Hakomi

Hakomi is a mindfulness and somatic-based therapy which I find helpful to increase awareness, self compassion and the ability to access the wisdom that we all have inside. Hakomi trusts and respects the individual, and at the same time it takes into account that all of us have a past context we came from which informs who we are now. I support my clients to find more freedom and satisfaction in their lives through experiencing new possibilities in the present.

Natalie Buchwald has been certified as a Hakomi practitioner after completing a post-graduate training.

I have been practicing Hakomi mindfulness-based somatic experiential therapy with clients since 2016. I have worked with clients in-person but also virtually to help them re-organize their relationship with themselves and their experiences and helped to provide missing experiences to create more wholeness.

I am trained in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based somatic (body-centered) approach to therapy.

I assisted in the most recent Pro Skills 2 training and am currently pursuing certification.

Hakomi is a depth oriented somatic mindfulness approach which I have been studying over the past 4 years. I am a Hakomi Certified Practitioner, and hold this lens of client centered, present moment, relational therapy as a framework for all of the work that I do with clients. Hakomi is a gently powerful; the way in which water can cut through stone. This combined with an IFS informed approach is a potent bottom up duo that can deeply shift held patterns and bring revelatory insights.

Hakomi is a modality that greatly informs my work and how we will explore your healing journey together. Hakomi utilizes mindfulness as the route into the memories and beliefs storied in your body, helping us study together how you both consciously and unconsciously orient around your present moment and past life experience, giving us the opportunity to, together, collaboratively experiment to create new experiences in those core memories.

Hakomi is an integrative method that combines Western psychology and body-centered techniques with mindfulness principles from Eastern psychology. Hakomi takes into account that we carry our memories and traumas and feelings in our physical bodies. The way mindfulness is utilized here maintains its integrity as a profound experience that reconnects the client and therapist to their true and common humanity. It is when an individual feels truly joined by another on their healing journey.

Find out more via my speciality webpage on Hakomi and Mindfulness Therapy: https://windingriverpsychotherapyservices.com/mindfulness-and-somatic-therapy

Having completed the first year of professional training in Hakomi, I now a teaching assistant for the 2021-2022 round of training. I also participate in regular practice and supervision groups to continue deepening my skills with this method.

Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy is concerned with tracking, contacting, deepening, and studying our internal state experience, and how our present moment internal state experience is organized based on ways we learned to be in the world going all the way back to childhood and earlier. When we learn to pause and study how we are organized internally, then we can relate to our present moment in new ways, including as the autonomous beings we are, as well as in relationship.

Hakomi therapy, also known as the Hakomi method, is a mindful, body-centered approach to psychotherapy that uses experiential techniques and somatic awareness to encourage positive individual transformation and growth. In this form of therapy, the human body is viewed as a resource to access unconscious materials from formative experiences that have shaped a person’s core memories, beliefs, and psychological outlook.

Hakomi is my love and a somatic, body oriented method that changed my life and what inspired me to become a therapist. Hakomi is a lifestyle that uses a "bottom up" approach to psychotherapy. It uses the principles of mindfulness by being with the emotions we feel in the moment with compassion, empathy and curiosity. It follows the organicity of what's happening for the client without an agenda but loving presence and nonviolent communication, to uncover the unconscious material the lies within

I completed several moths of Hakomi training and continue to study it.

One of the most important aspects of Hakomi is that we work with a special kind of consciousness, called mindfulness. That means turning inward, usually with your eyes closed, to notice whatever is going on within you, without any judgment. It’s being fully aware of your present experience while still fully experiencing it. You might think of it as being all the actors up on the stage in the drama of your life, and at the same time being comfortably seated in the audience observing .

I believe in the transformative ability of "being with" difficult emotions. Hakomi incorporates mindfulness and somatic awareness to access emotions.

Hakomi uses mindfulness to go towards your “core material,” or deeply ingrained beliefs about yourself and the world. By uncovering and examining these beliefs, we aim to discard inaccurate beliefs that no longer serve you, and gain new, life affirming experiences that help you understand the truth of yourself and the world, thereby living in alignment with each.

I completed training in Hakomi Mindful Somatic Therapy with Mindful Experiential Therapy Approaches (M.E.T.A.) at the Hakomi Institute of Oregon. I highly value Hakomi's approach to processing trauma, attachment wounds and other sources of stuckness. Hakomi's efficacy rests on the therapist's attunement to the client and the continued refinement of their art of counseling.