I offer introductory interviews to potential clients for no cost, as a way to get to know each other. The most important question I always want to understand when I talk to someone new is “What is Your Deepest Longing?” “What’s the outcome or the change that you’re looking for?” That way, I can see if I’m the right person to offer coaching.
People come up with all kinds of answers.
I want to make a million dollars.
I want to become enlightened.
I want to save the world.
I want to achieve perfect health.
I want to know the secrets of the universe.
There’s one answer that always gets me at my core. Whenever I hear these words, I become soft mush, and I discover an almost irresistible command – from the Great Spirit which gives us all life – to offer support.
I want to love and to allow myself to be loved.
The yearning to know love for real, not in a vast impersonal way (I feel the love of God, I feel the love of all humanity), but upfront and personal, to allow yourself to love and to be loved, feels to me to be not so much an ambition, but more like the claiming of your birthright.
My life used to be centered around spirituality and the aspiration for enlightenment, from my teenage years until my mid 40s. Then there was a pivotal moment. Sitting alone on the deck of my house in the stillness under the stars, I had a moment of recognition. If I die one day without having reached the peaks of enlightenment, I would really be okay with that. But if I die realizing I’ve never really opened my heart to love and to be loved, that would feel like a wasted life. That was in 2002, twenty-four years ago. Ever since that night, Love has been my highest value, and it’s the way that I most like to support other people.
After that initial conversation, if we decide to work together, I find it usually takes a few months to reset the nervous system to be ready for love. We have to attend too many things to be ready for healthy Love.
Know Your Why
The first step, (which almost no one ever does, but it makes all the difference), is to get clear on
Why do you want to be in a relationship?
It can be a lot of work. There’s the risk of betrayal and conflict. Why do you want to have a partner instead of just moving autonomously on your own? Whatever answers you discover to that question – that were not taught to you but come from deep within your own heart – become the map of what you want to create in relationship.
Let Go of the Past
Many of us carry significant wounds from previous relationships, as well as from childhood. Getting close to someone can trigger fears of being abandonned, humiliated, neglected, lied to, or cheated on. We have to find a way to feel those wounds and to fully release them. It’s like your heart has to become a virgin all over again.
Increase your Energy
Many people in our driven culture feel exhausted deep down, and just make it through another day with caffeine, energy drinks, or sugar. In order to have something significant to give in relationship, we need to be able to increase our level of bioenergy. I find the best way to do that is with Taoist practices. In that tradition, bioenergy is known as chi. The more chi you accumulate in the body, the more magnetic and attractive you become. Then you don’t have to go fishing for a mate. Someone will come fishing for you.
Emotional balance
Researchers like Dr. John Gottman and others have now established that there are specific behaviors which interfere with relational health: like criticism, blame, defensiveness, and withdrawal. There are others, which we sometimes need to cultivate, which support relational health, like appreciation, taking responsibility, leaning in with curiosity, and vulnerable authenticity. If you want to move into a healthy relationship in your life, it may be best not to wait until you meet someone to start to work on transforming how you habitually show up. Maybe best to get this process underway in advance. Underneath all these behave patterns are emotions, and energetic states. Once again, Taoism offers rich tools in the Six Healing Sounds and the Inner Smile to release stagnant emotions from the organs, and to create the energetic pathways which are the basis for healthy relationship.
Sexual Aliveness
There are also many practices –which you can already start to cultivate when you are single – to prepare for deep nourishing sex once you get into a relationship. For men, this includes practices like toning the pelvic floor, testicle massage, and circulating energy through the microcosmic orbit,-all of which are helpful to gain some choice over ejaculation – and to spread aroused energy into the rest of the body. For women, this includes practices like breast massage, the nine flowers massage, ovarian breathing, and working with the jade egg, all of which contribute to hormonal balance and increased libido.
The longing for love doesn’t have to be a hit and miss affair. There are so many practices you can develop which make it more likely that you will meet the right partner, and which will prepare you to have a spectacularly nourishing healthy relationship.
