Ron Kurtz (1934 to 2011) was an American psychotherapist who created Hakomi, a gentle, body-centred psychotherapy built on mindfulness, non-violence and what he called “loving presence”. He was an early pioneer of mindfulness in psychotherapy, and a founder of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. His refusal to force anything, and his respect for the parts of a person that protect them, echo the way Therapeutic Shamanism is practised.
Who was Ron Kurtz? #
A scientist by training who became a body-centred psychotherapist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934, and brought a background in science, mathematics and computer engineering to his work; his passion, he wrote, was systems theory, especially the study of living systems.1 He was drawn into body psychotherapy as a client of the body psychotherapist John Pierrakos, and through reading Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen.2
He began developing Hakomi in the 1970s and led the first training in 1977. With a core group of students he founded the Hakomi Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in 1981.3 In 1992 he left the Institute to form Ron Kurtz Trainings and kept refining the method, which he came to describe as “mindfulness-based assisted self-discovery”; the Hakomi Education Network continues that later version.4 He was one of the founders of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy, which gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He died in Ashland, Oregon, on 4 January 2011.5
What did he write? #
Three books in English. The Body Reveals (1976), written with the physician Hector Prestera, is a guide to reading the body for psychological information; it says that “the body sees what the mind believes and the heart feels, and adjusts itself accordingly”.6 Body-Centered Psychotherapy: The Hakomi Method (1990) set out the method, and Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of the Tao-te ching (1991), with Greg Johanson, linked it with Taoist thought.7 His late teaching was gathered after his death into The Hakomi Way (2018), compiled by his trainers at the request of his widow, Terry Toth.8
What did he bring to psychotherapy? #
Above all, mindfulness. Long before mindfulness became fashionable in therapy, Hakomi was asking clients to slow down and notice their own present experience, so that the beliefs held in the body could show themselves; the Hakomi Institute describes it as having pioneered the use of mindfulness in psychodynamic therapy for over forty years.9 Kurtz drew openly on Buddhism and Taoism, and on Reichian work, Bioenergetics, Gestalt and systems theory.10
He also changed the practitioner’s role. In Hakomi the therapist is not the expert who heals but a companion, and the state of mind Kurtz asked of the practitioner, loving presence, was made a basic element of his refined method in 1987.11 His principle of non-violence meant working with a person’s defences, never against them. And he spoke of offering clients the “missing experience”, the nourishing experience that was absent in childhood and can now be taken in. The principles, loving presence, taking over and Hakomi’s little experiments in mindfulness are set out in What can Hakomi offer shamanic work?
How does his work relate to Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Closely, on how a person is met. Therapeutic Shamanism also works with people at their own pace and in their own time: resistance needs to be respected and honoured, because it is there for a reason, and pushing past it is at best disrespectful and usually achieves no lasting healing.12 No deep or permanent change happens without the consent of the fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer, the protective part that stayed and coped.13 Kurtz’s non-violence, and his way of becoming an ally to the part that is holding something back, is one detailed body-based method for that same respect. Both also trust the body: in Therapeutic Shamanism the body has its own wisdom and intelligence, and “knows the truth, keeps the score, and never lies”. And both draw on Wilhelm Reich, one of the people Paul Francis counts among those who have inspired and taught him.14
Where shamanism adds something, it adds the other-than-human. Hakomi’s principle of unity speaks of the interconnectedness of all things, but its work, like most psychotherapy, stays within the human psyche. What shamanism brings, the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer, the spirits as real beings and the other Peoples of the living world, is set out in What can shamanism offer Hakomi? See also What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?
