Ron Kurtz is the originator of the Hakomi Method of Body-Centered and a preeminent influence in progressive psychotherapy. Ron “belongs to the masters,” says John Bradshaw, who calls the Hakomi Method “the absolute cutting edge in modern therapeutic technique.” Author or co-author of three influential books (Body-Centered Psychotherapy, The Body Reveals, and Grace Unfolding), Ron has led hundreds of trainings and workshops around the world over the last quarter of a century. Recently he has been leading these for professional psychotherapists and counselors in the USA, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico and Australia. He may soon begin trainings in China.
The life work of Ron Kurtz has challenged mainstream ideas about psychotherapy and has focused on the confluence of the fast-growing modern science of living systems (now generally called complex adaptive systems), neuroscience and the teachings and practical spiritual growth methods of Taoism and Buddhism
After doing doctoral work on mathematical models of learning and perception, he taught for two years at San Francisco State University. He then immersed himself in the growing field of experiential methods, such as sensitivity training Gestalt, Bioenergetics, and the work of Wilhelm Reich, Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf.
His own distinctive therapeutic approaches evolved during thirty seven years of private practice in Albany, New York, Boulder, Colorado, California and his present home, Ashland, Oregon. Ron is one of the world’s leading experts in reading body structure, posture and movement for emotional trauma and other psychological information. He has developed rapid methods of accessing and processing emotionally charged psychological material. His principles, which are defined by Western equivalents of long-standing Eastern spiritual wisdom, affirm an entirely different view of the therapist’s role. In contrast to the linear, mechanistic paradigm, Ron’s work and writing emphasize the most recent discoveries of neuroscience, mindfulness practice and the scientific understanding of emotional processes. His Hakomi method concentrates on the multiplicity and interconnectedness of the person as a living, complex whole and the interdependence and spontaneous unfolding of healing processes.
After founding the Hakomi Institute in 1979, Ron served as its director for a dozen years. He still serves in an advisory capacity and creates new training materials for a large Institute staff which has taught, and continues to teach the method to thousands of students around the world. He worked for two years with high-level creators and executives in Silicon Valley, helping them release from limiting personal patterns.
At present, Ron is developing new training structures based on the idea that we can build strongly bonded groups of people from all walks of life and all kinds of issues. The end goals of these groups are: to provide long-term emotional support, by lay people, for lay people. Such groups have been shown to enhance satisfaction, success and even life extension. A second goal is to encourage community service as an integral part of personal and spiritual growth.
Although he left the Hakomi Institute in the late 1980’s, he is again working closely with a fine new team of nearly a dozen teachers and trainers to bring this new vision to fruition. As a therapist and as a consultant, Ron is focused on creating methods that work to bring happiness and robust aliveness to individual lives and to the interconnected experience of many lives at once.