Healing with Hakomi Therapy: Connecting to Your Body's Innate Wisdom
Over the past two years, I’ve been training in Hakomi Therapy, a mindfulness-based somatic therapy. I’ve had many questions about what this type of therapy involves. Here is an introduction on the topic:
What is Hakomi Therapy?
Hakomi Therapy is a gentle yet powerful form of experiential psychotherapy that combines mindfulness and somatic techniques to heal attachment wounds and developmental trauma.
It offers a gentle approach leading to lasting and profound results by honouring the natural healing processes of the mind and body.
The Five Principles of Hakomi Therapy:
Mindfulness: Real change comes from awareness, not effort. Through a state of relaxed, non-judgmental awareness, we can access and gently explore the root causes of your habitual feelings and behaviours.
Nonviolence: The therapeutic process is guided without imposing our perceptions or preferences. We embrace and support your defences, allowing them to naturally soften and reveal their wisdom.
Mind-Body Integration: Your beliefs about yourself and the world are reflected in your body. By working with somatic material like movements and posture, we can uncover and transform your limiting core beliefs.
Unity: We see you as a whole system composed of interdependent parts. Healing involves supporting these parts to communicate and function harmoniously at all levels—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Organicity: Trusting your natural process, we support your inner healing impulse, allowing for organic growth towards wholeness.
Although not an official principle, Loving Presence is also central to Hakomi. It emphasises the therapist’s compassionate and open stance, fostering a deep connection that enhances therapeutic success.
Hakomi Therapy is a gentle psychotherapy approach that honours the natural healing processes of the mind and body, offering deep, often rapid and transformational results.
What are the benefits of Hakomi Therapy?
Experiential: Hakomi goes beyond talk therapy to provide deep, transformative experiences. It embraces the belief that you need an experience, not just an explanation.
Mindfulness-Centred: Utilises mindfulness to explore your core patterns, traumas, and somatic indicators. This approach helps you cultivate a compassionate, self-observing presence, making unconscious patterns more accessible.
Transformational: Makes unconscious patterns conscious, allowing for profound change. By bringing your early formative experiences into awareness, Hakomi helps transform the habits that create disharmony in your relationships and inner life.
Safe and Attuned: Builds a healing relationship through sensitivity, attunement, and compassion. The therapeutic process is guided without imposing perceptions or preferences, ensuring a safe space for your deep healing.
Body-Centred: Engages with your body’s wisdom through somatic interventions. By working with your habitual movements, gestures, and postures, Hakomi reveals and transforms limiting core beliefs that are expressed unconsciously.
Hakomi Therapy offers you a compassionate, insightful path to healing and personal growth. Whether you're looking to heal attachment wounds, address developmental trauma, or simply deepen your self-understanding, Hakomi can guide you towards a more harmonious and fulfilling life.
In my work, I incorporate the principles of Hakomi Therapy. Are you curious to explore art and somatic therapy for your mental health and well-being? Book in for a free 15-minute intro call with me here.
