We tend to hold our bodies and minds as separate things. They are not. And if our body is suffering we are not up for anything other than simple survival; we certainly are not up for saving the world.
Hakomi works with the common traumas people share. One of the most common is insecure attachment. If a child does not feel secure in their relationship to their caregiver they are traumatized. Insecure attachment means a greater chance of mental illness, and successful relationships are much harder. This trauma lives in the body. This is why people go so “crazy” in relationships — their logical mind is no longer in control, they get taken over by this old, deep wound.
Here is the really shocking part of this — between a third and a half of the population is insecurely attached! This is so not OK. This is even worse than school shootings because it affects so, so many kids. I am quite confident that this did not happen in Beige societies. They were living in a much simpler way and had a much better idea of what is actually important. Multiple caretakers were always there and attentive. We’ve lost that.
It gets worse. It turns out that in addition to insecure attachment there are a number of other ways young kids get traumatized that affects them for the rest of their lives. Again this is very very common. It actually is quite unusual to find someone who does not have a childhood trauma. These children grow up, and if they are lucky, they find their way to an expensive but effective therapist (or guide) and spend the rest of their lives trying to heal their traumas. I have a much better idea. What if we made it a priority to not traumatize children in the first place? Seriously. What if?
Many of us are lonely because we pull back from that terrifying vulnerable risk of reaching out. I know this one well. Sometimes we need support with this. At a certain point in a HAI workshop, the facilitators gently and reverently suggest that you take off any or all clothing that you feel comfortable removing. People choose a wide range of what they take off, but a fairly high percentage of people usually take off pretty much everything. Imagine, standing there naked in a room of people you just met the day before. It is extremely vulnerable. But it brings us all the way back to our naked body. There is no hiding here. And from that place of naked vulnerability, people experience incredibly intimate connection with each other. Also, although HAI is not explicitly aware of this, all their activities encourage oxytocin. This is the love hormone. When I first did a guided MDMA trip the experience felt very familiar, but I couldn’t quite place why. Then I realized — I felt exactly like I did after doing a powerful HAI workshop. Again it is our body leading the way.
Beige has much to teach us. We are animals. We crave healthy food. Most of us crave healthy, nurturing sex. And we crave simply being in nature. We notice how good it feels to simply walk amongst the trees. We enter into relationship with the more than human world. A Forest Bathing guide facilitates this. They gently get people to focus on all their senses, and ask them to step into nature