Ron Kurtz was the originator of Hakomi Therapy and the founder of the Hakomi Institute. Ron began to develop Hakomi in the 1970’s. With a background in science, mathematics, and computer engineering, Ron wrote: “My passion has been systems theory, especially the branch that studies living systems.”

Following graduate training in experimental psychology, Ron first taught at San Francisco State College, also leading encounter groups, and studying Gestalt. He became a client of John Pierrakos, founder of Bioenergetics, began to read the work of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, and was inspired by the work of Albert Pesso. He describes these experiences as “the beginnings of the Hakomi Method”. A practitioner of yoga since 1959, he was also strongly influenced by Buddhism and Taoism. He studied with Moshe Feldenkrais and received Rolfing sessions. He says, “All of this found its way into my thinking, my work and my writing… These threads: eastern philosophy, psychotherapeutic technique, and systems theory are the foundations of Hakomi.”

Stanley Keleman’s interest in the body has always been experientially based, beginning with an early involvement in athletics and continuing in his education at the Chiropractic Institute of New York, where he graduated in l954. After starting his practice as a clinician, he began to observe the relationship between emotional conflict, organismic movement and distortions of body posture. Following his interest, he initiated a program of training and research into the life of the body. He became a member in 1957 of Alexander Lowen’s Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis and was, until the l970’s, a senior trainer. He attended the Alfred Adler Institute and his thinking was affected profoundly by Adler’s ideas on the relationship of the state of the organism to its functioning, the will to power, and the role of society in personality development. This education and training balanced the characterological approaches of Lowen, Freud, and Reich.

In 1967, he moved to California where he interned at Esalen Institute in group dynamics and was exposed to humanistic psychology, the leading edge of psychology at the time. There in an atmosphere of cultural revolution, he established his form of working bodily. The interaction with many leaders of the humanistic movement – Carl Rodgers, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Alan Watts and others – provided a forum for his ideas. He met Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, and began a fifteen year association, teaching an annual program in which they developed connections between myth and the body. These workshops evolved into the annual programs taught by Stanley in Berkeley and Solingen Germany that connect dreams, body and the formative process.

His commitment to understanding the life of the body keeps him abreast of the changes in modern biology, neurobiology and molecular dynamics all of which help him understand how the body develops and matures. Along with his vision and philosophy, he has developed Formative Psychology®, an original methodology for teaching individuals how to participate in their own formative process. His pioneering efforts continue to take him into the forefront of learning how the body shapes itself over time, through all of life’s stages.

His Formative Psychology® methodology rests firmly on an anatomical and physiological base, as well as a psychological and mythological understanding. The Formative Psychology® approach deals with the human condition in its societal and evolutionary thrust toward forming a personal somatic self.

Somatic Experiencing (Developed by Peter Levine, Ph.D.): Nature’s Lesson in Healing Trauma
Dr. Peter A. Levine received his PhD in medical biophysics from the University of California in Berkeley and also holds a doctorate in psychology from International University. He has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years and is the developer of Somatic Experiencing. Peter’s original contribution to the field of Body-Psychotherapy was honored in 2010 when he received the Lifetime Achievement award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). That same year he also received the honorary Reis Davis Chair in Child Psychiatry for his innovative contribution to therapy for children and adolescents.

Throughout his life, Peter Levine has studied the effects of stress on the human nervous system and body. Beginning in the 1970’s, Peter’s explorations into how animals deal with threat led to the development of a method that is highly effective in dealing with the effects of overwhelm on our nervous system, called Somatic Experiencing (SE). SE is a clinical methodology based upon an appreciation of why animals in the wild are not traumatized by routine threats to their lives, while humans, on the other hand, are readily overwhelmed and often subject to the traumatic symptoms of hyper arousal, shutdown and dysregulation. Fortunately, the very same instincts — and related survival based brain systems 
— that are involved in the formation of trauma symptoms can be enlisted in the transformation and healing of trauma. Therapeutically, this “instinct to heal” and self-regulate is engaged through the awareness of empowering body sensations that contradict those of paralysis and helplessness. These new experiences create a foundation for restored resilience, equilibrium and wholeness.

Dr. Peter A. Levine received his PhD in medical biophysics from the University of California in Berkeley and also holds a doctorate in psychology from International University. He has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years and is the developer of Somatic Experiencing. Peter’s original contribution to the field of Body-Psychotherapy was honored in 2010 when he received the Lifetime Achievement award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). That same year he also received the honorary Reis Davis Chair in Child Psychiatry for his innovative contribution to therapy for children and adolescents.

Throughout his life, Peter Levine has studied the effects of stress on the human nervous system and body. Beginning in the 1970’s, Peter’s explorations into how animals deal with threat led to the development of a method that is highly effective in dealing with the effects of overwhelm on our nervous system, called Somatic Experiencing (SE). SE is a clinical methodology based upon an appreciation of why animals in the wild are not traumatized by routine threats to their lives, while humans, on the other hand, are readily overwhelmed and often subject to the traumatic symptoms of hyper arousal, shutdown and dysregulation. Fortunately, the very same instincts — and related survival based brain systems 
— that are involved in the formation of trauma symptoms can be enlisted in the transformation and healing of trauma. Therapeutically, this “instinct to heal” and self-regulate is engaged through the awareness of empowering body sensations that contradict those of paralysis and helplessness. These new experiences create a foundation for restored resilience, equilibrium and wholeness.

Peter is the author of the best selling book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma — which was published in 24 languages and sold over 250,000 copies — as well as four audio learning series for Sounds True including the book/CD, Healing Trauma: a Pioneering Program in Restoring the Wisdom of Our Bodies and Sexual Healing, Transforming the Sacred Wound. He is the co-author of Trauma through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healingand Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: A Parents Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience. He recently released with Maggie Phillips the book/CD Freedom from Pain: Discover Your Body's Power to Overcome Physical Pain. Dr. Levine’s most recent book, his magnum opus, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, is receiving international praise.

Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. Dr Schore's contributions appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioral biology, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. His groundbreaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has led to his description as "the American Bowlby," with emotional development as "the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self," and with psychoanalysis as "the world's leading expert in neuropsychoanalysis."

Alexander Lowen, M.D. (December 23, 1910 – October 28, 2008) was an American physician and psychotherapist. A student of Wilhelm Reich in the 1940s and early 1950s in New York, he developed bioenergetic analysis, a form of mind-body psychotherapy, with his then-colleague, John Pierrakos (February 8, 1921 – February 1, 2001). Lowen was the founder and former executive director of the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis in New York City.

Born in New York City, Lowen received a bachelor's degree in science and business from City College of New York, an LL.B and a J.S.D (a doctorate in law) from Brooklyn Law School. His interest in the link between the mind and the body developed during this time. He enrolled in a class on character analysis with Wilhelm Reich. After training to be a therapist himself, Lowen moved to Switzerland to attend the University of Geneva.

Lowen lived and practiced for the majority of his life in New Canaan, Connecticut. He suffered a stroke in July 2006. The Alexander Lowen Foundation was founded in April 2007 to continue his legacy. Lowen died on October 28, 2008 at the age of 97.

Dr. Alexander Lowen devoted his life to showing the importance of the body in the psychotherapeutic process, as he was convinced that every profound change has an impact on the body.

Dr. Alexander Lowen met Wilhelm Reich in New York in 1940, and trained  with him until 1952. He studied Reich's energy principles and character analysis. He also had personal therapy with Reich from 1942 to 1945 before becoming a Reichian therapist himself. In 1953, he split from Reich and his research on the "orgone". Lowen then developed "Bioenergetic Analysis" as his own creative contribution to help people clarify the complexity of the mind-body split. He teamed up with two other students of Reich, John Pierrakos and William Walling and together created the Institute of Bioenergetic Analysis (IBA) in 1956, in New York.

The audio quality is not very good, and the authors of this video cleverly use an "Avatar" to help with clarity and understanding. The interview was conducted when Freud was suffering from incurable jaw cancer and was near the end of his life.

Antonio Damasio, M.D. is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. From one of the most significant neuroscientists at work today, a pathbreaking investigation of a question that has confounded philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists for centuries: how is consciousness created?

Dr. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In Self Comes to Mind, he goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told. He also advances a radical hypothesis regarding the origins and varieties of feelings, which is central to his framework for the biological construction of consciousness: feelings are grounded in a near fusion of body and brain networks, and first emerge from the historically old and humble brain stem rather than from the modern cerebral cortex.

Dr. Damasio suggests that the brain's development of a human self becomes a challenge to nature's indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution and the source of a new level of life regulation—sociocultural homeostasis. He leaves no doubt that the blueprint for the work-in-progress he calls sociocultural homeostasis is the genetically well-established basic homeostasis, the curator of value that has been present in simple life-forms for billions of years. Self Comes to Mind is a groundbreaking journey into the neurobiological foundations of mind and self.

Dr. Antonio Damasio is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and an Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute Dr. Damasio is the author of several books and heads the Brain and Creativity Institute. His book "Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain", explores the relationship between the brain and consciousness. "Antonio Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making"

Books:

• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Putnam, 1994; revised Penguin edition, 2005

• The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt, 1999

• Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt, 2003

• Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Pantheon, 2010

Marti Glenn, PhD, Co-Director, the STAR Foundation, offering intensive retreats for healing early trauma. She is founding President of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute with graduate degrees in somatic psychology, prenatal-perinatal psychology and clinical psychology. A pioneering psychotherapist and trainer for three decades, she was also professor of clinical psychology, integrating body psychotherapy with affective neuroscience, attachment, and trauma. Dr. Glenn serves on several non-profit boards and has chaired numerous professional conferences, including APPPAH and Neurons to Neighborhoods: Preventing and Healing Trauma. She co-produced the broadcast quality documentary, Trauma, Brain, and Relationship and has appeared in such documentary films as What Babies Want; What Babies Know; Reducing Infant Mortality and Improving the Health of Babies. She continues to train mental health professionals with a focus on relationship and the experienced body, weaving neuroscience, polyvagal theory, epigenetics, trauma and attachment into clinical practices. She is a frequent speaker at conferences world-wide. See website. This material has been published in Somatic Perspectives on Psychotherapy (A publication of United States Association on Body Psychotherapy - USABP) and can be viewed in its original form here: http://somaticperspectives.com/2015/07/glenn/

Published July 2015. See printable PDF transcript.