One of the things that can make any approach to conscious relationship difficult is well-established and habitual energetic pathways. For example, you might decide together to practice appreciation, to recognize criticism, and to interrupt it. To some degree, you may be able to interrupt familiar patterns just by deciding. However, if the nervous system is oriented towards a fight-or-flight response, or a feeling of being threatened, you can practice new relating habits all you like, but the nervous system is going to respond in its habitual way.
This is where Taoist practice has so much to offer: because the whole Taoist system, with its five major yin elements and five minor yang elements, is completely oriented towards dissipating stagnant emotion and cultivating healthy emotion.
For example, in Taoism, when the lungs carry stagnant energy, which can be true for most people, they then harbor feelings of sadness and grief. When you bring fresh energy to the lungs, this creates the courage to tell the truth and to be authentic, honest, and real.
When there is stagnant energy in the liver, there can be a tendency towards anger and frustration, which can come out in relationships. When we release that and fill the liver with fresh energy, we have the basis in the organs for giving, generosity, and overflowing with fresh creative solutions.
We could go through all the five major organs in this way: each one carries energies destructive to intimacy when there is blockage, and becomes the basis of a healthy relationship when it is full of fresh “chi.”
This is where these ancient Taoist practices have so much to offer couples who want to create a conscious, loving relationship. This fusion is the basis of this website.
I have a passion, and 37 years of experience, in working with conscious relationships, and the same time period in working with Taoist practice.
This approach brings these two disciplines together in a way that creates wonderful results. It allows the nervous system to realign itself in alignment with conscious practice.
You can use Taoist practice to open the heart so it naturally expresses more appreciation and gratitude, and then you can combine that with conscious relating practices, which also bring forth more appreciation and gratitude. One discipline works in collaboration with the other. When you work on the energetic pathways through Taoist practice, and the relating habits through the work of Drs Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, you get the most magnificent result—allowing a high probability for a conscious, loving, safe, trusting relationship that is also sexually alive.
