The unquenched QM

In this contribution, we briefly analyze the formalism of the unquenched quark model (UQM) and its application to the calculation of hadron spectra with self-energy corrections, due to the coupling to the meson-meson continuum. In the UQM, the effects of $q \bar q$ sea pairs are introduced explicitly into the quark model through a QCD-inspired $^{3}P_0$ pair-creation mechanism. The UQM formalism can be extended to include also the effects of hybrid mesons, i.e. hybrid loops. The main applications to spectroscopy and decays are analyzed.