When we first begin a relationship, we are full of hope, promise and a kind of magic. We enter a time of feeling openness, warmth and love.
Opening to another person brings to the surface our conditioned patterns and obstacles that can shut this connection down: our deepest wounds, our grasping and desperation, our worst fears, our mistrust, and our emotional trigger points.
Let’s explore this together.
Most of us struggle in our intimate relationships – for one person to love another, is the most difficult of all of our tasks. It can feel challenging to love someone we live with, day in and day out, year after year. Our relational landscape is fraught with illusion, uncertainty and high expectations, that most of us just cannot achieve.
Difficulties in relationships present us with an opportunity for our growth. To develop more emotionally conscious, embodied and aware relationships, we must learn about ourselves and how our own projections that are placed on our partners, may be getting in the way of our own happiness and the potential happiness that could be found in our relationships.
It’s important to recognize that all the emotional and psychological wounds we carry with us from the past are relational in nature: they have to do with us not feeling fully loved. This happened in our earliest relationships – with our caretakers – when our brain and body were completely impressionable. As a result, we developed self-protective patterns to insulate us from the vulnerable openness that love entails.
If we want to heal our relational wounds from the past – and be free of our longstanding relationship patterns – we need to have a full, conscious experience of them.
We become free of what we’re stuck in through meeting it and experiencing it directly – how you’ve constructed barriers or walls around yourself to keep people out, how you’ve defended yourself against feelings by shutting down, how you may have been hurt or overwhelmed in the past and it is still affecting you now in your relationships.
Have you or your partner been feeling defensive, controlling or disconnected?
I understand why that may be.
While in a relationship, we are fending off the threat of being hurt, manipulated, controlled, rejected or abandoned in the ways we were as a child. Yet if this is the main feeling or aspect of our relationship, it keeps us locked in strategies of defensiveness and control that undermine the possibility of deeper connection.
We long for deeper connection, yet we are also blocking it unconsciously too – no wonder we are confused and disillusioned.
Many of us are stuck in expectations of how our relationship should be. We feel it should provide security and peace that will save us from having to face painful difficult areas of life. We imagine that finding the right person will spare us from having to deal with loneliness, disappointment, fear or despair.
When we are willing to face our patterns, we can find clarity and the truth that lies within us. When we use our relationship as a ‘fix’ to keep us from the realities of life, sooner or later, our relationship will bring us to our knees, forcing us to confront our chaotic mind and heart, to see of the truth of lies within us.
With your energy and focused attention – something new and life-enhancing is available for you in your relationships – now.
We can learn to ride our waves of feelings, instead of becoming submerged in them – becoming conscious of emotional cycles and waves, to become fully embodied in our relationships.
What does it mean to be embodied in our relationships?
Embodiment is a practice to integrate into your daily life. To feel into your body, sense what you are truly feeling, and respond to your partner from this truth.
To be embodied in relationships is to listen to others from the whole self – the body, mind, and heart– rather than thinking of what to say when the other person stops talking or translating/interpreting/fixing their experience.
To be embodied in relationship is to be awake in both pleasure and pain. To lean into challenges and to know the somatic (body sensation) markers of the “yes” the “no” and the “maybe.”
Working together – learning about yourself in relationships
Even relationships with a strong foundation and lots of love may have trouble staying connected, working through difficult times, or energizing their union during a period of stagnation or boredom.
Rekindling the trust, emotional connection, and the playful spark necessary for intimacy is a process of establishing mutual goals, building new skills, expanding perspectives, and healing old wounds. This is a safe, supportive, and knowledgeable space for you to develop a foundation that will strengthen trust, develop deeper knowing of yourself and sustain your love through difficult times.
I work with couples to do the following:
- Learn how to stay in the present moment and speak from the heart during conflicts
- Transcend unhealthy relationship patterns and heal old wounds that keep couples locked in the past
- Learn tools to effectively communicate needs and resolve conflict
- Deepen and expand intimacy and your sexual relationship
- Build a strong, loving foundation for a nourishing relationship
Many of us have a tendency to get anxious, or to numb or freeze when faced with challenging and stressful events.
I invite each partner into their body, as well as their thoughts – and learn to hold a larger vision for their relationship – beyond day-to-day interactions and struggles – towards the essence of what is important to both of you now.
Somatic Inquiry Therapy can help you understand what’s happening physiologically and emotionally, unwind the overwhelm from your body, find your ground, and discover and embody your potential.
After working together – many couples report feeling a deeper connection and understanding of each other, a sense of shared purpose, an increased attraction for each other, and a knowledge of how to better resource themselves and each other.
The quality of your relationship is important – let’s explore this important ground together.
I’m scheduling sessions for individuals and couples for September now.
I look forward to being with you. Kim xoxo
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
Workshops & Classes – Coming Soon…
Presence Through Movement – November 2017
Reclaim the Divine Feminine – A Monthly Space for Women to Receive – November 2017
Wise Women’s Writing to Refresh & Renew Ourselves – January 2018
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
