What can shamanism offer Hakomi?

Does Hakomi go beyond the human? #

In its principles, yes. Kurtz writes that “Unity reminds us of the interconnectedness of all things, of all life, of all events.”¹ The Hakomi trainers David Cole and Carol Ladas-Gaskin go further: “The unity principle reminds us that we belong to nature: an integrated event, a total ecology with social, physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions.”² Kurtz also names the West’s great mistake: “I thought one of the great mistakes was the notion that we are separate beings.” And he adds: “We think we are here to conquer nature.”³

Shamanism shares this view entirely, and offers a way of living it. The interconnected web does not only apply to humans: “Shamanic people experience being part of, not separate from, a world that is profoundly alive and vibrant, and which can be communicated with.”⁴ Shamanism takes this into direct relationship with the Animal, Plant and Stone People, the Lower-World and Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this. See What are the three shamanic realms?

Are the helpers only inside us? #

Not in shamanism. “Rather than perceiving spirits as real, independent, and living beings, psychotherapy usually sees them as parts of the human psyche.”⁵ Hakomi speaks of the spiritual. Shamanism adds helpers who are beings in their own right: a Power Animal, Guides in the Lower-World and Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, and the wider family of the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer. See Are Power Animals and Guides just archetypes?

Can a belief be more than a belief? #

In the shamanic view, sometimes. Hakomi helps people discover the core beliefs that organise their experience. Shamanism agrees that these matter, and adds that some of them lodge in us as intrusions. In our modern, domesticated world, the commonest form of intrusion is the unhelpful thought-formThought-form. A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this: a thought that has “become persistent and lodged within someone’s energy body, causing harm.”⁶ Identifying and removing such thought-forms is something shamanism and psychotherapy have in common, though they go about it in different ways.⁷ Shamanism offers Hakomi a way of removing such a belief as well as understanding it. See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?

Is mindfulness the same as a shamanic journey? #

No, though they help each other. Hakomi uses mindfulness to turn attention inwards, to the person’s own experience. A shamanic trance goes somewhere else: “Shamanic trance states are characterised by being in contact with the world of the spirits.”⁸ At the same time, Therapeutic Shamanism values mindfulness highly. Hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer is itself a meditation practice, and any mindfulness practice helps with it.⁹ Mindfulness can also be carried into the other realms. These practices are usually done in ordinary, everyday middle-world reality, and “An interesting variation is to experiment with doing them in shamanic reality.”¹⁰ See What is hollowing-out?

Why do we feel so separate in the first place? #

Kurtz traces the idea of separation back to the ancient Greeks.¹¹ Shamanism traces it further back, to domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer. “We are a self-domesticated animal.”¹² As cultures grew more controlling, people learnt to push away the parts of themselves that did not fit, and one of the reasons we suffer soul loss is that “we send part of our own self away in order to fit in.”¹³ So the beliefs Hakomi uncovers are personal, but they also belong to a much older story, and healing them includes finding our way back into relationship with the living world. See Can modern humans recover an animist way of seeing and undo domestication? and What can Hakomi offer shamanic work?