Over the years of practicing Chinese medicine, I’ve moved more and more into the realm of psychotherapy practice, too. I often hear the question “why did you start doing counseling in addition to Chinese medicine?” Here are some of my thoughts on why I offer counseling work…

According to Ron Kurtz, the progenitor of Hakomi therapy, “To work nonviolently, we must drop notions about making clients change and, along with that, any tendency to take credit for their successes… that doesn’t mean we have to be passive; nonviolence is not inaction. We can work without using force or the ideas and methods of a paradigm of force.”

Mindfulness is the fourth of the core Hakomi principles. In this context, the word “mindfulness” simply means the ability to have an experience and notice it at the same time. As Ron Kurtz, the progenitor of Hakomi therapy said it in his book Body-centered Psychotherapy (1990), “In psychotherapy, nothing is more useful than mindfulness”.