In Hakomi with Internal Family Systems and Focusing: A Deeper Look at Mindfulness-Centered Therapies, Hakomi certified therapists J. David Cole and Carol Ladas-Gaskin bring together three revolutionary approaches to body-mind healing and personal growth therapy. Hakomi's mindful, body-centered approach to deep work and its emphasis on compassion, emotional attunement, and presence offers an open foundation that can be seamlessly extended and blended with enhancements from Internal Family Systems and Focusing. Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard C. Schwartz, holds that the personality does not comprise the totality of a human being but is a modular multiplicity of sub-personalities (called "parts") whose first purpose is to respond reactively to protect the whole. This "reactive" personality is imbued with an aware Self that acts creatively to provide compassionate leadership for the whole person including its family of internal parts. Recognition, acknowledgment of, and identification with this Self provides a person with a wider, more grounded perspective within the healing practices of Hakomi.

Focusing distinguishes a kind of inner experience that therapist and philosopher Eugene T. Gendlin discovered and called "felt sense." It is an intricate, implicit, relatively subtle but information-rich form of inner experience. "Felt sense" experiences blend emotions, body sensations, and what might be called the ineffable seeds of thought and action into a single sensate presence in the body that often underlies a hunch, intuition or "gut feeling." Learning to become aware of this realm of experience requires mindfulness and patience, but finding and naming the "felt sense" can lead to insights and powerful shifts in perspective enabling creative action steps and self-discovery.

This book shows how these game-changing discoveries are now blended into a single method of body-centered therapy based on Hakomi.