Perhaps you avoid difficult conversations, become anxious when someone doesn’t reply to a message, apologise before you’ve done anything wrong, or find it impossible to ask for help.
Most of us assume these reactions are simply part of our personality.
Hakomi invites us to become curious about something different.
What if they are not who you are, but patterns you learned long ago?
Many of the ways we move through life were once intelligent adaptations. As children, we discovered how to stay safe, loved or accepted in the environments we grew up in. Those patterns were often exactly what we needed at the time.
The difficulty is that our lives change, but many of those patterns remain.
What was once adaptive can quietly become limiting.
Without realising it, we begin to organise our lives around beliefs we no longer question. We avoid certain situations. We expect certain outcomes. We stop ourselves from having experiences that might challenge those old expectations.
And because we avoid them, we never discover that something different might also be possible.
Becoming Curious
Hakomi is based on a very simple idea.
We are not as conscious as we think we are.
Much of what shapes our lives happens automatically.
Rather than analysing these patterns, Hakomi invites us to notice them.
Together, we become curious about what is happening in this moment.
Your breathing.
Your posture.
A tightening in your jaw.
A hesitation before speaking.
A movement towards or away from something.
These small moments are called indicators.
They are not problems to fix.
They are gentle clues that point towards the deeper patterns organising your experience.
The Wisdom of the Present Moment
One of the things I love most about Hakomi is that we don’t have to search through your past looking for answers.
Everything we need is already beginning to reveal itself in the present moment.
As we slow down together, these patterns naturally emerge.
Sometimes we use small experiments, perhaps a sentence, a gesture or a moment of silence, to gently explore what happens inside you.
There is no right reaction.
Your immediate response is simply information.
Often it tells us far more than the stories we have told ourselves for years.
New Experiences
The aim of Hakomi is not to remove parts of yourself.
It is to discover where life has become organised around old expectations that no longer serve you.
Perhaps somewhere inside there is still a belief that you have to cope alone.
That you are too much.
That your needs are a burden.
That you have to be perfect before you are worthy of love.
When these beliefs become conscious, something remarkable begins to happen.
The nervous system can finally have a different experience.
Perhaps one that wasn’t available when those patterns first developed.
Safety.
Support.
Acceptance.
Choice.
These new experiences gradually soften the old patterns, allowing new possibilities to emerge.
You Don’t Need to Know What to Do
People often worry that they won’t know how to “do” Hakomi.
You don’t need to.
You don’t need to analyse yourself or arrive with answers.
You simply bring yourself, as you are, and whatever is present in the moment.
My role is to listen carefully, to notice the subtle indicators that appear naturally, and to gently guide the process with curiosity, compassion and respect.
I trust that your own system already knows the way.
Sometimes it simply needs the right conditions to reveal it.