In Search of Eros:
The Australian Tour
Hakomi Teacher in Training, Karen Baikie, talks to us about the recent sexuality workshops
presented in Australia by Hakomi Trainers Maci Daye and Halko Weiss.
Deeply embedded in mindfulness and the Hakomi
principles, Halko and Maci’s approach emphasizes the
need for couples to focus on developing greater levels
of consciousness as the way to overcome the deadening
effect of automaticity in both everyday life and sexual
encounters. They believe that when we interact with
mindfulness and compassion, the everyday challenges
of relationships can become an opening to growth,
awakening and deeper intimacy. This is certainly
something that the couples who attended the workshops
reported happening in their own relationships as they
shared more deeply with each other.
In February we had the pleasure of hosting
Halko Weiss and Maci Daye on their “Australian Tour”.
Halko and Maci presented their new workshop “In Search
of Eros: Mindful Love Relationships and the Road to Deep
Intimacy” in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
As we all too well know, love relationships can
be extremely nourishing and yet simultaneously very
challenging. Halko and Maci’s work is based on the
premise that the same issues that show up in daily life
also surface in the sexual arena. In this workshop, they
introduced participants to their combined approaches to
help couples generate increasingly satisfying relationship
experiences:
A central premise in Halko’s H.E.A.R.T.® model
is that we spend much of our life in automatic routines and
behaviour. This is true in our relationships and sex life too.
Surprisingly, research on couples shows that the longer
you are together the less you actually know your partner.
Halko believes that for anything to be different, we have to
learn to see things afresh and be willing to see something
• Halko’s H.E.A.R.T.® approach to cultivating
interpersonal intelligence and seeing from the heart;
• Maci’s Passion & Presence® approach to the erotic
encounter, designed especially for couples in longterm relationships.
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new about our partners. Mindfulness is therefore the main
skill that we can cultivate to help us in relationships. As
Halko says, “something is only a problem if you stop being
curious about it”.
previously called Experiential Disidentification (EDis).
For further information and to be kept informed about
future H.E.A.R.T. workshops and trainings, email me at
[email protected].
In her Passion and Presence® model, Maci
highlights how common relationship issues are much the
same as common sexual issues – such as boredom and
everydayness, power struggles, and the tension between
togetherness (“we”) and separateness (“me”). As a
relationship evolves over time, we go from being excited
and curious about this ‘new person’ in our lives, to bored
and shutdown, believing we know everything about them
already. In long-term relationships, diminished desire and
sexual issues are the norm rather than the exception. By
encouraging co-investigation and mindful exchanges,
Maci and Halko propose that a couple can become a more
conscious ‘erotic team’. This happens by taking the risk
to be ‘emotionally naked’ with one another, expressing
desires and fears, and recovering curiosity towards oneself
and one’s partner. As Maci says, “we don’t need a variety
of sexual partners to spice up our lives, we just need to
update the menu and provide more novelty to bring Eros
back into our primary relationship”.
Dr Karen Baikie
Certified Hakomi Therapist, Private Practice, Sydney
Assistant Teacher, Sydney Hakomi
Professional Training
Organiser and Co-Facilitator of the
H.E.A.R.T. training in Australia.
Halko and Maci provided a safe space for both
individuals and couples to see something new
about themselves and their partners. The workshop
provided opportunities for participants to gently
and compassionately explore the dynamics of their
relationships and sex lives. Halko introduced participants
to the Reciprocal Interaction Loop, a tool for analyzing
relationships that helps people see the protector and
protected parts that play out when they get into difficult
interactions. Maci used the Hakomi Sensitivity Cycle that
most of us are familiar with as a lens to explore the sexual
encounter and the barriers that show up in long-term
relationships. She helped participants to explore their
own barriers along the sensitivity cycle (Relaxation, Clarity,
Action, Satisfaction) to identify areas of resource and areas
of struggle. In this way, Halko and Maci provided practical
tools that participants could take away to use and reflect
on at home.
Once again, it was a pleasure to host Halko and
Maci who are keen Australian tourists and big fans of our
kangaroos. For those of you who missed out this time, I
highly recommend making space in your diary next time
you see their names in the Hakomi calendar. Halko and I
are putting our heads together to organise the full oneyear H.E.A.R.T. training in Australia in the near future. To
satisfy your curiosity at last, H.E.A.R.T. stands for Hakomi
Embodied and Aware Relationships Training, and was
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