Mr Ajay Hawkes

A conversation with Ajay Hawkes

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  After many years of personal development work and a passion for mindfulness practice, I chose to find a way of making these practices central to my work. To work at something I love. I find this very satisfying, purposeful and fulfilling.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  Acceptance & Mindfulness are keys for me.
  
  I began my personal development journey by working on identifying things I didn't like about myself and working at changing them. Essentially fighting with myself, which creates a lot of tension!
  
  Then I had a breakthrough moment when I realised that through accepting something that I was uncomfortable with, I was able to see it more clearly and it began to open up and change. Of course, I was not the first person to have this realisation, and there are various schools of therapy which adhere to Carl Rogers' paradox of change:
  
  "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, and allow myself to have discomfort with it, then I can change, when I can accept you as you are, then you change."
  
  Another way of putting this is that you have to recognise where you are in order to get somewhere else. Imagine trying to find your way using a map if you didn't know where you were!! I only wish someone had pointed this out to me a little sooner. So having learnt this the hard way I hope to be able to support others to find it out for themselves more quickly.
  
  Mindfulness is a tool which I use as a foundation stone for my therapeutic work. Mindfulness is a very effective way of accepting ourselves. It is a powerful ally in processing uncomfortable emotions. I find that a lot of us can be quite overwhelmed by events in our lives and how they trigger us, often emotionally, and then we may behave in ways that create problems for us. Mindfulness gives us a container that allows us to hold our experiences and emotions. Then we can learn from them and act in a way that we are happier with and that is more consistent with our values, with who we really are.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  Learning to meet the challenges of life in a creative and fulfilling way.
  
  Learning to stay centred in our painful experiences, rather than have those experiences knock us over.
  
  Coming to understand the maps we have of the world (often from childhood) that hold us back and to find ways of fully absorbing new information so that those maps can change. This then supports us to live more fulfilling and happier lives.
  
  Beyond that, using meditation and mindfulness practices to realise our full potential as human beings.

• What methods do you use?

  I work with people in an individual way and tailor my approach to the needs of the person, but these approaches inform much of my work:
  
  Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness based therapy, Hakomi somatic psychotherapy, Solutions focussed therapy.
  
  To get an understanding of what these therapies are like, questions 2 and 3 give a sense of my approach to therapy.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  I would aim to give people something to take away with them from the first session. I find that 5-6 sessions are a realistic time-frame for most people to develop some good good coping skills and to start to understand the underlying issues. 8-10 sessions would be needed to work more thoroughly on underlying issues and will be enough for some people.
  
  Others may want more in depth work and 15 - 20 sessions or more long term therapy can be beneficial to gain a deeper understanding of oneself and will be very rewarding in terms of practical changes to ones' life. Of course, therapy is a very individual process and the time frame depends on the individual, the resources they have already developed, and the issues they are dealing with.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  I have been on a personal development journey for 21 years and it has had countless benefits for me over this time, some subtle and some really momentous changes. Briefly, I find that therapy has made me more grounded. Another way of saying this would be that I find I have more of an embodied sense of myself and that my interactions with others come more from this place.
  
  - On a practical level this has improved my relationships, (at home and work) and made me at once more aware of my feelings, and less emotionally "reactive".
  - Therapy has made me more effective in my actions and my work.
  - It has also gave me more of a sense of purpose in my life and made life more fulfilling.
  - Through my meditation practice I have also developed a certain amount of inner stillness which helps me to be a little less triggered by things that don't go my way.....

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  I enjoy the sense of connection and the relationship that builds with the people I work with.
  Sometimes there is an "aha" moment where someone really gets something new which I find a real pleasure to witness. I also enjoy seeing the changes which occur in people's lives as they grow and perhaps become more in touch with themselves.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  Nobody is perfect, and we all make mistakes!

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  There are many important political issues.... the most significant I think is the environmental crisis. However momentous the other issues are, the planet has a somewhat uncertain but tight deadline that we have to sort things out by. Hopefully that timeframe won't reach crunch point in my life time, but it might. This motivates me to be part of the change.
  
  Many people, from Al Gore to the Dali Lama have said that we need to shift in consciousness in order to resolve the environmental problems we face. Einstein said that "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
  
  I believe that if we all become more self aware then we will very naturally start treating the planet with more respect. I hope to play my own small part in this change through my work as a therapist.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  Too many to mention, films from art like Kubrick , Fellini and Coppola's work to more pop culture films with some depth like the Wachowskis Matrix. ( I had another lifetime as a film student and wannabee filmmaker...)
  I also love Van Gogh's paintings.