presence, as Ron is now using the phrase, incorporates into a single concept much of what
he used to discuss more in terms of the principles. If we briefly review the principles with respect
to how each one translates into specific ways of being with the client, we'll see this.
Organicity refers to the fact that complex living systems, such as human beings, are self-
organizing and self-directing. In the psychotherapeutic world, this inner, organismic thrust has
sometimes been referred to as the actualizing tendency. It is akin to what A. H. Almaas calls the
"dynamic optimizing thrust of being”.
This means that, as therapists, we can assume there is a life-positive, self-directing, self-healing
energy and intelligence at work within the client. Our task is simply to create the setting, the
emotional climate, that facilitates the emergence of this natural impulse toward health and
wholeness in our clients.
[In finding indicators of core material and doing little experiments with them, we're attempting to initiate this
organic healing process. Very often it begins with bringing the emotional pain that's been avoided into consciousness
and along with the emotions associated with it. This spontaneous rise of emotions is, in fact, the beginning of the
healing process. -RK]
Mindfulness refers to the understanding that real change comes about through awareness, not
effort. When we are truly aware of our experience, when we have what focusing (Eugene Gendlin's
work) calls the "bodily felt sense" of it, our experience naturally reveals its inherent meaning, and
it continues evolving in a self-directed, life-positive direction.
As therapists, we trust that if we can assist the client into a willfully passive "encounter" with her
present-moment somatic experience, then her own awareness will facilitate (provide the context
for) whatever change (or next step) needs to occur.
Non-violence is being mindful of organicity. It's the recognition that there is a natural way that life
is wanting to unfold, and aligning ourselves with - not against - this organic, intelligent process.
As therapists, this means we have no agendas or intentions of our own that we aren't willing to
abandon at once if they somehow conflict with what is emerging from the client. It means we
support the client's so-called defenses (her "management behaviors"); we don't offer advice or
interpretations; and we don't ask questions unless doing so serves the client.

Holism refers to the complexity and inter-relatedness of organic systems, including human
beings, with their minds and bodies, hearts and souls. It is what allows us to holographically read
a person's life story in her posture or tone of voice, to infer an entire childhood from a single
memory, to suspect certain core, organizing beliefs from simple repetitive gestures or words.
As therapists, this means that the entire (relevant) psychological history of the client is always there
before us, that there are a number of ways for us to become aware of it, as well as a variety of
ways to assist the client in learning more about what troubles her.
Unity reminds us of the inter-connectedness of all things, of all life, of all events. It is holism on a
universal scale.
As therapists, unity reminds us of the ever bigger picture, of the fact that we are intimately
connected to our client, and that both of us together are connected to our culture, our
environment, our world.
Ron says that you don't really have to "learn" the Hakomi method; that if you ground yourself in
these five principles then the Hakomi method, with its particular style and feel and way of being
with others, will naturally emerge as your way of working with clients. Hakomi is a product of
living, thinking, and feeling in terms of the principles, in alignment with the principles, not just a
good idea that Ron came up with and then found justification for in a set of high-minded
principles.
In the same way, we can say that we don't have to try and learn to be in a state of loving presence.
Rather, loving presence is an attitude that will naturally emerge in us as we come to deeply
understand these universal spiritual principles, principles which are, in effect, the true theoretical
underpinnings of Hakomi.
A Summary of Loving Presence
Let me summarize the assumptions that are, on the one hand, implicit in the practice of loving
presence and, on the other, give rise to the attitude of loving presence, as viewed from within the
therapeutic context.
1. Within the client is a life-positive, self-actualizing tendency - an organic-spiritual optimizing
thrust - that naturally seeks out healing and pleasure and novelty, that wants to be challenged and
extend its capacities, and which participates enthusiastically and intelligently with both its
immediate and larger environments. This unfolding movement is neither completely predictable
nor completely arbitrary.
2. The function of the therapist is to provide the context that facilitates this self-actualizing, life-
forward movement. The most favorable context is the one that duplicates the environment the
organism originally anticipated - maternal love, protection, and tenderness - modified to take into
account the fact that the client has a life-time of experience behind her, and that the therapist is
an unrelated adult. But the general atmosphere will be one of compassion, safety, and gentleness.
3. Because the therapist is in an adult, peer relationship with his client, his attitude will also be
characterized by a high-degree of non-directiveness and not-knowing, out of respect for the client
whose autonomy and intrinsic motivation are understood as the true source of direction and
motivation in the session. The therapist has no particular agenda; he's OK if nothing happens; he
knows he doesn't know what the client needs right now, in this moment. He enjoys the
opportunity to spend an hour or so just attending to another person. His basic mood or stance is
one of unconcerned trust.
4. Because the therapist is aware that the locus of healing is over there, in the client, and because
he is, through his own presence, providing the most favorable setting possible, he knows that if he
simply pays attention to his client's present experiencing, and allows his limbic resonating system
to help him sense and understand the client's shifting internal state, that he will spontaneously

respond in an optimal, authentic way to whatever the client says or does. The mindful, attuned
therapist allows the most life-forwarding response possible to be called forth from within him in
each moment, thus providing the client with one missing experience after another as her
previously "stopped" experiences begin moving forward again.
Being Inspired by the Client
Loving presence, as Ron is defining it now, includes yet one more aspect: the therapist "activity"
of seeking for and finding, in the client, something that inspires or nourishes him.
We want to try and appreciate the client as we might a work of art, or prize the client as we would
something precious, or savor the client as we might some exotic delicacy. If we hope to remain
focused and attentive, and in heartfelt connection with the client, we must be being nourished in
the process. Seeking inspiration in the client also has the effect of making our rapport with the
client more human, more grounded in the here and now. Our loving presence isn't a gift we are
offering to someone who is subtly lower than us on the great chain of being; it is part of an
exchange between two beings who are inherently equal, equally capable of being inspired by each
other. This is therapy as sacrament, therapy as spiritual practice, therapy as high art. And we're
just getting started! We're not even out of task one yet.
I'll close this section with a quotation. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a concept he
called “sound human understanding.” Although these words seem to name what might be a
rather balanced, reasonable attitude, in fact the phrase expresses something quite close to what we
mean by “loving presence.” Another writer, in describing sound human understanding, says that
this concept of Wittgenstein's is:
. . .the expression of a religious commitment; it is the expression . . . of a fundamental and
pervasive stance to all that is, a stance which treats the world as a miracle, as an object of love, not
of will. The sound human understanding is the mark of such love, for it is a feature of love that it
never literalizes any perception; love is always ready to go deeper, to see through whatever has
already been seen. From the perspective of loving attention, no story is ever over; no depths are
ever fully plumbed. The world and its beings are a miracle, never to be comprehended, with
depths never to be exhausted. Thus the sound human understanding is essentially a religious
response . . . . It is a response that makes sheer acknowledgement, not control, central.
(James Edwards, Ethics without philosophy: Wittgenstein and the moral life)
It is nicely confirming that one of our greatest philosophers has equated what we think of as loving
presence (referred to as loving attention in the quotation) with a concept sound human understanding - that
makes such an attitude seem obvious and reasonable.
Contact and contact statements
If the therapist is in a state of loving presence, or something relatively close to it, then probably
the therapist and client are already beginning to feel connected, to feel in contact with each other.
This is the most important aspect of what Hakomi means by "contact": this on-going sense of
rapport or connection, of being on the same page with one another, looking out in the same
direction. Being in contact is fundamental, and is a key element in establishing the healing
relationship.
Within this state of being in contact, it is also helpful to occasionally contact the client: to name or
reflect some aspect of the client's present experience back to her, especially her inner experience.
Making "contact statements" like this is a way of letting the client know and feel that we are
"tracking" her process accurately (or, if we aren't, to be corrected). So one reason we contact the
client in this manner is to (hopefully) demonstrate that we understand what she's communicating
and what she's feeling.

Doing this also helps move the process forward. When the client feels understood or feels felt, she
can move on in her story or in her emotional process. Let's call this kind of contact a level 1
contact statement. It's the kind we make as a part of this first Hakomi Simplified task. Such a
contact is, on the whole, non-strategic: we aren't trying to make anything special happen; we just
want to foster the empathic atmosphere that allows someone to relate and feel her story. In other
tasks, we do make strategic contact statements that are designed to influence the direction of the
session. These we will refer to as level 2 statements, and we'll get to them later.
Task Two
Observing, Hypothesizing, and
Selecting an Indicator
A Note about Organic Processes

Organic processes, such as Hakomi psychotherapy, cannot really be neatly divided into separate
tasks or linear steps. The parts are always flowing into each other, and the meaning of each part
varies somewhat as we understand it in relation to other parts and to the whole. We can delineate
and name various aspects of an organic process so that we can think about it, discuss it, or teach
it, but the boundaries will always be somewhat arbitrary, and never true demarcations.
At the same time, however, the delineations, if intelligently made, will also not be arbitrary. We
don't work with the outcome of an experiment before we do the experiment; we don't do any
experiments until we've established safety. We do, on the other hand, start gathering information
about a client from the moment she walks in the door, when theoretically our concern is with
creating the optimal emotional climate. And attending to this climate will continue to occupy part
of our attention even later when we're doing experiments. And of course our experiments will
allow us to gather additional information. Etc.
So task two is already well under way before we start giving it a larger percentage of our attention.
But this is the point at which we allow ourselves to start thinking like a scientist: we begin making
observations, forming hypotheses, imagining possible experiments, and settling on an indicator.
Let's take each of those items one at a time.
Being a Scientist
Making observations. In Hakomi, the chief way we gather information is by observing and
listening to the client. We don't ask a lot of questions because questions tend to create a passive
client and the image of an "expert" therapist, when what we want is an active, self-actualizing
client, and a fairly quiet, beginner's-mind kind of therapist. So we "track" the client: we pay
attention to her posture and movements, to her breathing and her voice, to the shifting
expressions on her face, to what she does with her hands. We try to "read" or feel her emotional
state: does she seem anxious, sad, hurried, burdened, timid? We listen to her story for hints of
beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes that might reflect core material.
We also pay attention to our sense of the relationship. What kind of interaction does this feel like?
How much is she receiving us, letting us be a partner in her work? Is she looking at us, or
elsewhere? Do we feel ourselves being pulled into any particular style of relating, such as rescuer,
provider, wise person, teacher, potential threat?
We also track her state of consciousness. Is she in everyday, conversational, reporter mode? Is she
emotional? Is the child-consciousness evident? How inward and mindful does she seem? Is she
speaking from an experience-near or experience-distant place?
As we are collecting all of this data, what we are looking for is patterns or themes. For example, a
client whose body seems to not take up much space physically or energetically, who has an

unusually soft voice, who displays a hesitancy in her manner of speaking, and whose story is about
being overlooked for a promotion - these would seem to suggest a theme or pattern of some kind.
A client whose body looks heavy and burdened, whose delivery is labored, whose story is one of
overwhelming responsibility - these suggest another kind of pattern. And once we've noticed, or at
least conjectured, the presence of a pattern, we are ready for the next step.
Forming Hypotheses. We need two things to form a reality-based hypothesis: we need some
good data; and we need a general understanding of the "laws" which govern that kind of data.
For example, from your favorite corner table at Starbucks (where you sit every day sipping herbal
tea and working on your novel), you observe that a certain nicely dressed man comes in most days
a little after 3:00, orders a double espresso to go, and hurries off. Because you know about 8 to 5
jobs, and about office dress codes, and about scheduled break times, you might hypothesize that
the man works in an office nearby and that he gets a short break at 3:00. You might also
hypothesize that the man isn't getting enough sleep, or perhaps he isn't eating right, or has
adrenal problems, or maybe he finds his job boring, and that he needs the caffeine boost to stay
alert for the last couple of hours at work. Because it's a man, you figure he's getting the coffee for
himself and not somebody higher up in the organization. Etc.
So, you have some observations (male, 3:00, almost daily, double espresso); you know the "laws"
governing employment and gender roles in your particular subculture (8-5 jobs, breaks, dress
codes, most secretaries are women); you know a little about physiology (sleep, adrenals, diet); and
you makes some guesses about what it all means (bored, mid-level employee, who isn't taking
good care of body, on his afternoon break).
This is the kind of thing we do all the time: knowing so-and-so, and hearing he did such-and-such,
we postulate what his motives might have been. What we do in Hakomi is refine this whole
process of observing and making informed guesses. We learn how to pay attention to the client's
signals - to her verbal and (especially) non-verbal communications - and how to infer from those
signals the beliefs that might be organizing her behavior. We learn which signals tend to be
relevant, and we learn which beliefs tend to organize behavior to produce such signals.
If a client is speaking rapidly, for instance, we might infer that she has a belief (perhaps
unconscious) that no one will listen to her for very long. If another client seems weary and
burdened, we might infer a belief that says she's not allowed to rest, or that she can't rely on
anyone to help her, or that she's only valued for what she does.
So one part of the Hakomi training is learning what and how to observe the client, how to listen
to the story behind the client's story. We learn how to hear the story within which the story-teller is
herself merely a character, often an unfortunate character whose fate and happiness seem to have
been determined by forces and circumstances outside her control.
Or, to update our metaphor, we could ask ourselves: what kind of a virtual reality does our client
seem to be living in? What are the rules of the invisible but effectively real (inner) world the client
is inhabiting? What is permissible and rewarded in her personal version of reality, and what is
disallowed and punished? Who makes the decisions here? What kinds of relationships are
possible? How do "they" feel about displays of emotion or creativity or independence? What goals
are worth pursuing within the invisible world the client inhabits, and which don't get much
recognition.
Or, from still another perspective, we might wonder, what kind of an environment is this
organism - our client - adapted for. It's basic evolutionary understanding that organisms evolve in
response to their environments: over time they try to find unoccupied niches; to discover available
sources of nourishment; to protect themselves from real or potential threats. What sort of
environment might have produced a creature such as your client? What kind of world, what types
of interactions, does she seem prepared for, built for, predisposed to expect?

So another part of the training, then, is learning about these "forces and circumstances", the
"rules", the "environmental factors" which seem to determine how we human beings end up
being molded as we are. We learn about the kinds of core issues and needs that tend to run us,
and the kinds of strategies we devise in order to survive within a world that has often shown up as
indifferent, hostile, and dangerous; one that may at times seem opposed to our aliveness, to our
love and to our very existence.
Imagining possible experiments. So, we have the data, which is the information we have
unobtrusively gathered simply by paying attention to the client's various signals; and we have a
hypothesis that is informed by our understanding of how human beings tend to develop in less
that optimal circumstances. But . . . all we really have at this point is just an educated guess. And,
more importantly, even if we're 100 percent correct, our knowing it will make very little difference
to the client. She has to know - to feel, to experience - it herself. So we need to devise some kind of
simple experiment, both to test our theory, as well as to allow the client to experience directly the
influence of the core organizing belief whose operative presence we are postulating.
The simplest form of an experiment in Hakomi is, of course, the verbal probe. For example, our
observations lead us to notice that our exhausted client seems to feel she has to say yes to anyone
who asks for her help. We suspect that in her virtual world, helping - even to the point of
unhealthy self-sacrifice - is highly valued and is probably tied into her sense of self-worth. To
confirm our suspicions, and to help the client directly notice that she is indeed operating
according to such a principle, we would (later, in task 4, after establishing mindfulness) offer her a
probe such as, "your life belongs to you". If our hypothesis is correct, this potentially nourishing
statement will "collide" with what may be her unconscious belief - "my life belongs to everyone
else first, then if there's any left over, to me" - thereby bringing that belief into felt consciousness.
But more about all of that later. In task 2, we're just thinking about all of this.
Selecting an indicator. In the example above, the "indicator" would probably be the client's
general state of exhaustion. But an indicator can be almost anything. What we want is something
that we somehow suspect or sense might provide access to deeper psychological material. So a
repeated gesture, a unconscious mannerism, a habit, a way of holding the head, a certain look in
the eyes, an incongruous smile, a unique way of dressing, a careful way of speaking - all of these
could be indicators, depending on the rest of our observations. Ron suggests asking ourselves:
What is it that stands out about this person? If you had to describe this person to someone else,
what traits would you mention? If you were that novelist sitting in Starbucks, what words would
you use to capture her uniqueness?
Obviously, settling on an indicator is not really a separate act from making our observations or
forming our hypotheses. The observation, hypothesis, experiment, and indicator may all reveal
themselves to us in the same moment of clear-seeing. But whether this all comes at once, or
gradually, if we're going to somehow make use of all this fine detective work and hunches, we're
going to have to get the client interested in this indicator. That's the next task.
Task Three
Shifting the Client's Attention
to the Indicator
This task is pretty straightforward. We've noticed something interesting about the client that we
suspect might give us access to some deeper level of material. Now we need to find out if the client
shares our interest and curiosity. And so we wait for an opportune moment to share our
observation. Ideally, the client pauses in her story and perhaps looks to us for some kind of

response or contact, and we take advantage of that opening. But maybe this is the kind of client
that hardly takes a breath between sentences. What then? Well, we may need to interrupt her. We
want to be as polite as we can be, but not so polite that we are excluded from the interaction. So
in one way or another, at some point, we need to say to the client: "I've noticed something
interesting about you." And then it's just a matter of tact and flow and gentleness.
If the client shows some interest, we go on to task four, and set up the experiment. If she's got
some higher priority, like finishing her story or getting a point across to us that we don't seem to
have gotten because we were thinking about our wonderful experiment, we back off and return to
spaciousness. Maybe in a few minutes.
Philosophical Interlude
Because this is such a short task, I thought it might be good spot to introduce a bit of discussion
around what kind of psychotherapeutic approach Hakomi represents. After all, psychotherapy
keeps evolving as one sensitive, malcontented therapist after another says to him or herself: "You
know, something just doesn't feel right about the way we've been taught to do therapy. We're
paying far too much attention to this, and not nearly enough to that. We're focusing here when we
should be focusing there. Let me see if I can figure out how to address the problem." We all know
who the sensitive malcontent was who brought forth Hakomi and now, still not content, Hakomi
Simplified. But where exactly does Hakomi fit in the grand scheme of all things therapeutic?
Alas, there is no grand scheme. Evolution isn't linear, and organic processes keep spinning off new
variations of themselves in multiple directions whenever they find new circumstances or
opportunities. But there are some small, local schemes that are relevant to Hakomi, and which
may help us appreciate a bit more the kind of work we're doing.
This philosophical interlude actually does belong right here, at this point in the description of
Hakomi Simplified, because this simple task - shifting the client's attention to an indicator - marks
a distinct transition in the session. Until this point in the process, the therapist has been relatively
quiet: mostly listening, occasionally making contact. The space and initiative have clearly
belonged to the client. What the client is interested in and aware of has guided most of our shared
attention (aside from our surreptitious observations). And now, we are about to change all that;
we are going to take charge. We're going to start making level 2 contact statements.
So, local scheme number one (of two) has to do with the debate in psychotherapy between non-
directiveness and efficacy.
Non-directiveness-efficacy. All of the so-called person-centered psychotherapies (which
broadly includes Hakomi) are relatively non-directive. They assume or affirm, in one way or
another, that the impetus for growth and understanding must come from the client, and will come
from the client eventually if the therapeutic setting is conducive and friendly to such growth.
In its purest form, called principled non-directiveness (meaning, a fundamental, underlying principle,
like organicity or holism), the stance is this: if we really believe what we say about the self-
actualizing potential residing in the client, then we must have absolute respect for the client's
ability to bring forth, at her own pace, in her own way, whatever is needed for her healing. For
the therapist to intervene or redirect the client's attention in any way is a disrespectful act, and
violates her autonomy just as her childhood environment doubtless did.
On the efficacy side of the equation, other equally person-centered practitioners would agree that
non-directiveness is nice up to a point, but practically speaking, clients come to us precisely
because they are damaged; their actualizing function isn't functioning all that well. If they are
going to make any significant progress, they need a whole lot more than just a weekly, one-hour
dose of unconditional positive regard. They need our active, educated help.
In Hakomi, task three is where we shift from something we could easily label the "principled non-
directiveness of loving presence", into the overtly strategic stance of "efficacy", of "moving the

process forward". The reason why it's critical for us to be aware of this transition and what it
entails, and to handle it with delicacy, is that the client may (quite legitimately) experience it as
jarring or confusing. If a small child is playing happily alone, building something with blocks,
while father looks on, the child may not immediately appreciate dad's suggestion that she put a
block there before the whole thing falls down. [Of course client's may be aware that this is how the therapy
works, either by having read the Prospective Clients paper or by having had previous experience with the method. -
RK]
A second local scheme, another way of positioning or thinking about person-centered
psychotherapies, is according to the extent they insist meaningful change comes about because of:
a) the client having certain types of relationships; or b) the client having certain types of experiences.
Relationships-experiences. The relationship side of the discussion highlights not so much the
optimal therapeutic setting (of, say, loving presence), though something like that is implicit. The
emphasis rather is on the quality or nature of the interaction between the client and therapist. From
this perspective, what really allows for meaningful change to occur is for the client to experience,
moment by moment, qualitatively different responses to her beingness than she experienced early
in life. What is important about these responses is, not necessarily that they be loving, but that
they be authentic. So here it is the authenticity of the therapist, his personal congruence, his mature
personhood, that is understood to be the catalyst for healing.
When I extended the meaning of "missing experience" earlier in this paper, it was to highlight this
dimension of the therapeutic encounter as is might be understood in Hakomi.
On the "experiencing" side of this scheme is, for example, what focusing calls the "felt sense". This
may be loosely defined as our deeper, bodily sense of whatever it is we are experiencing.
Emotions, memories, sensations, and action all emerge from, and can be brought back to, the felt
sense. The felt sense is understood to provide and contain a much more complete "grasp" of our
total situation (about the particular issue we're focused on), and knows or "implies" the next step
we need to take.
The felt sense is a kind of somatically attuned inwardness that is often unclear initially, but which
tends to clarify itself, to be sensed more precisely, the longer we can stay with it. When the
therapist asks us what we are feeling, and we don't know immediately, it is to our felt sense,
ideally, that we turn, and wait for an answer. For this discussion, the most important point is that
the felt sense - when we allow it to emerge within us and focus on it -is the source of meaningful
change. By being in contact with our felt sense, we intuitively know what to do next.
In Hakomi, it is experience evoked and studied in mindfulness that corresponds (roughly) to this
emphasis on a certain way of experiencing our experience as being a key part of the process.
So, a second way to think about the transition we make in Hakomi at task three is this: that we are
moving from a reliance on our authentic relationship with the client as the (nearly) sufficient
vehicle of healing, to a territory where a certain kind of deep experiencing is understood as
required for significant healing to take place.
In some ways, these categories or distinctions I've invoked here represent false dichotomies: in the
first instance (non-directiveness vs. efficacy), we obviously don't abandon our loving presence
when we begin directing the process a little; in the second (relationship vs. experience), we know
that clients only allow themselves to go deeply into their experience within the context of safety
and containment which the attuned therapeutic relationship offers. But I think the distinctions
can help us understand a little better how Hakomi works, and underline the fact that there are
two relatively distinct stages in any given Hakomi session.
Finally, I want to point out another reason why the first of these two false dichotomies is false:
Ron didn't base Hakomi on the principle of non-directiveness; he based it on the principle of non-
violence. Non-violence doesn't tell us not to intervene or redirect attention or try an experiment; it

says, pay very close attention to the client's response to our suggestions and efforts, and if there is
resistance, don't continue. Working within the principle of non-violence, we don't have to be
extraordinarily cautious or all-knowing; we just have to be observant, sensitive, and ready to stop
at once. If we can move the therapy process forward in the direction of deeper experiencing, and
do so respectfully and mindfully, in true service to the client's unfolding process, then we are free
and ready to do so. It's the Hakomi way.
Task Four
Establishing Mindfulness and
Doing the Experiment
Mindfulness
In its simplest application, mindfulness means paying attention. It is pretty much what mom meant
when she said to us, as we were spilling or bumping or dirtying something: "Will you please watch
what you're doing!" Her exasperated admonition was a call for us to be mindful of our actions,
especially those aspects of our activity that we weren't focused on. Our goal, for instance, may
have been to fill the dog's water bowl as full as possible at the sink and then place it outside the
back door. The fact that we spilled some water on the kitchen floor as we carried the bowl didn't
really matter to us. Our attention was elsewhere, on our goal. We weren't paying attention to
(weren't noticing as relevant) the water slopping over the edge of the bowl.
Eckhart Tolle has popularized the "power of now", the enormous shift of consciousness that takes
place when we deliberately and regularly bring our otherwise scattered attention back into a
unified focus in the present. When we "watch what we're doing", when we are actually present to
ourselves and our surroundings, and to our present moment experiencing, then our sense of who
we are and what is possible are greatly expanded. "Your point of power is in the present", Seth
(through Jane Roberts) insisted, in book after book. Whatever reality the past and future may
have, whatever influence they may in fact exert on us, our only practical point of contact with
them is right here and right now. So that's where we need to be too.
When we speak of mindfulness in Hakomi, we are usually referring to this point in the process
where we are now, in task four, in relation to the client and the upcoming experiment. But of
course, mindfulness also relates to the therapist. The basis of loving presence, as well as the whole
ambience of the healing relationship, is mindfulness. So, what do we mean by that?
Mindfulness is a state of consciousness, and the fact that we have to name it and describe it
suggests that it isn't our ordinary state of consciousness. Ordinarily, we are not being mindful. Thus
it becomes possible, in part, to describe mindfulness in terms of how it is different from ordinary
consciousness.
In our familiar, ordinary state of consciousness, we are mostly busy figuring things out: what to do
next; how to accomplish so-and-so; planning, scheduling, managing time and resources;
wondering what will happen if we do this instead of that; and so on. So one (admittedly over-
simplified) way of describing ordinary consciousness would be to call it "strategic". It is survival
oriented. We're using our minds to run our lives, to take care of business, to create small spheres
of order in what will surely otherwise be chaos if we don't personally take charge, if we don't come
up with a strategy.
Mindfulness, in contrast, is a non-strategic state of consciousness. In mindfulness, we are mostly
"busy" appreciating things: how beautiful the flowers are; how lovely this person is; how gracious
the day feels; how wonderful it is to breathe and move about in such a surprising and delightful

world. If mindfulness has an orientation, perhaps we could say it is toward wonder and gratitude,
toward acceptance and cooperation. If we living mindfully, then instead of "running" our lives, we
are allowing our lives to be run, permitting ourselves to be directed or nudged along by some very
real process within us, one that seems to have a much better grasp of our situation and purpose
than does our anxious, calculating mind.
Mindfulness, in fact, has much less to do with the mind than does ordinary consciousness. A great
deal of what we are calling ordinary consciousness is (or at least, seems) located inside our heads,
in our mental activity. Mindfulness, in contrast, is a much more embodied state of consciousness,
which is why one of the most reliable ways of entering a mindful state is by bringing our attention
into the body.
From the very beginning of a Hakomi session, the therapist is modeling a mindful state of being,
which is expressed through his soothing and friendly voice, his unhurried pacing, his interested
listening, and his focused attention. Mindfulness is inherently spacious, accepting, alert. The
mindful therapist has no immediate agenda other than to be fully present and receptive to his
client. And the attitude the therapist displays toward the client is the attitude which, in this step,
we hope to encourage the client to take toward his own experience: alert, curious, welcoming.
Probably the most important means we have of assisting the client to adopt this attitude is by our
modeling of it. Our mindful presence serves to engender mindfulness in the client. This is one of
the ways we influence the process in therapy. But we also offer some instruction if that seems
called for. In its simplest form, we merely suggest they relax a bit, close their eyes, let go of
whatever they had been thinking about, bring their attention inside, perhaps by taking a deep
breath and following that breath into the chest and belly. That's probably enough. There's less
"noise" in the system now. We can do the experiment.
[Randall has left out a most important aspect. Mindfulness is also passive in a very special way. Think for example
of paying attention to your breathing without controlling it. It seems that as soon as we focus on our breathing, we
begin to control it; we stop it and start it, but we do not simply let it happen. Francisco Varela and his co-authors
have called this passive quality of mindfulness “A change in the quality of attention, which passes from the looking-
for to the letting-come.” It is the conceit of conscious will that keeps us from realizing how much of what we do is
done without deliberate control or even consciousness. Yet, almost all we do is done that way. Mindfulness is the
state of mind in which one can actually follow this automatic activity without interfering with it. An important
example would be following the constant activity of the mind - the endless flow of thoughts that seem impossible to
stop.
When we use mindfulness in Hakomi, we are asking clients to make an observation of a reaction that we evoke
through an experiment. It is the passive allowing of the reaction and the attention to what it is that constitutes
Hakomi's use of mindfulness. -RK]
Doing the Experiment
What we actually do at this point will of course depend on the indicator we settled on and how we
want to study it. Standard Hakomi experiments include: verbal and tactile probes; taking over
voices; supporting "management behavior"; repeating gestures in slow motion; and many more.
Ron emphasizes that there is a lot of room for creativity at this point. If there's something about
the client's behavior or story that intrigues the therapist, and seems like it might be linked to a
core pattern, it's up to the therapist to come up with some way to study it. We don't even have to
have a hypothesis. There are times when we really have no idea what an "indicator" is indicating;
we merely suspect it's important. We can still experiment, using the information we gather through
the experiment to form a hypothesis.
We do these experiments (with the client in mindfulness) because we're hoping to evoke
something spontaneous, unpredictable, or at least interesting about and for the client. We want to
find out if our hypothesis is correct, if we have one. We also want the client to experience in her
own body the effects of her core organizing material. And the whole endeavor can be fairly

playful and cooperatively figured out. If we're curious about something, and if the client is
interested and engaged, experimenting like this can be joint undertaking.
[Also, we believe in the possibility of healing processes having their own unfolding patterns. That is, just as a cut
finger heals “itself”, given the right conditions, so too do emotional hurts, given the right conditions. For some hurts,
the conditions were not present when needed and the healing didn't happen. According to Pierre Janet, these
unintegrated, uncompleted (un-healed) emotional processes have a detrimental effect on emotions and behavior. The
“right conditions” include a lot of things, but one essential thing is the emotional context of the therapy and the
personality and state of being of the therapist. Given these and the motivation and courage of the client, an experiment
done in mindfulness will not only evoke emotions, memories and the like, it can also initiate a healing process that
was waiting to happen. A healing process that the therapist can follow, support and help bring to completion.-RK]
Task Five
Working with the Outcome
of the Experiment
Getting the Data
In order to have any outcome to work with, the first order of business is to get a report from the
client on precisely what she experienced during the experiment. In other words, get the data.
Scientists do experiments because they hope to learn something or confirm something. So do we.
Scientists take careful note of the results they obtain. We should do the same.
Ideally, we would like the client to report on her experience while it is happening, and from
within the experience itself. Some clients, however, have their experience, then come out and tell
us about it. In either case, if they don't tell us, we have to ask, because the data determines what
we do next, where we go from here.
[Of course, it's also quite possible that we would see an obvious effect of an experiment. In which case, we would not
have to ask for it. If it is an emotional reaction, our best bet is just to recognize it, either by making a contact
statement or simply putting a gentle hand on the client. After that, it is most important to remain silent until the
client talks or does something new. In this way, we wait for direction which we take from the client's spontaneous
“movements” through the process, like memories “popping up” or impulses to do something. When these arise, we
follow and support the them as central to the healing process. -RK]
Accessing, Deepening, and Processing
Typically, an experiment will result in some form of present experience: sensation, emotion,
thoughts. This is already a good start. While in a state of mindfulness, the client has moved into a
deeper awareness of some aspect of her actual present-moment experience. What we need to do
then is help her stay with that experience longer, so that it deepens or opens up in some way, or so
that it stabilizes. If a verbal probe elicited a feeling of sadness, we might simply suggest that she
"stay with the sadness", or we might ask her what kind of sadness it is, or what the sadness seems
to be saying. We want her to feel the sadness fully, while at the same time maintaining some
distance from it. We want her to come into a relationship with her sadness: it is part of her, but not
all of her. She is close to it, but not overwhelmed.
[This is no longer part of the method as I now teach it. It was part of the original Hakomi Method, but is really not
necessary and even disruptive. As I mentioned above, I now wait silently, sometimes with a hand on the client, in
order to allow the client the freedom to move spontaneously into a healing process. It is the silent attention, loving
presence and the comforting hand that invites the client to be inside following her own healing process. As that
proceeds, we also follow and support it. We become “assistants” to the process and forgo directing it. In fact, our
whole participation is as an assistant to someone seeking to understand and heal herself. We share the process with
the client and are directed by the operations of her adaptive unconscious. -RK]

Our [mutual] goal of course is to "access" core material by means of these deeply felt experiences,
whatever they may be, and by discovering what they mean to the client. In this overall, cyclically
repeated process, there is often a release of strong emotions, and when that happens we will
attempt to support the client's spontaneous behavior (tensing the abdominal muscles, covering the
eyes, collapsing the chest), and offer whatever nourishment she will accept. Or the "child" may
appear, signaled by a change in voice or facial expression, and we will attempt to relate to this
inner child in a natural and reassuring manner, offering the consolation and wisdom that was
missing in the earlier time.
Eventually - if the client has been willing, and we have been skillful, and the heavens have been
gracious - we uncover a core belief [or a memory of a foundational experience]. Perhaps the belief, as
verbalized by the client (speaking from the child's perspective and with the child's limited
understanding) is "the world isn't safe". We assist the client in coming to see that the child's
intense but narrow experience of non-safety (in her family) let to a great over-generalization of
how things are, that while some parts of the world, some particular people, might not be safe,
other parts and people probably are. And at this point, we are slipping into task six, where we'll
pick this up again.
Now, this has been an admittedly cursory description of what is in fact a very complex aspect of
the therapy process. The doing of all this accessing, deepening, and processing requires a lot of
therapist skill and confidence, as well as moment by moment attunement to the client's often
rapidly shifting state. Let's take a moment to remind ourselves why it is we do this at all.
Experience is Organized
One of the main ideas which Hakomi is based on is that experience is organized. With respect to the
therapeutic process this means: our psychological experience (our perceptions, our feelings, and our
sense of what things mean) is organized (is effectively created or structured) by our core beliefs
("conclusions" we reached at a very young age about what kind of world this is). In the section on
virtual reality, I said that it is core beliefs that effectively generate the particular personal world
that each of us inhabits. For example, a core belief of "I'm not safe" will tend to generate a virtual
reality in which the possibility of danger seems higher than it otherwise would, where a greater
sense of threat seems to permeate otherwise innocuous settings.
Saying that the belief, "I'm not safe", organizes our perceptions and emotional responses means: it
colors our perspective on things (we tend to see people and situations as threatening); it tells us
what we should pay attention to (strangers, crowds, situations that might be chaotic); it instructs us
in how to approach the unknown (with caution, with a tensed body and shallow breathing); it
advises us how to feel in unfamiliar circumstances (anxious, vigilant, ready to flee). The person
whose virtual reality is organized around the core belief, "I'm not safe" is going to experience and
report on a very different world than the person whose virtual reality is being generated, say, by
the belief "I can't get what I want", or "I'm only loved when I perform."
As I mentioned early in this paper, most of these so-called core organizing beliefs reside in an area
of the brain that holds implicit memory, which we don't have direct access to, and so they shape
our experience often without our being consciously aware of them. Even if we are conscious of
them at some level (meaning, we can talk about them), that level of knowing doesn't change
anything. It's like thinking we know how to bake a cake because we'd read a cookbook, but hadn't
gotten down to the level of flour and ovens. Even if we could recite the recipe by heart, our plates
would still be empty.
So the reason we "do" all this accessing and processing is because - we have to. This is what it
takes. If we don't get down to the level where these "beliefs" are stored - packaged inextricably
with the painful memories and awful feelings, and the sense of hopelessness and shame and
resentment, that was all part of what became a "missing experience" - then the client won't really

be in the state of openness and trust needed to receive the nurturing experience when it is offered.
She will go away hungry.
Task Six
Offering Nourishment
to Satisfy the "Missing Experience"
Most of what needs to be said here I have already said, in the overview of task six, and in the
section on the missing experience. To summarize, in one way or another, most often simply
through his kind words and compassionate presence, the therapist offers the client her missing
experience, the nourishment all of her processing and openness have prepared her to receive. The
therapist's energetic and perhaps physical embrace, the atmosphere of trust and intimacy that
now fills the space, the client's openness to her own inner resources, visiting angels perhaps - all of
these combine somehow to answer the particular soulful longing that has made itself known
during the session. And so the client experiences feeling truly safe and welcome, or deeply seen
and valued as a person, or unconditionally honored in some way she's been waiting for all her life.
She cries a little, she laughs a little. And for the moment at least, all is well.
After Word
Where two or more are gathered together in the name of healing, with at least a minimal degree
of humility and trust, something else enters in to the midst of that relationship. The combined
intention of healer and “healee” to alleviate suffering, to walk a step or two further into the heart's
labyrinth serves as an invitation or call, perhaps even a summons, to those greater energies and
beings which express the universe's true nature: compassion, beauty, wholeness. When we commit
ourselves to healing, providence moves too, and whatever healing takes place comes about more
through grace then merit, more through sincerity than preparation, more through surrender than
effort. How it all works is still mostly a mystery, but with Hakomi, Ron has found, and now offers
us, a skillful way of participating in this mystery with those who come to us, a participation which
naturally facilitates our own continued healing and growth at the same time, the ultimate win-win
situation.
End of Randall Keller's Hakomi Simplified 2004
Appendix I.
Books and Articles Cited
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Arien, Angeles (1993) The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer,
and Visionary. New York, NY: HarperOne ISBN-10: 0062500597 ISBN-13: 978-0062500595
Bateson, Gregory (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York, NY: Bantam Books 1979
Becker, Robert (Author), Selden, Gary (Author). (1998). The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the
Foundation of Life. New York: Harper Paperbacks
Blechschmidt, Erich and Freeman, Brian. (2004). The Ontogenetic Basis of Human Anatomy: The
Biodynamic Approach to Development from Conception to Adulthood. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books

Blyth, R. H. (1978) Zen and Zen Classics: Selections from. Compiled and with drawings by Frederick
Franck. New York: Vintage Books.
Brazier, David. 2002. The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and
Passion. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan
Bromberg, Phillip M., (2006) Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys. NY, The Analytic Press
Brown, Mick (2004) The Dance of 17 Lives: The Incredible True Story of Tibet's 17th Karmapa (2005)
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Especially Recommended
Damasio, Antonio. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt.
Lewis, Thomas (Author), Amini, Fari (Author), Lannon, Richard(Author), (2001). A General Theory
of Love. New York: Vintage Books.
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Systems. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press
Ramachandran, V. S., Blakeslee, Sandra. 1999. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the
Human Mind. New York: Harper Perennial.
Rossi, Ernest L. 1996. The Symptom Path to Enlightenment: The New Dynamics of Self-Organization in
Hypnotherapy : An Advanced Manual for Beginners. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen: Phoenix, AZ
Wilson, Timothy D. (2004). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press.
Appendix II. The Evolving Vision
Original Components & Major Refinements

Original Components:
1. Character Theory (This was replaced by the more general category, Indicators.)
2. Reading Bodies, particularly Posture and Structure (Again, replaced by indicators.)
3. Experiments
4. Use of Mindfulness
5. Nonviolence
6. Tracking and Contact
7. Probes
8. Taking Over
9. Offering Emotional Nourishment
10. Concepts: Core Beliefs, Unconscious, Explicit Memory and Defenses.
Items 3 through 10 are still part of the method as I teach it.
Major Refinements:
1. Loving Presence
2. Using Assistants
3. Searching For and Using Indicators
4. The Operational Shift to Holding the Work as Assisted Self-Study
5. Adapting to the Adaptive Unconscious
6. Irritations (Pierre Janet’s ideas about what happens)
7. Following (responding to spontaneous impulses and behaviors)

8. Honoring the Need for Silence by Waiting
9. Touching and Comforting
10. Additional Ideas Introduced
a. Implicit Beliefs (acting as if)
b. The Six Skill Sets
c. Adaptive Unconscious and Procedural Memory
d. Moving the Process Forward
e. Mental-Emotional Healing
f. Letting Things Take Their Natural Course
g. Evoking Healing Processes
h. Following
i. Comfort as Essential to Integration
In Detail:
Original Major Components149
1. Character Theory. This derived from my interest in Bioenergetics and the work of Wilhelm
Reich. It was taught, both as theory and method in the original trainings held in Vermont,
Connecticut and Colorado, in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
2. Reading Bodies (Posture and Structure). This was a direct outcome of studying Bioenergetics
and Reich. I would ask people to stand and I’d look at them for the kinds of bodily signs talked
about by Alexander Lowen, in his many books. A book about this, written by Hector Prestera,
M.D. and myself, was published in 1976.150
3. Experiments. I learned to use these when I studied Gestalt, back in the late 60’s, at Esalen and
as a teacher at San Francisco State. It was a very experimental time, with the whole culture
experimenting with new ways to be and to relate.
4. Use of Mindfulness. Asking people to become mindful before doing an experiment was
something that came out of my private practice around 1974. I was motivated by the idea that
people in mindfulness could observe their reactions and begin to understand their true beliefs
about themselves and the world, the beliefs that organize their behavior and experience. This
was and is a direct way to support self-study and self-discovery. My meditation practice, a
retreat with Chögyam Trungpa, and workshops Moshe Feldenkrais and Ruthy Alon were all
part the inspiration.
5. Nonviolence. This inspiration also came in the 60’s. Partly it was the temper of the times, the
Viet Nam war, Flower Children and a couple of years of teaching at San Francisco State. It
was the coming of Buddhism to America, my love of the Tao Te Ching and anti war
movement. To me, nonviolence means not persisting, not forcing anything, not using power or
coercion or acting authoritarian. This sentiment was the main reason I gave up using
bioenergetic methods.
6. Tracking and Contact. Of course contact came from Rogerian Therapy, which I read about in
graduate school and taught later in college. The idea of tracking (constantly following the
149
These are covered in great detail in Kurtz, Ron (1997) Body-Centered Psychotherapy: The Hakomi
Method: The Integrated Use of Mindfulness, Nonviolence and the Body. Mendocino, CA: Life Rhythm.
150
Kurtz, Ron (Author) and Prestera, Hector (Author) (1976). The Body Reveals. An Illustrated Guide to
the Psychology of the Body. New York: Harper and Row.

trajectory of people’s present experience) was a reflection of my Navy experience as a fire
control radar operator. (“Tracking” is what those radars do; they follow the movements of an
airplane, staying locked on it as it flies). The practice of tracking came out of that.
7. Probes. This technique came at the same time using mindfulness did. Having heard clients
speak about themselves and having studied their posture and body structure, I realized that
people were not always aware of what beliefs were at the core of their behavior and
experience. As a way to help them discover that, I wanted to surprise them with their own
reactions to statements that I figured they would not be able to accept, in spite of the fact that
all those statements were designed to be potentially nourishing. Sure enough, it worked. And it
became a cornerstone of the Hakomi Method.
8. Taking Over. This was the outcome of having pursued nonviolent ways to support the
emotional processes that sometimes followed probes and other experiments. It was a simple
reversal of the Bioenergetic practice of “breaking down” the defenses. I first used it in the late
70’s. It quickly developed into the second major technique of the method, expanding into all
kinds of ways to take over verbally and physically. It’s used both in experiments done with the
person in mindfulness to help people study themselves and with evoked emotional reactions,
where it’s used to support people’s spontaneous management behaviors.
9. Offering Emotional Nourishment. This was a natural outcome of using potentially nourishing
statements as probes. After some processing, the same offering that was automatically rejected
when offered as a probe could be used to provide relief, relaxation and emotional satisfaction.
It eventually became the general goal of a providing missing experiences, experiences that were
automatically avoided due to the beliefs that organized experience.
10. Touching and Comforting. This is something we do that developed with the use of assistants
and new understanding of the adaptive unconscious.
11. Important Concepts: These concepts were important in the early development of the method:
a. Core Beliefs: Core beliefs were what we called the general organizers of experience.
b. Gaining the Cooperation of the Unconscious: We thought of the unconscious much the
same way as Freud and Jung did, though they certainly had their differences. Some of the
ideas about this came from the work of Milton Erickson.
c. Defenses: The idea of psychological defenses was and still is quite common in the field.
These ten components make up a good portion of the original method. They came together over
two and a half decades of learning, practice teaching and training people. Used together in an
integrated way, they make an effective method for helping others with their personal growth and
emotional healing. They are taught and practiced today in at least thirteen countries and used by
hundreds of practitioners.
Since the early 90’s, when I resigned as director of the Hakomi Institute, I have continued to
refine the method and to teach these refinements in workshops and trainings along with several
newer trainers who have trained and worked with me, rather than the Institute. Some of them,
like Donna Martin, have been working and teaching with for fifteen years or more.
Some of the refinements were made as far back as the early 90’s and some as recently as the last
three months. I’d like to describe the major ones and the changes they made to the method.
The Refinements
1. Loving Presence. The progression here was this: at first, I thought mostly about techniques, the
momentary interventions I’d learned from Gestalt and Bioenergetics. After thinking about
these for a while, I began to see how they formed a unified method, the when and how to use
the techniques and the theory that made sense of them. After a while of thinking, teaching and
writing about method and techniques, I began to see how they had to fit within the

relationship one had with the client. I began to have ideas about what we called The Healing
Relationship. All of this was part of the development of the original method.
Then, after reading a book called Human Change Process by Michael J. Mahoney, I began to see
that the most important ingredient—after “client factors such as motivation—he called
personhood or therapist personal factors.
I realized during one mind-opening session that my own state of mind (or state of being) was
strongly affecting the outcome of the session. State of mind very quickly became the most
important aspect of the healing relationship. I called that state of mind loving presence and began
teaching it in trainings and workshops as the first and most important element of the method.
The workshop was about how one creates that state of mind in oneself. It’s now part of a book
being published which I wrote with Donna Martin and Flint Sparks, two trainers of the refined
method. Presence refers to attending to the flow of experience from moment to moment.151
2. Using Assistants. I began using assistants in my workshops and trainings back in the 80’s.
When I’d did demonstrations, I would have one or two of the observers come and help me
with taking over voices and physical management reactions. I have trained many advanced
students as assistants and pay them when I can. It’s both a very good way to involve people
and to teach them the method through that kind of participation. Since the mid-nineties, I’ve
use assistants in my private practice. There are many things you can do when you have
assistants that you can’t do when you’re alone with a client. For a while, early in 2000, I would
have four clients come at a time, people who knew each other. I would work with one person
at a time and have the other three assist me. Then we’d rotate and work with the next person.
3. Searching for and Using Indicators. Having tracked client’s present experiences for many
years, I began to notice and think about the person’s habitual behaviors and qualities that are
a regular part of their way of being, qualities like holding the head on an angle, shrugging the
shoulders a lot, talking fast, constantly watching me, the person’s default facial expression, and
anything that jumps out at me. There are an endless number of such qualities. I learned that
these qualities often reflect early adaptations and are the external expressions of implicit
beliefs. One of the first things I do when I start a session with someone is to search for these
qualities, which I call indicators, and come up with experiments we could do with them. I don’t
teach character theory any more and consider character traits as just one limited subset of
indicators.
4. The Operational Shift to Holding the Work as Assisted Self-Study. This is the most important
refinement of all. I stopped thinking of the work as belonging within the medical model of
treating psychological problems or “diseases”. I began to think of the method as a way of
assisting a person in the pursuit of self-knowledge. When this pursuit is successful, relief from
the suffering usually follows. Knowing the truth about oneself, making implicit beliefs
conscious, recognizing the automatic behaviors of the adaptive unconscious, is the most direct
path to changing oneself at a deep level. As part of this shift in perspective, I began to require
of clients that they understand the work as self-study, that they be able to enter into mindful
states and participate in the experiments that are the vital to the process. I give new clients a
one-page description of what they can expect and what they’ll need to do.
5. Adapting to the Adaptive Unconscious. The adaptive unconscious has come into currency in
the last couple of decades. Books have been written about it (Strangers to Ourselves for example).
In contrast to the Freudian unconscious, it’s much more of a helpmate than a “cauldron of
erotic and violent impulses”. It is there to “conserve consciousness”. (For more about this, see
151
Senge, P. Scharmer, C. O., Jaworski, J. and Flowers, B. S. (2005) Presence: An Exploration of Profound
Change in People, Organizations, and Society. New York, Currency ISBN-10: 038551624X, ISBN-13:
978-0385516242

cognitive load theory articles on the web!) As I learned about the AU, I began to recognize
and work with that part of the mind as it interprets situations and initiates actions and
reactions acting completely outside of conscious decisions and awareness. Knowing this, I can
understand and respond to a person’s behavior in a more accurate, appropriate and sensitive
way, thus gaining a level of cooperation that greatly helps the work proceed. (See Following,
below.)
6. Irritations (Pierre Janet’s Image of What’s Happening). Pierre Janet wrote about events that
overwhelm a person, events that cannot be integrated and “made sense of”, events that
happen when we’re vulnerable, and especially when we’re young. The emotions and memories
of such events can end up, in his words, “encapsulated” in the unconscious. They remain there
causing irritation and suffering and influencing emotions and behavior. It is these irritations
that our experiments in mindfulness often bring into consciousness. And that’s exactly what we
want. Once conscious, with the proper emotional support, sense can finally be made of them
and the irritation finally dissolved.
7. Following (Using Spontaneous Impulses and Behaviors). In keeping with a new awareness of
the functioning of the adaptive unconscious, I now see the spontaneous impulses and thoughts
that come up during the work as signals from the adaptive unconscious which point the way
the work might proceed. When something pops into a client’s consciousness, an impulse or a
memory, I will use whatever it is as part of the very next thing to do.
8. Honoring the Need for Silence by Waiting. One thing that stands out in the demonstrations
that I do is the long amounts of time during which I am silent and waiting for the client.
Observers frequently comment on this. When I work, I track for signs that the person is inside:
thinking, feeling, remembering, integrating. The signs are simple. Usually the eyes are closed.
The head may be turned to one side or nodding. The face may show signs that the person is
thinking or having insights. When this is happening, I simple wait in silence. My attention
remains on the person. When the person opens his or her eyes, I am present and I wait for the
person to speak first. These simple behaviors of mine help shape the kind of relationship the
person and I will have. They indicate that I will give the person all the time he or she needs to
process experiences. This is especially important when emotions have spontaneously arisen or
have arisen in reaction to an experiment I have learned that clients need time to remember
and figure things out, to integrate the memories and feelings that have arisen during the
healing process. Integration is happening and needs to be protected from interruption. So, I
remain silent.
9. Touching and Comforting. I started many years ago to offer physical contact in ways that are
generally frowned upon in professional psychotherapy circles. Of course, they have good
reasons for this. The imbalance of power, the privacy of the two-person interaction, the
intimate nature of the relationship, all make it quite easy to violate boundaries. When I use
touch and offer comfort, it is always in the presence of witnesses, sometimes a hundred or
more. Usually, I’m not the one touching the person or holding them. I have assistants do that
and always with permission. We touch people, usually gently on the arm or shoulder, at the
first physical sign of sadness or grief, signs like tears forming and the voice changing. When we
do touch, we’re signaling that we’re aware of the person’s feelings and that we’re sympathetic.
We also keep silent to allow the person to deepen into the experience. We offer and extend
comfort when those same emotions are moving freely through the person and painful
memories are being integrated (made sense of), which happens spontaneously if not interfere
with. At those times we’re either silent or we make occasional comforting sounds.
10. Additional Ideas That Are Part of the Refined Method:
a. Implicit Beliefs (acting as if)

Beliefs are implicit when they are not recoverable as memories of events. They are
memorized procedures. Habits, in other words. They are equivalent to beliefs, in that the
habitual behaviors can be thought of as the enactment of rules: “if this, then do that”.
They are outside of awareness, not because they are necessarily repressed, they are simply
actions that can be performed without conscious attention, thus preserving consciousness
for tasks which need time to think about and implement. Like all the habits which are by
their nature procedural, they are functions of the adaptive unconscious. Some are
adaptations to situations that were painful and/or unresolved. It is these latter adaptations
which we help bring into conscious awareness, in order to resolve and change them, thus
giving consciousness thought the implicit beliefs they represent.
These additional ideas are discussed in the full text of this Training Handbook. They are only
listed here:
b. The Six Skill Sets (see page xx of this 2008 Training Handbook)
c. Adaptive Unconscious and Procedural Memory (see page 8 of the 2008 Training
Handbook)
d. Moving the Process Forward (see page xx of this 2008 Training Handbook)
e. Mental-Emotional Healing (see page xx of this 2008 Training Handbook)
f. Letting Things Take Their Natural Course (see the section on Following)
g. Evoking Healing Processes (see page xx of this 2008 Training Handbook, Experiments)
h. Following (see page xx of this 2008 Training Handbook)
i. Comfort as Essential to Integration (See Touching and Comforting, this page)
Appendix III. The Method as Process

Guidelines for the Way Things Work
Mutual Causality
In this doctrine [the Dharma] everything arises through mutual conditioning in a reciprocal
interaction. Indeed the very word Dharma conveys not a substance or essence, but orderly process
itself—the way things work.
—Joanna Macy152
A good therapist, shares control with everything present, sometimes moving deeply into the unfolding
action, sometimes waiting quietly as the other does inner work, surfing gracefully the changing
amplitudes of intimacy. —R.K.
From the perspective of mutuality, our part in the client’s process is basically to assist in the
client’s self-study. We do not need to see ourselves as directors of the process. When we don’t, a
new kind of relationship can emerge, one of mutual influences. Our respect for the healing power
that lies within the client gives rise to the client feeling free to go inside and feel what’s next for
her. The client’s sense of safety and freedom allows her to consider our suggestions and ideas
without the need to defend against being manipulated. Her respect for our suggestions makes our
adjustments to her spontaneous behaviors simple and generally successful.
Not a Lot, But Enough
152
Macy, Joanna (1991) Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of
Natural Systems. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Page xi.

Beauty is a very successful criterion for choosing the right theory. …. a beautiful or elegant theory is
more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. Why on earth could that be so? — Murray
Gell-Mann153
I always tell the students that it’s easy to have a complicated idea, but it’s very, very hard to have a
simple idea. Often, that means thinking about them in new ways, that aren’t just the way everybody
else is thinking about them.— Carver Mead154
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction — John Maeda155
Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler — Albert Einstein156
According to Occam's razor, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the most
likely to be true. A description of the method can be made simple. However, as Mead points out,
doing that is “very, very hard”. He talks about thinking in new ways. That is certainly what I’ve
attempted to do with my ideas about method. Given the complexities of human interactions and
healing, what I’ve written below is the best I can do. …. So far.
The simplicity of the method isn’t obvious to naïve witnesses. It resides in the learned behavior of
the accomplished practitioner. Being simple doesn’t mean it’s not creative and flexible. On the
contrary, simplicity is the source of its power and creativity. For example, When the harmonic
structure of a piece of music is simple, the melody lends itself most easily to improvisation.157
When a player knows that structure completely, he can. He need not think about it.
Learn simple things first and learn them to perfection.—Kevin Kelley158
It’s the same with the process. When you ground yourself in the basics, no conscious thought is
needed for its implementation. Learning the signs and steps that constitute the process and
learning them to perfection is the beginning of excellence. Then, the work is easy, creativity
becomes possible and brings delight, and consistent success.
Here are twelve essential elements of the process. Good things to practice to perfection:
(1) being and staying in loving presence.
(2) tracking, be continuously awareness of the client’s present experience.
(3) making contact statements, short, non-invasive statements that name the client’s
present experience you’ve been tracking.
(4) watching for indicators, habitual verbal and nonverbal expressions which could be
expressions of implicit beliefs and adaptations.
(5) mentally modeling the client’s mind.159
(6) helping to establish and supporting mindfulness in the client.
(7) creating and doing experiments using indicators and good guesses.
153
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/194
154
http://web.mit.edu/invent/a-winners/a-mead.html
155
President of Rhode Island School of Design
156
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins103652.html
157
A tune like Autumn Leaves is like that. There must be at least fifty jazz versions of it that have been
recorded. I have 32 versions myself.
158
Kelley, Kevin, (1994). Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic
World. New York: Perseus Books Group
159
Mental modeling is what we’re doing when we use external signs to get ideas about what the other
person is feeling or thinking at the moment, or when we get ideas or make guesses about his or her history,
adaptations and beliefs. Tracking for the client’s present experience is one example.

(8) studying and using the outcomes of experiments. There may be several
possible directions to take, given different kinds of outcomes, primarily by:
(9) following: using the client’s spontaneous behavior to move the process forward.
(10) being silent when the client needs time to be inside, e.g. when integration is happening.
(11) supporting the client’s healing process by recognizing its emergence and the
spontaneous integration which normally accompanies it and by providing comforting,
periods of silence, and when needed, containment.
(12) creating the missing experience by providing opportunities for the client to
experience the emotions and realizations that were not possible within the client’s old
beliefs and adaptations.
Here are some guidelines for the twelve elements:
(1) Loving Presence
a. search for something in the client that inspires warm feelings.
b. avoid asking questions or…
c. having an ordinary conversation.
d. stay relaxed and stay focused on the aspects that inspire.
e. allow your demeanor to be shaped by your warm feelings
(2) Tracking
a. make a habit of constantly noticing signs of the client’s present experience.
b. be especially observant of when the client’s experience changes.
c. be especially observant of signs of emotions rising.
d. watch the whole body.
e. watch for gestures, facial expressions, shifts in posture, nervous movements.
f. listen for attitudes expressed in the tone of voice
g. watch for gestures that can be seen as “unconscious comments” on what’s being
discussed. A simple example is a shrug of the shoulders.
(3) Contact Statements
a. make them as short as possible. For example, “sad, huh”.
b. your tone should be such that it says, “I’m open to being corrected.” That’s what the
“huh” is about. It’s half way between a statement and a question.
c. make a contact statement whenever the client’s experience changes significantly.
d. make a contact statement when you notice the first signs of an emotion arising.
e. don’t make a lot of contact statements, only enough to establish in the client’s mind that
you’re generally aware of what he or she is experiencing. Too many can become
annoying for the client.
f. although you may occasionally contact the ideas the client is presenting, it’s best not to
do too much of this; it encourages thinking, explaining and storytelling.
(4) Watching for Indicators
a. indicators are: habitual verbal and nonverbal outward expressions which could be
outward expressions of adaptations and implicit beliefs.
b. watch for these habitual behaviors, like the resting facial expression, or a repeated
gesture.
c. find the ones you already know about or those that seem most interesting to you.
d. again, watch the whole body, especially habits of posture, facial expression, and tone
of voice

(5) Modeling the Client’s Mind
a. from the indicators, make some guesses about what beliefs, implicit beliefs, adaptations
to early situations, history, thinking—all the internal structuring that influences the
client’s experiences.
b. possibly make a contact-like statement naming your guesses about your ideas.
c. frame these guesses as sources for experiments.
d. come up with an idea for an experiment.
e. once you’ve picked an indicator to work with, ask the client if he or she is willing to do
an experiment.
f. if yes, go into…
(6) Establishing Mindfulness
a. generally, you only have to do this with a first –time client. When you’ve worked with
someone for a while, the person should be able to go right into mindfulness when asked.
b. you should speak in a slightly hypnotic way, softly and slowly emphasizing non-action
and attention to the flow of present experience.
c. there are signs in the client’s demeanor that indicate mindfulness. Chief among these is
the movement up and down of the eyeball under closed lids.
d. other signs are: little movement, easy breathing, very relaxed look.
e. once mindfulness is established, set up and do the experiment.
(7) Doing the experiment.
a. ask permission and set it up.
b. if it needs explaining, describe the client’s role.
c. use phrases like, “if you’re ready” and “please notice” and “tell me what happens
when…”
d. do the experiment
e. ask for the outcome, if it’s not obvious or offered.
f. track for the outcome.
(8) Studying and using the outcomes of experiments.
a. there may be several possible directions to take, given different kinds of outcomes.
b. if the client seems confused, you might want to repeat the experiment.
c. if the reaction is obvious, make a contact statement.
d. if the client has his or her eyes closed, wait for the client to speak first.
e. if the reaction is sadness, have an assistant offer to put a hand on the client.
f. if there’s no reaction, contact that and wait for the client to speak.
g. if the reaction is tension, do the tension sequence.
h. if the reaction is an impulse that’s not executed, take over the holding back.
i. be inventive!
(9) Following and using the client’s spontaneous behaviors.
a. when something spontaneous arises for the client, especially if it is conscious and
surprising to the client, find a way to use it.
b. consider these spontaneous behaviors as signals from the adaptive unconscious.
c. following is a general principle in moving the process forward. An example is making
contact statements when the client’s present experience is changing. In that case, after
the contact statement, it’s usually a good idea to wait to see what the client says and
does, and use that to move forward.
d. following requires a habit of often remaining silent and waiting to see what direction the
client takes.

e. following is an example of having faith in the client’s healing process.
(10) Being Silent when the client needs time to be inside, e.g. when integration is happening
a. an especially important time to be silent is when the client is integrating a new
experience.
b. signs of this are: closed eyes, movements in the face that suggest internal dialog.
c. nodding of the head is especially important as it signals understanding.
d. be waiting with your focus on the client when his or her eyes finally open.
e. silence creates spaciousness and signals the client that you will give her the time she
needs to study her thoughts, memories and experiences, without your needing to
interrupt or control her process.
f. silence, like following, is a way to honor the client’s healing process.
(11) Supporting the Client’s Healing Process by recognizing its emergence and the
spontaneous integration which normally accompanies it and by providing comforting,
periods of silence, and when needed, containment.
a. stay as calm and focused as you can and leave space by being silent when the client is
processing emotions.
b. use touch. I have assistants touch and/or hold the client, usually without speaking.
c. containment, like taking over bodily contraction during the experience of fear, is another
way to support the healing process.
d. if there is a strong sense in the client of her own inner child being present, you can work
directly with the child. Do what any compassionate and skillful adult would do to help it
understand, calm down, feel cared for, and give it time to recover and integrate.
e. sometimes soothing and calming sounds or words will help.
f. it is important to follow the client’s spontaneous behaviors during the healing phase.
(12) Creating the Missing Experience by providing opportunities for the client to
experience the emotions and realizations that were not possible within the client’s old
beliefs and adaptations.
a. As part of the healing process and integration, it may be useful to create an experience
for the client that was not possible before the implicit beliefs, memories and adaptations
were became conscious. For example, an experience of others being patient, paying
attention, or not being judgmental or wanting something can be new to the client.
b. you can use assistants or a whole group if they’re available to offer nourishing statements
that were automatically rejected before and are now accepted and evoking good feelings.
c. sometimes it can be support for something the client does or says, like people smiling or
clapping or joining in.
d. the criterion for success here is the enjoyment and pleasure the client feels when these
things are done.
e. it may only need five or ten minutes of this to have a permanent effect.

Appendix IV References and Quotes on The Unconscious
1. References:
a. A few examples from Who’s Minding the Mind160
the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than
previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs
that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it
chooses.
we’re finding that we have these unconscious behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing
suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is considering and often acting on those,
all before conscious awareness.”
Dr. Bargh added: “Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and
sometimes they’re not.”
“Sometimes non-conscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones,” Dr. Schaller said,
“because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”
The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious
one.161
b. From Strangers to Ourselves162
A picture has emerged of a set of pervasive, adaptive, sophisticated mental processes that occur largely out of
view. Indeed, some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that the unconscious mind does virtually all the
work and that conscious will may be an illusion.
…the modern view of the adaptive unconscious is that a lot of the interesting stuff about the human
mind—judgments, feelings, motives—occur outside of awareness for reasons of efficiency, and not because
of repression. Just as the architecture of the mind prevents low-level processing (e.g. perceptual processes)
from reaching consciousness, so are many higher-order psychological processes and states inaccessible.
c. From Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World163
We do not perceive the object in front of our eyes until the brain has made unconscious inferences
abut what that object may be. We are not aware of the action we are about to perform until the
brain has made an unconscious choice about what that action should be.
d. From The Itch164
Such findings open up a fascinating prospect: perhaps many patients whom doctors treat as having a nerve
injury or a disease have, instead, what might be called sensor syndromes. When your car’s dashboard warning
light keeps telling you that there is an engine failure, but the mechanics can’t find anything wrong, the sensor
itself may be the problem. This is no less true for human beings. Our sensations of pain, itch, nausea, and
fatigue are normally protective. Unmoored from physical reality, however, they can become a nightmare.
e. From The Unbearable Automaticity of Being165
160
Carey, Benedict (July 31, 2007) Who’s Minding the Mind? The New York Times Company,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?th&emc=th
161
ibid
162
163
ISBN-10: 1405160225, ISBN-13: 978-1405160223
164
Gawande, Atul (June 30, 2008) The Itch, in The New Yorker Magazine.

….none put it so vividly as the philosopher A. N. Whitehead: “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by
all copy-books and by eminent people making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we
are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which
we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle–they are
strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”
f. From i of the vortex166
…the nervous system’s overall mode of operation…attempts at all times to increase its computational
efficiency while lowering its computational overhead.167
Comforting or disturbing, the fact is that we are basically dreaming machines that construct virtual
models of the real world. It is probably as much as we can do with only one and a half pounds of
mass and a ‘dim’ power consumption of 14 watts.168
g. From Damasio169
All living organisms from the humble amoeba to the human are born with devices designed to solve
automatically, no proper reasoning required, the basic problems of life.
Appendix V. The Process for Clients and Students
Information Offered to Prospective Clients:

If you’re thinking about becoming a client of a Hakomi therapist, this short description
will acquaint you with the method and what you may experience.
Here’s What You Need to Know about the Method:
Hakomi is based on the idea that much of our everyday suffering is in fact unnecessary and is
produced by unconscious beliefs that are no longer relevant, true or necessary. The method is
designed to bring such beliefs into consciousness. Hakomi is a method of assisted self-study and
discovery. It can bring normally inaccessible mental processes into consciousness gently and
efficiently. Once these mental processes (such as beliefs memories, habits and emotions) are made
conscious, they can be examined and modified to provide a more realistic and satisfying way of
being. This work of assisted self-discovery requires of clients that they can enter into short periods
(a minute or less) of mindfulness. Because of this, clients must be able to become calm and
centered enough to observe their own reactions, as if they were observing the automatic behavior
of another person.
The therapist pays very close attention to your nonverbal behaviors, such as your tone of voice,
movements, gestures, posture, facial expressions and micro expressions. By observing these, the
therapist gets ideas about what unconscious material is controlling your automatic, unconscious
behaviors. On the basis of those ideas, the therapist creates little experiments, often just a
statement, that are done while your are in a mindful state. These little experiments often elicit
clear reactions, often emotional ones. These reactions are the links to the unconscious mental
processes that create them. When a reaction is evoked, moments later, memories, beliefs and
associations emerge which will help you make sense of the reaction. Once beliefs and memories
are in consciousness, they are examined and modified.
165
http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/trivia/Bargh.pdf p.3
166
167
i of the vortex, pg. 254
168
In i of the vortex, Chapters 3 & 8.
169
Damasio, A. 2003, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain

What to Expect: This method is not about talking out your problems. It won’t be a long,
speculative conversation about your troubles or your emotional history. It is our belief that your
emotional history, the part of it that has created the unconscious beliefs and habits with which
you meet the world, is operating right now. Your history is written in the way you do things every
minute. It is expressed by your style and your defining characteristics. So, you can expect that the
therapist will be looking and listening for these and will bring them to your attention as part of
setting up the little experiments in mindfulness that are the core of the work.
The therapist will also be very warm and kind and patient. The vulnerability that mindfulness
entails, the openness to unconscious material that’s needed, all require a very safe environment,
which needs a particularly caring, non-judgmental person. You can expect your therapist to be
exactly that.
You can also expect the work to bring up intense emotions at times. At those moments, your
therapist will work to contain the process, provide comfort and help you understand what’s
happening.
Because the method is based on this very direct route to unconscious material (evocative
experiments in mindfulness), it is faster than most other methods. It works very directly with
nonverbal expressions and does not spend a lot of time in conversation, analyzing and explaining.
Something significant usually happens every session.
What You Need to be Ready: It helps if: (1) you can stay with and report on your present
experiences; (2) you can study your reactions to experiments in mindfulness; (3) you can stay
focused on your present experience; (4) You’re able to get into a calm inward focused state and
are relaxed enough to allow reactions; (5) you’re willing to experience some painful feelings and
speak about them. It also helps if you don’t need to ask a lot of questions or feel like you must
solve problems, explain yourself, justify your actions, have a conversation. And you’ll need the
courage and be open and honest. That will be your greatest ally.
The Rewards: There are many. Relief from persistent painful emotions and behaviors is probably
the greatest reward. And you will gain a much deeper understanding of yourself and with that,
more freedom to choose what you’ll be able to feel, greater pleasure in everyday living, and to
engage in fuller richer more rewarding relationships. Assisted self-study can achieve all that.
Information Offered to Prospective Students
If you’re considering becoming a student in a Hakomi Training or a client of a Hakomi Therapist
this short description will acquaint you with the method and what you may experience.
Here’s What You Need to Know About the Method:
Hakomi is based on the idea that much of our everyday suffering is in fact unnecessary and is
produced by long held, unconscious beliefs that are no longer true or relevant. The method is
designed to bring such beliefs into consciousness. It’s not about people talking out their problems.
We don’t have long, speculative conversations with people about their troubles or history. A
person’s emotional history—especially the part that has created the unconscious habits and beliefs
with which that person meets his or her world—that history is operating right now. It is written in
the way the person does things now, his style, his defining characteristics. We use those things to
help the person study who he or she is. Hakomi is a method of assisted self-discovery. A Hakomi
practitioner brings what are normally inaccessible mental processes—like implicit beliefs and
habitual rules and attitudes—into consciousness in a gentle, efficient way. Once these processes
are made conscious, emotional relief and revision of beliefs becomes possible. Old, painful
experiences are integrated. Beliefs and habits are examined and modified. A more realistic and
satisfying way of being begins.

As practitioners, we pay very close attention to the way a person does things. The information
needed for the method to work is contained in nonconscious, nonverbal aspects of behavior, such
as tone of voice, movements, gestures, posture and facial expressions. By observing these, we get
ideas about what unconscious processes are controlling a person’s behavior. On the basis of these
ideas and we create little experiments (often only a simple evocative statement170) done with the
person in a mindful state. (This method of self-study requires short periods of mindfulness.
Participants must be able to be calm and centered enough to observe their reactions.) Effective
experiments elicit clear reactions, often emotional ones. These reactions are the links to the
unconscious mental processes organizing them. These reactions are the necessary prelude to the
integration and positive emotional outcomes achieved by the method.
What to Expect: The teaching method is similar to the therapy method. You can expect teaching
to be primarily experiential. There will be short lectures, discussions, and demonstrations, but
mostly, the group will do exercises designed to convey the ideas being presented in practical,
experiential way. These exercises sometimes bring up emotions, sometimes, very strong ones. In
those situations, the trainer and the assistants know how to guide and support the process.
Overall, you can expect that you will change in much the same way you would change being a
client rather than a student.
What You Need to be Ready: You need to be ready to be with your own present experience.
Your reactions to the exercises, some of which are done in mindfulness, need to be studied and
reported to your small group partners. You need to be comfortable learning in this way, with your
whole body, mind and spirit. You need to be able to stay focused on experience and you need to
be ready to go into a calm, inward focused, accepting state, to let things happen that you might
normally contain or avoid. You have to be willing to experience some painful emotions. These are
your challenges.
There is almost no homework, although it is highly recommended that you read about the work
and practice what you’ve learned, either with your fellow students or with people not in the
training. The more you practice, the better.
The difference between an expert and a novice is that a novice hasn't acquired the schemas of an
expert. Learning requires a change in the schematic structures of long term memory and is
demonstrated by performance that progresses from clumsy, error-prone, slow and difficult to smooth
and effortless. The change in performance occurs because as the learner becomes increasingly familiar
with the material, the cognitive characteristics associated with the material are altered so that it can be
handled more efficiently by working memory.171
The Rewards: You will learn a modern, effective scientific approach to helping people change.
You will gain a deeper understanding of yourself and others and greater freedom to choose what
you will do and feel. You will find greater pleasure in everyday living and will be able to develop
richer, happier relationships.
End of Reader
170
Such statements are always potentially nourishing, never hurtful or discouraging.
171
From the Cognitive Load Theory article mentioned in footnote 11.

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© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 1

Reproduction, in part or in full, without written permission by

A good therapist, shares control with everything present—sometimes moving deeply

2 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 3

4 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

There will be time, there will be time

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 5

6 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

The Nature of Mind6

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 7

8 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

Helping Clients Become Conscious

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 9

10 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 11

12 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

How Amazingly Unconscious We Are

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 13

14 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

Wilson tells us:

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 15

16 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 17

18 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

Belief and Implicit Belief

We Are Such Stuff…”

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 19

Implicit Beliefs as Rules

20 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 21

22 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

Mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Self-study

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 23

How to Get into Mindfulness and What it Feels Like

How Mindfulness is Used in Evoking Reactions

24 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 25

Musings on the Self

26 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 27

Section II. The Method

28 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 29

An Outline of the Method

30 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 31

32 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 33

Recent Thinking That Has Refined the Method

34 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

© 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc. 35

1. Loving Presence Search & Enter State (Maintain Throughout)

2. Indicators Find One to Use

3. Modeling Guess About Meaning

4. Experiment 1 Decide How to Use the Indicator

5. Experiment 2 Create & Implement

6. Outcomes Healing Process or New Information

Follow & Support Back to Modeling ••

7. Complete Create a Missing Experience

36 © 2009 Ron Kurtz Trainings, Inc.

2. develop a healing relationship