What if the deepest truths about yourself—your core beliefs, wounds, and patterns—aren't just stored in your thoughts, but held in your body? What if accessing and transforming these patterns required not analyzing or talking about them, but entering a state of mindful presence and following the body's subtle signals?

This is the essence of the Hakomi Method, a body-centered psychotherapy approach developed by Ron Kurtz in the 1970s. Combining mindfulness, neuroscience, systems theory, and a deep respect for the wisdom of the body, Hakomi offers a uniquely gentle yet profound approach to healing.

Unlike traditional talk therapy that relies primarily on verbal processing, or exposure-based approaches that can feel overwhelming, Hakomi works by helping you enter mindful states where unconscious material naturally emerges through the body—then meeting what arises with compassion, curiosity, and the missing experiences needed for healing.

If you're drawn to somatic approaches, find traditional therapy too cognitive, or sense that your deepest patterns are held beneath conscious awareness, the Hakomi Method might offer the experiential, body-centered healing you're seeking.

What Is the Hakomi Method?

The Hakomi Method is an experiential, somatic (body-centered) psychotherapy that uses mindfulness to access and transform core beliefs, implicit memories, and unconscious organizing principles. It's profoundly gentle yet remarkably effective at reaching material that verbal therapy often cannot touch.

The Name: Hakomi

"Hakomi" is a Hopi word that Ron Kurtz discovered, meaning "How do you stand in relation to these many realms?" or more simply, "Who are you?"

This question—"Who are you, really?"—sits at the heart of the method. Not who you think you are, or who you were told to be, but who you are beneath the adaptive layers, in your essential nature.

Core Principles: The Foundation

Hakomi is guided by five core principles that shape every aspect of the work:

1. Mindfulness

The foundation of everything. Hakomi uses mindfulness not just as a practice but as the primary state in which therapeutic work happens. In mindfulness, you can observe your experience without being swept away by it, allowing unconscious patterns to surface.

2. Nonviolence (Ahimsa)

Deeply compassionate and gentle. The work never forces, pushes, or overwhelms. Everything proceeds at the client's pace, with constant attention to safety and readiness. The therapist follows, not leads.

This isn't weakness—it's profound respect for the psyche's natural wisdom and timing.

3. Mind-Body-Spirit Integration

Wholeness is assumed. You're not just a mind to be fixed or a body to be healed—you're an integrated system where mind, body, emotions, and spirit are inseparable. Hakomi works with the whole person.

4. Organicity (Self-Organization)

You have innate healing wisdom. Like a seed that knows how to become a tree, you have an inherent capacity to heal and organize toward wholeness. The therapist's role is to create conditions for this natural process, not to direct it.

5. Unity

Everything is interconnected. You're not separate from your environment, relationships, or the larger web of existence. Healing happens in relationship and recognizes these connections.

These principles aren't just philosophy—they guide every intervention, creating a therapeutic space that feels profoundly safe, respectful, and honoring.

The Core Concept: Core Material

At the heart of Hakomi is the concept of core material—the unconscious beliefs, memories, and organizing principles formed (usually in childhood) that shape how you experience yourself, others, and the world.

What Is Core Material?

Core material includes:

  • Core beliefs: "I'm not lovable," "The world is dangerous," "I must be perfect to be accepted"
  • Implicit memories: Pre-verbal or traumatic experiences stored in the body
  • Organizing principles: The unconscious rules that govern how you relate and behave
  • Somatic patterns: How beliefs are held in your body—tension, collapse, bracing

Characteristics of core material:

  • Largely unconscious—you don't choose these beliefs; they operate automatically
  • Formed in early relationships and significant experiences
  • Held in the body, not just the mind
  • Shape perception, behavior, and relationships
  • Feel like "the truth" about reality
  • Resist change through normal conscious effort

Example: A child whose parent was unpredictably angry might develop:

  • Core belief: "I'm never safe. I must always be vigilant."
  • Somatic pattern: Chronic tension, hypervigilance, shallow breathing
  • Organizing principle: "Scan for danger. Don't relax."
  • Relationship pattern: Difficulty trusting, expecting others to become angry

Years later, this adult may feel anxious in relationships, tense in their body, and not understand why—because the core material operates outside awareness.

Why Core Material Matters

These unconscious patterns:

  • Drive automatic reactions you later regret
  • Create self-fulfilling prophecies (you expect rejection, so you act in ways that create it)
  • Limit your capacity for joy, connection, and authentic expression
  • Keep you stuck in familiar painful patterns
  • Feel like "just who I am" rather than learned adaptations

Traditional cognitive therapy tries to change these through conscious thought. This can help, but often doesn't reach the deepest layers because core material is:

  • Pre-verbal or non-verbal
  • Held somatically (in the body)
  • Implicit (unconscious)

Hakomi accesses core material through the body in mindfulness—where it actually lives.

The Hakomi Process: How It Works

Hakomi unfolds organically, but there's a general structure to sessions. The work is collaborative, gentle, and follows the client's natural process.

Phase 1: Establishing Contact and Safety

The beginning: Before any deep work, the therapist establishes a relationship characterized by warmth, presence, and safety.

The therapist is:

  • Fully present and attuned
  • Genuinely curious and caring
  • Non-judgmental and accepting
  • Tracking your verbal and nonverbal signals

This creates the "safe harbor" from which exploration can happen. Without safety, mindfulness leads to guarding, not opening.

What this looks like:

  • Checking in about your experience
  • Noticing how you sit, breathe, hold yourself
  • Reflecting back what's observed: "I notice your shoulders are up by your ears"
  • Creating rapport through resonance and attunement

Phase 2: Accessing Mindfulness

The foundation of Hakomi work: The therapist helps you enter a state of mindful awareness—present, curious, observing your internal experience without judgment.

This isn't the mindfulness of daily meditation practice—it's a specialized therapeutic mindfulness:

  • Eyes usually closed or softly focused
  • Attention turned inward to body sensations, feelings, images
  • A quality of gentle curiosity, not striving
  • Observing experience as it arises, without trying to change it

How it's facilitated:

  • "Take a moment to turn your attention inside..."
  • "Notice what you're aware of right now in your body..."
  • "Just be curious about whatever's there..."
  • "You don't need to do anything, just notice..."

Why mindfulness matters: In this state, your usual mental chatter and defenses soften. The body can reveal what it's holding. Core material becomes accessible.

Phase 3: Creating Contact with the Present Experience

Once in mindfulness, you establish contact with your present experience:

The therapist might ask:

  • "What do you notice in your body right now?"
  • "Where do you feel that?"
  • "What's the quality of that sensation?"

You might notice:

  • Tension in shoulders
  • Tightness in chest
  • Heaviness in belly
  • Warmth in heart
  • Constriction in throat

The work: Not changing the sensation, just being with it. Tracking it. Letting it reveal what it has to say.

Example:

  • Therapist: "What do you notice in your shoulders?"
  • Client: "They're really tight, like I'm holding something heavy."
  • Therapist: "Stay with that... holding something heavy... what's that like?"
  • Client: [pause] "Like I can't put it down. Like I always have to be ready."
  • Core material emerging: A belief about needing to be vigilant, unable to relax.

Phase 4: Probes and Experiments

The heart of Hakomi: Once you're in mindfulness and tracking an experience, the therapist introduces probes—words, touch, or actions designed to evoke the core material.

A probe is an experiment to see what happens when certain stimuli are introduced while you're in mindful awareness.

Types of probes:

Verbal Probes

The therapist offers words or phrases while you remain in mindfulness, noticing your internal response.

Example: Testing a belief about worthiness

  • Client is in mindfulness, tracking sadness and heaviness
  • Therapist says gently: "You matter."
  • Client notices their response: Do they soften? Resist? Feel tears? Contract?

The response reveals the core belief:

  • If they soften and tears come: The words touch a deep need
  • If they tighten or feel nothing: A belief blocks receiving ("No, I don't matter")
  • If they feel skeptical: "That can't be true" belief is active

The probe isn't meant to convince—it's meant to evoke and reveal what's there.

Taking Over

The therapist physically takes over a tension pattern the client is holding.

Example: Held shoulders

  • Client's shoulders are chronically raised
  • Therapist (with permission) places hands on shoulders and gently supports the holding
  • Client relaxes and lets therapist hold the tension
  • Core material often emerges: "I can never let my guard down" or memories of needing to protect

When the body is given permission to release what it's been holding, what it's been protecting often emerges.

Contact Statements

Statements that name and acknowledge what's being experienced.

Example:

  • Client describes feeling small and scared
  • Therapist: "Something in you feels very young right now."
  • This acknowledgment often deepens the experience, allowing more to emerge

Nurturing Touch

With explicit permission, the therapist might offer supportive touch—a hand on the shoulder, holding a hand—while client is in mindfulness.

This can evoke:

  • Memories of being or not being comforted
  • Beliefs about deserving care
  • Ability or inability to receive support

All touch in Hakomi is:

  • Consensual
  • Appropriate
  • In service of revealing core material
  • Gentle and respectful

Phase 5: Accessing Core Material

When probes touch core material, something shifts:

  • Deeper emotions emerge (often grief, fear, young-feeling states)
  • Memories surface
  • Core beliefs become conscious
  • The body releases or intensifies holding patterns

What this looks like:

  • Tears and sadness when realizing "I was so alone"
  • Anger emerging about past mistreatment
  • A young part surfacing that feels small and scared
  • Relief and softening as tension releases
  • Clarity about a belief: "Oh, I've been living as if I'm not enough"

The therapist stays present, attuned, and supportive—tracking and naming what's emerging without directing it.

Phase 6: Processing and Integration

Once core material is accessed, the work becomes:

Missing Experience

What was needed but not received. Often, core material reflects deprivation—what should have been present but wasn't.

The therapist provides (or helps you provide yourself) the missing experience:

  • For "I don't matter": Genuine presence and validation
  • For "I'm not safe": Protective energy and boundaries
  • For "I must be perfect": Acceptance of imperfection
  • For "I'm alone": Companionship and attunement

Example:

  • Core material: "No one sees me" (emotional deprivation)
  • Therapist offers: Deep attunement, truly seeing and acknowledging the client
  • Client receives this, often with tears: "I've never felt so seen"
  • New neural pathway forms: "It's possible to be seen and accepted"

Transformation Through Experience

Core beliefs change not through argument but through new emotional and somatic experiences that contradict them.

The child part that learned "I'm not lovable" needs the felt experience of being loved, accepted, seen. This can happen through:

  • The therapeutic relationship itself
  • Guided imagery where protective figures are imagined
  • Self-compassion practices where adult self cares for child self
  • Somatic experiences of safety, support, strength

The body learns what the mind cannot: "I am lovable. I am safe. I am enough."

Phase 7: Integration and Completion

Sessions end with:

  • Coming out of mindfulness gradually
  • Reflecting on what emerged
  • Noticing how the body feels now (often more relaxed, spacious)
  • Acknowledging the courage of the work
  • Sometimes homework (noticing patterns, practices)

Integration continues between sessions as new neural pathways strengthen and old patterns loosen.

Hakomi Techniques and Practices

Tracking

What it is: The therapist closely observes verbal and nonverbal signals—posture, breathing, facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, energy.

Why it matters: The body reveals what's happening before words do. Tracking allows the therapist to follow the client's process precisely.

Example:

  • Client talks about being fine with something
  • Therapist notices shoulders rise, jaw tighten
  • Therapist: "I notice when you say that, something happens in your shoulders and jaw. What do you notice there?"
  • Core material: The tension reveals they're not actually fine—they're bracing against something

Tracking says: "I see you. I'm paying attention to all of you, not just your words."

Following the Flow

Organicity in action: The therapist follows where the client's process naturally wants to go, rather than having an agenda.

If the client:

  • Feels sadness → Follow the sadness
  • Notices sensation in chest → Explore the chest sensation
  • Has an image arise → Go into the image
  • Remembers something → Follow the memory

The wisdom of the psyche leads the way. The therapist is a skilled companion, not a director.

Accessing the Child State

Much core material was formed in childhood. Hakomi often involves contacting younger parts of yourself that still carry old beliefs and wounds.

This isn't regression—it's accessing an aspect of self that exists now, holding these patterns.

How it happens:

  • In mindfulness, memories or young-feeling states emerge
  • "How old do you feel right now?" (Client might say "Five" or "Very young")
  • The therapist relates to this young part with appropriate care
  • Missing experiences are provided to this part

This is similar to Internal Family Systems' Exiles—the wounded child parts that need healing.

Loving Presence

The therapeutic relationship itself is healing. The therapist's quality of presence—warm, accepting, non-judgmental, fully attentive—provides a new relational experience.

For clients who experienced:

  • Absence → Loving presence is corrective
  • Criticism → Acceptance is corrective
  • Intrusion → Respectful boundaries are corrective
  • Unpredictability → Consistent attunement is corrective

The relationship isn't just a context for techniques—it's a primary healing agent.

Completion

Uncompleted actions or expressions from the past want to complete.

Example:

  • A child who couldn't say "no" to abuse
  • In Hakomi, in mindfulness, they might spontaneously push away
  • The therapist supports this: "Yes, push. Show me how you want to push."
  • The action completes, the body releases, empowerment is felt

This is similar to Somatic Experiencing's completion of defensive responses.

Mindfulness in Hakomi: The Core State

Hakomi's use of mindfulness is unique—it's not insight meditation or present-moment awareness in daily life, but a specialized therapeutic state.

Characteristics of Hakomi Mindfulness

1. Inward Focus

  • Attention turns from outer world to inner experience
  • Eyes often closed or softly downcast
  • Awareness of body sensations, emotions, images, thoughts

2. Passive Observation

  • Not trying to change anything
  • Simply noticing what is
  • Curiosity without judgment

3. Deautomatization

  • Normal automatic responses slow down
  • You can observe reactions before they sweep you away
  • Space opens between stimulus and response

4. Slowed Down

  • Everything happens more slowly
  • Micro-moments can be observed
  • Subtle shifts become visible

5. Present-Centered

  • Attention on what's happening right now
  • Past and future recede
  • "What do you notice right now?"

Why This State Is Therapeutic

In mindfulness:

  • Defenses soften: You're not defending; you're observing
  • Core material becomes accessible: The body reveals what it's holding
  • New experiences can be received: You're open, not armored
  • Integration happens: New neural pathways form more readily

Without mindfulness, therapy often stays at the cognitive level—talking about problems rather than accessing and transforming the somatic patterns beneath.

Entering Mindfulness in Sessions

The therapist guides you:

"Take a moment... turn your attention inside... notice your breathing... let yourself just be curious about what's here right now... you don't need to change anything... just notice..."

With practice, you learn to access this state more easily—both in sessions and in daily life.

Working with Specific Issues

Trauma

Hakomi is profoundly trauma-sensitive:

  • Gentle, never overwhelming
  • Client always in control (can open eyes, stop anytime)
  • Works within window of tolerance
  • Titrates—small doses of activation
  • Emphasizes safety and resources first

For trauma:

  1. Establish safety: Internal and external resources
  2. Build capacity: Strengthen ability to stay present with difficulty
  3. Access material in small doses: Brief contact with traumatic feelings
  4. Provide missing experiences: Protection, validation, companionship
  5. Support integration: New neural pathways strengthen

Unlike exposure therapy, Hakomi doesn't require retelling the trauma story or prolonged exposure to distress. The work is gentle, body-based, and follows the organic pace of healing.

Attachment Wounds

Core material often reflects attachment injuries:

  • "I'm not worthy of love" (anxious attachment)
  • "I must be perfect to be accepted" (conditional love)
  • "I can't depend on anyone" (avoidant attachment)
  • "People will hurt me" (fearful-avoidant)

Hakomi addresses these through:

  • The therapeutic relationship (earning secure attachment)
  • Accessing child states that hold these wounds
  • Providing missing experiences (attunement, consistent care, validation)
  • New somatic experiences of safety, connection, worthiness

The work creates a new internal working model—not through reasoning, but through lived experience.

Depression

Often rooted in:

  • Collapsed body posture and energy
  • Core beliefs: "I'm powerless," "Nothing matters," "I'm helpless"
  • Suppressed emotions (especially anger)

Hakomi approach:

  1. Contact the collapse: Feel it in the body
  2. Access what's beneath: Often sadness, grief, or anger
  3. Support emergence: Let suppressed emotions surface
  4. Provide missing experiences: Empowerment, agency, mattering
  5. Shift somatic patterns: From collapse to more upright, energized posture

As the body shifts, so does mood and outlook.

Anxiety

Somatic patterns:

  • Chronic tension
  • Shallow breathing
  • Hypervigilance
  • Bracing against perceived threat

Core material often includes:

  • "The world is dangerous"
  • "I must always be ready"
  • "I can't relax or something bad will happen"

Hakomi works with:

  1. Tracking the tension: Where is it held?
  2. Accessing the belief: What is the body protecting against?
  3. Testing safety: Probes like "You're safe right now" while noticing response
  4. Teaching the body: New experiences of actual safety
  5. Releasing chronic holding: As safety is established, body can relax

Self-Criticism

The harsh inner critic often reflects:

  • Internalized critical parent
  • Core belief: "I must be perfect to be acceptable"
  • Protective function: Trying to prevent shame or failure

Hakomi approach:

  1. Mindfully contact the criticism: Notice it without being swept away
  2. Find the vulnerable part beneath: Who is the critic protecting?
  3. Access the child state: The part that feels "not good enough"
  4. Provide missing experience: Unconditional acceptance and kindness
  5. Transform the pattern: New somatic experience of being enough as you are

Daily Practices: Bringing Hakomi Home

Mindful Self-Observation (5-10 minutes)

A Hakomi-style practice for daily life:

  1. Find quiet space, close eyes
  2. Turn attention inward: "What do I notice in my body right now?"
  3. Track sensations: Location, quality, intensity
  4. Notice without changing: Just be with what's there
  5. Get curious: "If this sensation could speak, what would it say?"
  6. Listen: Wait for what emerges—images, words, feelings
  7. Acknowledge: Thank this part for revealing itself

This builds the capacity to access your internal experience mindfully.

Tracking in Daily Life

Throughout your day:

  • Notice somatic reactions: What happens in your body when you feel stressed, excited, scared?
  • Pause and name: "My shoulders just went up. What's that about?"
  • Make connections: "I tighten my jaw when I'm angry but don't feel safe expressing it"

This awareness is the beginning of transformation.

Self-Loving Presence

Practice being with yourself as a Hakomi therapist would:

When you're struggling:

  1. Place hand on heart (self-soothing touch)
  2. Bring gentle attention to your experience
  3. Acknowledge: "Something in me is hurting right now"
  4. Be curious: "What does this part need?"
  5. Offer what's needed: Comfort, validation, protection, rest

You become the source of missing experiences for yourself.

Little Experiments

In daily life, try small probes:

If you believe "I'm not lovable":

  • Stand in front of mirror, look in your eyes
  • Say: "You are lovable"
  • Notice your response—do you soften? Resist? Feel nothing?

If you believe "I must do everything perfectly":

  • Do something intentionally imperfect
  • Notice your body's response
  • Stay with any discomfort that arises

These experiments reveal and gradually shift core material.

Hakomi and Other Approaches

Hakomi integrates beautifully with other modalities:

Somatic Experiencing:

  • Both are body-centered and trauma-sensitive
  • Both work with incomplete survival responses
  • SE focuses more on nervous system; Hakomi on core beliefs

Internal Family Systems:

  • Hakomi's "child states" are like IFS Exiles
  • Both provide missing experiences to wounded parts
  • IFS more structured; Hakomi more organic

Emotion-Focused Therapy:

  • Both access core emotional experiences
  • EFT works more with emotion chairs; Hakomi with body in mindfulness
  • Both believe transformation happens through new emotional experience

Mindful Self-Compassion:

  • Hakomi's loving presence is self-compassion in action
  • Both provide the relational warmth that heals

Schema Therapy:

  • Core material = Schemas
  • Child states = Vulnerable Child mode
  • Missing experiences = Reparenting

Attachment Theory:

  • Hakomi explicitly addresses attachment wounds
  • The therapeutic relationship provides secure base
  • Core material often reflects attachment patterns

Finding Hakomi Therapy

Consider Hakomi if:

  • You're drawn to body-centered work
  • Traditional talk therapy feels too cognitive
  • You want gentle, non-forcing approach
  • You have trauma or attachment wounds
  • You sense your patterns are held somatically

Finding a practitioner:

  • Visit hakomiinstitute.com for certified therapists
  • Look for "Hakomi Certified" or "Hakomi trained"
  • Many practitioners integrate Hakomi with other modalities

What to expect:

  • Gentle, slow-paced sessions
  • More silence and internal focus than talk therapy
  • Therapist's warm, attuned presence
  • Body-based exploration
  • Feeling deeply seen and accepted

Training:

  • Hakomi training is extensive (2-3 years for certification)
  • Emphasizes therapist's own mindfulness and presence
  • Includes personal work and supervision

The Promise: Healing at the Core

The Hakomi Method offers something rare: a way to access and transform the unconscious patterns that shape your life, through gentle, body-centered mindfulness work in a deeply compassionate relationship.

Through Hakomi, you can:

Discover your core material:

  • The unconscious beliefs running your life
  • Where they're held in your body
  • How they formed and why they made sense

Transform at the source:

  • Not just managing symptoms
  • Actually changing the core organizing principles
  • Creating new neural pathways through experience

Heal in relationship:

  • Experiencing attunement and loving presence
  • Receiving what was missing in early relationships
  • Building secure attachment through the therapeutic bond

Reclaim your authentic self:

  • Releasing adaptive layers that no longer serve
  • Accessing your essential nature
  • Living from wholeness rather than woundedness

Develop inner resources:

  • Mindful awareness of your internal experience
  • Ability to be present with yourself compassionately
  • Capacity to provide yourself what you need

The work is:

  • Gentle: Never forcing or overwhelming
  • Organic: Following your natural wisdom
  • Somatic: Addressing patterns where they live—in the body
  • Mindful: Using awareness as the primary tool
  • Relational: Healing happens in connection

The Hakomi Method reminds us that:

  • Your body holds your history
  • Your wounds want to heal
  • Mindful awareness creates the space for transformation
  • Gentleness is more powerful than force
  • You have innate wisdom and capacity for wholeness

Every time you:

  • Turn attention inward with curiosity
  • Notice without judging
  • Stay present with what's difficult
  • Offer yourself kindness
  • Allow experience to unfold organically

...you're practicing the essence of Hakomi. You're creating conditions for your deepest healing.

And gradually, experience by experience, breath by breath, you discover who you are beneath the wounds—your essential self, already whole, already enough, already home.

Related Articles

The Hakomi Method offers a gentle, body-centered path to healing—using mindfulness to access unconscious core material, transforming deep patterns through new somatic experiences, and discovering your authentic self beneath adaptive layers. Through loving presence and organic unfolding, profound healing becomes possible.