if people are too much in pain, they are not available for doing anything else. Cleaning Up shows how we can step out of pain and into connection with others. It shows the healing power of nature and community. It takes on all our traumas, and starts to transform them into something we can live with. We have to start here.
If you haven’t watched the stink spirit video from Spirited Away yet please consider watching it now. It is such a good metaphor for this work.
We all have a lifetime of accumulated junk that is keeping us from our true shining nature. Notice how much courage and fortitude is needed just to get started. It feels kind of hopeless. I’m not worth the effort! But the pain keeps driving us forward. I love how the whole community rallied to help with cleaning up the stink spirit. I’ve had a community stand up for me too. I could not get there all on my own. We can’t get there all on our own.
So how do we really dig in to what these stages offer? I suggest we use Hakomi principles. These principles are kind of mostly obvious, but subtly powerful. They kind of sneak up on you. I’m going to use them not just for this Cleaning Up section, but also for Waking Up, Showing Up, and Wising Up as well.
Hakomi is a beautiful form of body centered, talk therapy. The question asked over and over again in different ways is “Where are you feeling this in your body?”. And then you are invited to deepen into that. It is the only form of talk therapy that has ever worked for me. A typical Hakomi sessions takes the client way, way deep into themselves. They enter a liminal state of here and now. Here in their body, deep into all their hidden parts. To get there the client has to know how safe and welcomed all parts of them are. Even those pesky defenses are welcomed and celebrated. And at the deeper layers we find our core beliefs. These beliefs form our core story. If we can change our core beliefs we can change our story.
After you have done some healing work, some people feel called to service. To learn how to provide this amazing healing service to others. The Hakomi Institute offers many classes. They range from one day workshops to a two year program. I did the two year program. Each year we had ten three day weekends. Each of those weekends felt like a personal growth workshop to me. They taught us the Hakomi principles, and we kept on coming back to them throughout. But these principles are not just for therapy. They are a solid foundation to build a life on. It turns out that all the other personal growth schools in my life are based on these principles, even if they weren’t explicitly aware of them. Let’s take a look at them next.