As a Certified Hakomi Therapist my role is to help you uncover and explore unhelpful patterns and prevent your past experiences limiting your future opportunities.
My passion is working with men and supporting them to find their connection with themselves and their emotions. This work revolves around two key approaches:
COURAGE (originally meaning from the heart)
Focus and support on self-expression and conversations that redeem and reclaim the healthy male spirit;
WHOLE-HEARTEDNESS
Pathways to understanding ‘self’ and tools for openness, honesty, self-expression, and positive communication.
Men are always more than just the ‘bread winner’, or the emotionally ‘tough’ stalwart. By supporting men to stop conforming to others’ expectations, men start to remember the beauty, kindness and ‘lightness’ that resides within.
HOW?
MY APPROACH
I support diversity and the inclusion of anyone who presents and identifies as male, and work with all sexual identities and preferences. I work from a te Ao Māori worldview and welcome all cultures and ethnicities along with individual differences, neuro-diversities, personal experiences, and life histories.
RELATIONSHIPS
In the relationship field my work focuses on relationships (with self or others) that require mending, ending or regular tending. I can provide short-term coaching, medium-term skills development, longer-term personal therapy which we can use in combination to find just the right sort of support for you.
I offer a variety of communication skills, relationship strategies and personal practice tools that can be used to assist in managing challenging personal relationships. These skills and tools can be used to achieve solution or resolution focussed outcomes. The short to medium-term skills I can provide (in any combination) are:
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Mindfulness (slowing down and staying in your seat)
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Active listening (an invitation for understanding)
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Communication (speaking with courage, clarity and compassion)
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Emotional literacy (supporting the positive use of feelings)
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Effective anger management (understanding the purpose of being ‘pissed-off’)
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Positive parenting (child-focused relationships)
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Setting healthy personal boundaries (instead of building barriers)
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Self-awareness and self-reflection (seeing the wood for the trees)
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Relationship recovery (letting go and getting better)
THERAPY
To achieve longer-term (think life-time) personal change (think life-changing) I provide Hakomi psychotherapy. Hakomi is not a ‘narrative’ or ‘talk-based’ therapy. It is a style of therapy that pays attention to the sensations and emotions held within the body (stress points, pains, physical, and emotional reactions). A great deal of this work is based simply on sensations and emotions and their expression through the body. These sensations are the body’s way of asking for attention. If we listen to our bodies, mindfully, we can access valuable information. Body-based therapy brings our attention to the inter-relationship between what’s going on in our minds (what we think we know) with what’s going on in our bodies (what we genuinely feel).
Hakomi is a ‘somatic therapy’
Hakomi combines therapy practice with an inward-looking practice of mindfulness. It is a direct and simple approach to therapy that is compassionate, mindful, curious, non-invasive, humorous, and respectful. Clients learn to adopt an observant approach to their body movements, gestures, tone, posture, and expressions and recognise a deeper important personal story.
Hakomi practices involve:
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Accessing old material through tracking the movements of the body;
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Repeating involuntary gesture to bring attention to new information;
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Light, non-intrusive touch or support to assist with heavy harder emotional movement;
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Physical action to express and explore an underlying state or emotional sensation.
For more information see hakomiinstitute.com and hakomi.co.nz
Client work is always conducted with the express agreement of the client. I operate according to the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics of the Hakomi Institute.
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