What is Hakomi Therapy? - Steps to Start, Effectiveness & Benefits

Nowadays, lifestyle changes are very common, which cause mental imbalances in daily life. Hence, though every situation cannot be handled properly without medical help, some of them can be. However, people need to be focused and practice mindfulness to achieve that control. Hakomi therapy is an example of helpful assistance for gaining mindfulness and being streamlined in daily life. Keep scrolling to know more about this therapy and its benefits.

The Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy was developed by Ron Kurtz, which is a body-centric approach with somatic awareness and experiential techniques. This psychotherapy helps to enhance the growth and transformation of your mind. The core principles of Hakomi therapy are as follows:

• Mind-Body Integration: Mind-body integration refers to the correlation of body and mind to form a perfect balance. This correlation is also very important to build individuals' perceptions and enhance their capabilities to align with the outside world. Hakomi therapy thus improves the mind and body relationship for every individual so that they get better exposure to the world.
• Mindfulness: Mindfulness refers to staying focused on the inner self. Therefore, it helps build concentration power and recognise one’s true self. Further, mindfulness effectively strengthens cognitive power and the ability to think differently and identify motivating sensations from the inside.
• Organicity: This is one of the most important aspects of Hakomi therapy, where therapists boost people’s organic mental capabilities. Hakomi therapists believe that human beings can control and self-heal from different adverse situations. Therefore, they just assist their clients in healing themselves most naturally.
• Nonviolence: Hakomi therapy is the most natural way of healing a person’s mental ailments. Here nonviolence means not using any method during the therapy that forces the patients. Instead, the therapy takes time and allows patients to reduce all their mental issues by themselves, naturally and effectively.
• Unity: Unity refers to the combined ability of the interdependent parts of a person. Hakomi therapy helps to make a connection between all of these parts so that the combined power makes up the whole person optimally.

Hakomi therapy is a very effective and natural way of healing mental disorders. Therefore people who face the following issues can opt for Hakomi psychotherapy:

• Trauma
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Chronic pain
• PTSD
• Relationship issues
• Sexual issues

This therapy is apt for treating any mental disorder with its unique healing process. Therefore, people can seek help from Hakomi therapy to reduce any mental ailments most naturally by self-organising and self-awakening.

Hakomi therapy involves different techniques to solve mental issues; however, they may vary from patient to patient. The effective methods of Hakomi psychotherapy are listed below:

• Contact: This technique aims at creating a safe environment for the client. At the beginning of this procedure, the therapist needs to create a comfortable environment so the client can open up easily. Moreover, it is also important to generate willingness among the patients to talk about their issues.
• Accessing: In this stage, the therapists help the patients to attain mindfulness. This process helps bring out the beliefs that exist unconsciously in mind. The therapist will help the patients to think about their beliefs and state their feelings.
• Processing: At this stage, therapists go deeper into the patients’ thoughts to create new experiences. Therapists work on reducing somatic experiences by analysing the visualisation and sensations of the patients. In addition, they create self-awareness in patients with different ‘experiments’. In a comfortable environment, with the proper therapeutic alliance, the patient will likely answer the questions properly.
• Integration: Lastly, the therapist accumulates all of the patient’s senses, finds the root cause of the mental trouble and helps the patient to create new experiences. The integration stage helps the patient to think differently about the newfound knowledge and implement that beneficially in the outside world.

As discussed earlier, Hakomi therapy is helpful for treating different mental disorders. Apart from that, this body-centric treatment can help in:

• Gaining knowledge of spiritualism.
• Being good at parenting.
• Effectively handling family dynamics.
• Learning multiculturalism.
• Improving potential in business management.

The benefits of Hakomi therapy worth mentioning are as follows:

• Creates Body-Awareness: Hakomi Therapy is a body-centred treatment which involves different techniques to release trauma and stress from the patients. Therefore, it also creates awareness about stress points in the body and helps them learn how to hold or release tension from these areas.
• Helps to Create Comfort: Hakomi therapy uses the touch method to calm the sensations of patients. Therefore, it helps to make patients comfortable with their surroundings. Further, it is more beneficial for patients who have experienced trauma as it will help them to restore connections with the outer world.
• Helps in Creating Therapeutic Alliance: The therapy effectively builds the relationship between patients and therapists. Further, this connection will also help them to come at ease with the real world. In addition, the therapy is beneficial for making the patients feel more present.

Hakomi therapy is still in the research process. Therefore, the limited reports can hardly speak for its effectiveness. However, the basic research shows that its body-centric approach is helpful for patients with anxiety disorder, ADHD, and depression. Furthermore, research also says that Hakomi therapy can help treat people with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. In addition, this treatment also gives beneficial results for reducing insomnia and unnecessary guilt.

Hakomi therapy can help people with mental disorders heal their minds naturally. Hence, to prepare them for this, Hakomi therapists help in many ways. The treatment procedure they follow is discussed below:

Step 1: If you want Hakomi therapy, you should search for a Hakomi Institute and not opt for any random practitioner.

Step 2: Remember your boundaries and personal limitations and let your therapist know them.

Step 3: At the very beginning, therapists try to build a comfortable environment through care and acceptance, called a ‘loving presence’.

Step 4: The therapist will try to understand the main ailment that is troubling you and how it shapes your thought process. You will be asked to focus on your body and mind and express your feelings. Therefore, the whole process becomes an excellent instance of enhancing mindfulness.

Step 5: The therapist will continue asking you questions and notice the changes in your body and make you aware of them so that you can get knowledge about your own experiences.

Step 6: By taking your consent, therapists will also use the touch method to help you heal from the inside. Touching and providing mental aid will make you more connected with reality.

Hence, it is advisable to choose a therapist who can treat your problem effectively. For example, a Hakomi practitioner who is going to help people with depression should be well-trained in handling depression.

Hakomi therapy is based on the therapeutic alliance; therefore, it also depends on how quickly a patient starts accepting the treatment procedure. Further, the session duration depends on the patient’s progress, as different people need different times to adapt to the course of treatment. The sessions follow a sequence of contact, accessing, processing and integration, so the duration depends on all these factors.

Hakomi therapy treats patients with a very personal approach. Therefore, you should check your comfort level at the very beginning of the process. Further, you should consider only those practitioners who have received proper training in Hakomi therapy. The things you should check before opting for a Hakomi therapist are:

• Specialisation in treating different issues.
• A valid licence.
• Comfortable and friendly nature.
• Educational qualifications.
• Experience certificate in Hakomi therapy.

Further, you should also check the cost of the treatment and whether it will be beneficial to treat your problem with this unique approach.

Hakomi therapy can be a helpful treatment for those who have undergone a lot but cannot express themselves in a therapy session. This method is helpful in building a better relationship between therapist and patient; therefore, it is more patient-friendly and natural. Further, this treatment is noteworthy for dealing with traumatic experiences, removing them and restoring normal relationships with the real world.