The unquenched quark model

Abstract: In this contribution, we briefly analyze the formalism of the unquenched quark model (UQM) and its application to the description of several observables of hadrons. 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. We present our description of flavour asymmetry and strangeness in the proton when baryon-meson components are included. In the meson sector, the charmonium and bottomonium spectra with self-energy corrections due to the coupling to the meson-meson components .