Lovingkindness and Neuroplasticity

Stephen Here.

For years, my favorite English word has been “lovingkindness” (and, yes, I love language enough to have a favorite English word, ahem). One of the things I appreciate the most about Hakomi therapy is that one of its fundamental tenets is “loving presence.”

According to the late Ron Kurtz, originator of the Hakomi method, “It is the intention and habit of seeing something lovable in the other [person] that creates the feeling state necessary for loving presence.” It just so happens that by caring about something we make it stronger, and this goes for people, too.

One of the things I love most about counseling is that when I get to care about my clients and their struggles. And this care is not just some good feels for me. It’s also essential for my clients: it makes therapy more effective!

As Psychotherapist Lous Cozolino puts it, “A safe and trusting relationship is the core of psychotherapy precisely because it provides the emotional support and regulation necessary to counterbalance the emotional and biological stressors of change. This regulation allows plasticity to stay in play so that brains can actually be changed in therapy.”

We’ve known for a long time that therapy changes how people think, how people behave, and how people experience themselves and the world. We feel better, do better, and live better when we get therapy. Some folks have tried traditional talk therapy and didn’t get much out of it. Somatic therapy goes deeper than traditional talk therapy, purposely creating links between mind, body, and spirit.

We now know that powerful therapy literally changes the structure of the whole brain for the better: Some studies (like Beauregard, M.’s study, referenced below) “suggest that mental and behavioral changes occurring during psychotherapeutic interventions can lead to a normalization of functional brain activity at a global level.”

References:

Kurtz, R. (2015). The Essential Method, Chapter 3 in Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy. Ed. Weiss, et al. (p. 24). 

Cozolino, L. (2021). The Development of a Therapist. W. W. Norton & Company.

Beauregard, M. Functional neuroimaging studies of the effects of psychotherapy. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2014 Mar; 16(1): 75–81. doi: 10.31887/DCNS.2014.16.1/mbeauregard