You know that phrase that goes something like “That person is really pushing my buttons!”? As I perceive it, your family of origin is made up of the folks who installed those buttons in the first place… Here are 5 Hakomi-informed tips to stay present with yourself in to help you navigate challenging family dynamics during the holidays…

One of the things I love most about counseling is that I get to openly care about my clients and their struggles. And this care is essential to the effectiveness of the therapy I provide.

The most fulfilling parts of my career have been when I’ve landed in a role of helping others. From selling supplements at the local natural foods store in high school to becoming a psychotherapist over the past several years, I’ve always valued being able to bring healing into the world.

I do counseling because I believe in the human spirit, with all its inherent healing power.

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”.

The unity principle means that we, like all living systems, “are made up of parts organized into wholes.” In other words, at the level of an individual, the unity principle holds that each of us is a complex, self-correcting system made up of interconnected parts. Additionally, the unity principle also holds that each of us is interconnected with an infinitely complex, much greater whole than we ourselves could ever be alone— because “we live in a participatory universe.” 

“The answer to what might or might not be considered Hakomi is whether the process embraces the foundational Hakomi principles of unity, organicity, mind-body holism, mindfulness, and non-violence.”

Other-people-are-annoying tropes are all over the place: when your roommate (...spouse, kid, or whoever) leaves dirty underwear on the bathroom floor? Annoying. Your friends’ or partners’ little idiosyncrasies that were endearing at first? Annoying. The sounds of your lunch mate’s chewing, the kids crying, a restaurant roaring with so many voices that you can hardly hear yourself think? Annoying, an-NOY-ing, ANNOYING!