Red-Hot Body, Red-Hot Relationships
I met my friend and colleague, Jena LaFlamme, over 8 years ago, while we were both studying holistic wellness and counseling. We were both struggling with eating disorders, weight issues
and relationship woes. From macrobiotic cooking classes, conferences at Kripalu, contact improvisation dancing and zen meditation in India, I've experienced it all – and then some – with Jena.
Today, we are both successful business owners with booming private practices; we live, breathe and teach the secrets to vibrant wellness, healthy and balanced (red-hot) bodies and extraordinary and vibrant (red-hot) relationships.
We'd like to invite you to a free 2-part webinar series, where we'll share with you, each in turn, what we've mastered over the years.
Red-Hot Body, Red-Hot Relationships: Let two women who KNOW show you how!
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
Part 1: Red-Hot Relationships
The Nine Essential Ingredients for Passionate Partnerships for the 21st Century
with Relationship Expert, LiYana Silver
Tuesday, June 9, 2009; 5:30-6:30pm PST; 8:30-9:30pm EST
- Confounded, confused and can't communicate with the opposite sex?
- Discouraged when your relationship gets more loving & intimate, the sexual spark fizzles?
- Want to stop unhealthy relationship patterns, but you're not sure if it's them, or if it's you?
- Want to be yourself, but always feel like you have to choose between you or the relationship?
- Daunted when it starts out so loving and sizzling, but turns into a fight-fest, over and over again?
Join Relationship Expert and Coach, LiYana Silver and get the revolutionary recipe guide for creating the intimate love relationships you hunger for.
If the Iron Chef got Naked, slipped into a sassy, classy lady suit and divulged her feisty, fresh formulas for creating tasty relationships, sex and intimacy – and passed out yummy samples at the end – that would be this webinar.
You will:
- Learn the nine essential ingredients that make any relationship sizzle – and lasting!
- Uncover the number one skill, without which your relationship is doomed
- Decipher your relationship blueprint – the first step in turning conflict into harmony (and so that you will never get into a lame relationship again!)
- Learn simple communication tools that will get your needs met without nagging, diffuse reactivity and bring you more satisfaction in the bedroom
- Find out why men and women appear to be different species - and how to activate your translator for symbiotic, respectful relating
- Learn why in most long-term relationships the sex dies – and what you can do about it
Complete with vital information, lively Q&A and simple how-to's and tools you can apply to your life (tonight!), this hour-long, chock-full webinar will forever change what you know to be possible in relationships.
** You'll also get a special offer to be a part of a 11-week beta relationship coaching program with LiYana Silver!
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
To learn more about LiYana Silver, Relationship Expert & Founder of Re-Defining Monogamy :
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com
Part 2: Red-Hot Body
The Seven Succulent Ingredients for a Body that Sizzles
with Weight-Loss Expert, Jena LaFlamme
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 5:30 – 6:30pm PST, 8:30 – 9:30pm EST
- How would you like to look in the mirror only to find a satisfying smile ripple across your face?
- How would you like access to your metabolic hot buttons so that weight loss becomes a natural letting go of that which is no longer needed, as opposed to a forced and painful restriction exercise?
If your relationship with food and your body feels more like a nightmare than a dream, like a fight than a friendship, do not resign yourself to a life of inner conflict, there is a way out.
I spent a decade vacillating between overeating and cruel food restriction, and in my search for the body of my dreams I tried everything under the sun. And nothing worked….until I came
across these teachings. These teachings worked for me to lose 20 pounds and you can too.
In the end, the answers were simpler than I ever could have imagined. My discovery? That the blue-print to easy, sustainable weight loss has been with you all along, in the very instincts of you own body, or as I call it, your "animal."
In this 60-minute free webinar you will:
- Discover why "self-control" doesn't melt off the pounds and what really does.
- Dissolve your despair with your stubborn body and replace it with hope and inspiration that you too can have the body of your dreams
- Learn the key, delicious foods that will satisfy you and put an end to your cravings
- The exercise secret that keeps weight on even if you are pounding the treadmill and has allowed me to maintain a slender figure without even stepping in the gym
- Recognize where you may be inadvertently sabotaging your weight loss efforts and how you can get more satisfaction from food and make weight loss effortless
With these strategies, I have not only lost weight myself and kept it off for years without yo-yoing, but have helped hundreds of clients get the same results. You can too!
There's only room for a limited amount of you on the bridge line so if this interest you sign up immediately while there is still space.
To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/129027795
To learn more about Jena LaFlamme, Weight Loss Expert & Founder and Director of the Jena Wellness Center :
http://www.jenawellness.com
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I look forward to having you on the red-hot pair of webinars!
Enjoy, LiYana
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I'm a student of sensuality, and am familiar how "taking away" one sense can have the wonderful effect of enhancing the others in our fine five: taste, touch, sight, smell and sound.
So I was interested a week ago, to be invited by two close friends to dine in the dark at a local San Francisco restaurant, Opaque. We would be served in complete darkness, by legally blind servers – and fine fare would complete this strange and fascinating experience.
We were led down twisting, velvet-lined corridors to our table, and managed to find our places without either upsetting the table nor knocking even a plate or piece of silverware off. When food began to arrive, we coordinated between our server and us four, to put it all within groping reach. Our first trick was to pry a piece of bread out of the napkined basket and dip it (rather than our fists) into the butter. So far so good. And plus, if you didn't put your bread on it's assigned bread plate, who could tell anyway?
After an "aumse bouche" – my favorite term in the world for an appetizer before an appetizer, literally meaning, to amuse or tease the mouth, but hey, I'm all for amusing a bush! – came a plate of cut up veggies with three sauces. Our server announced, here is your cru d'etat.
Speaking enough french to order in a restaurant and have a conversation about love while keeping myself out of jail, I know that what he meant was, crudite – meaning raw cut up vegetables.
Without knowing it or meaning it, I'm pretty sure, he put "crudite" and "coup d'etat" (meaning revolution or overturning the current regime) in a blender, pressed "whirl" and got "cru d'etat."
I have to say, his slip of the toungue was the best thing about the night. We all found our eyes strained for sight, giving us slight headaches, not at all enhancing the flavors of the food. Likewise, it hard to really feel and get into what each other were saying, without being able to see body language and facial cues.
Grateful for our sightedness, we all commented how the visuals of food – it's shapes, presentation and variety – all add to the experience of eating. At least during this night, taking sight away didn't add to the taste, texture, sound and smells of our meals. The food was fine, but not worth the whopping price tag, attached to the novelty of blind dining.
As we exited the restaurant, back into the twilight of the street, we realized Opaque had gotten away with quite a "coup" indeed. Somehow, we'd paid twice as much for mediocre food, and helped them save on their electric bill!
Cru – raw
d'etat – of the house
Opaque: Raw Deal on the House!
In a recent article (coming out in June) I explored the concepts of lasting sexual spark in long-term relationships, our erotic intelligence and shadow natures, and the link between pain and pleasure. And in the exploration I ran across something I'd heard about before, but never seen covered by mainstream news – orgasmic birth.
Childbirth: talk about a personal and cultural arena of our lives fraught with pain, shame, blame and shadow! (I believe it's Genesis 3:16 that says, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.")
Enjoy excerpts from my article as well as the ABC news story and a link to an extraordinary site on Orgasmic Birth!
When pain is transformed into pleasure…
Why is it that so often where there is the intimacy, love and familiarity of long-term and life partnership, the sexual spark seems to dim, flicker and perhaps fade altogether? What gives? Why is it when the pleasure of partnership grows, the pain of habituation and resultant boredom can also increase?
Riding high in my own partnership, I am neither blind nor impervious to the dismal track record of most long-term relationships. I set off on a preemptive search in the most light-filled and shadowy places for some guidance for keeping both the erotic zest and the sacred intimacy flourishing in sacred sex and life partnership. The search leads right away into the link between pain and pleasure.
We strive for intimacy: to hold nothing back from each other, to share everything. We strive for our relationships to be as pleasureful and pleasure-filled as possible. Yet sexual sparkle often feeds on tension, polarity, something yet to discover. And often past pains and traumas stand in the way of our path to pleasure. Arousal is a complex paradoxical cocktail: it requires some amount of adrenaline, some degree of excitement and danger, while also requiring just enough safety to open to the risk of the unknown, the new and the mysterious.
When we can unlock formerly locked doors of our pain and embrace what we have previously rejected in ourselves, the result is often more wholeness and a divine homecoming. As Dossie Easton, marriage and family therapist and co-author of The Ethical Slut puts it, “… the shadow, our personal garbage pit, becomes the gateway through which we pass to travel in realms beyond ordinary consciousnesses.”
Shadow aspects can be hot, exciting, intriguing. The taboo has simultaneous repulsion and appeal. Can our shadow – the very things we’ve decided have nothing to do with our best, most sacred selves have a place in our sacred sex and turned-on relationship lives?
When we dive into our past with consciousness, we get to rewrite the ending ourselves; we travel a familiar path, but come out as victors, rather than victims. And when it is injected with eros, with the very life force that sexual energy is, it is powerfully affirming – and we have created a new memory, now accessible in our consciousness. We turn our personal tragedies into triumphs.
Easton offers, “Lucifer actually means “light bearer”… the fallen angel who goes into unfathomable darkness with an unquenchable light inside him, and who carries the power of the villain and of the emancipator.”
But is going deeper into pain always necessary for its transformation? “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer,” says influential thinker and founder of Analytical psychology, Carl Jung. For some the healing process cannot bypass pain, and the “powers of enlightenment” have to bore directly through the dense center of suffering. Often, going through pain becomes the access to pleasure; it becomes a question of degree and the intention behind the exploration.
I admit to being rather skeptical, until I ran across an abcNews video story on orgasmic birth. Birth is considered to be one of the most painful experiences a body can endure, yet this showed many women having the same blissful, expansive sensations in birthing their babies as in sexual orgasm. One woman explained her process as re-interpreting the intense sensations of contractions and labor from painful to pleasureful. In fact, many of the same physiological actions occur in labor and birth as in sexual intercourse and orgasm.
We are all influenced, to one degree or another by spiritual lineages that have included shadow and pain in the quest for enlightened union: fasting, sleep deprivation, whirling dervishes, self-flagellation, walking uphill on the knees, etc. While many of these sought to punish and deny the body in order to get to spirit, others used pain as a transformative tool to lovingly unite the body with the divine.
Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron reminds, “Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.”
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To be notified when the full article is out in June in New York Spirit Magazine, join my mailing list and I'll let you know when it comes out:
http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com
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News story on Orgasmic Birth:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=6120045&page=1
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Amazing site on Orgasmic Birth:
http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/
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"You may picture fear as the child within you who is terrified of being unworthy of love, joy, abundance and laughter, doomed to abandonment, dying of a broken heart. As you hold the child to your heart say: "Beloved of my heart, I love you with every part of my being. You are not alone. We live in a safe universe, you and I, and together we are going home."
– Benjamin Disraeli
Years ago, I was a professional modern dancer. I did fairly well in a hard field, making my humble living (mostly) dancing in Europe, Israel and in New York City. Until one day I realized I spent 80% of each day hating myself.
When I did the math, that meant 80% of my life devoted to self-denigration, and that was too high a percentage (!) so I quit dancing as a profession.
I wasn't raised religiously, but I know being a dancer from a young age took the place of Catholic school or a rigorous, constrictive religious training. In terms of working harder for less for promise of reward later. In terms of denying the body for a higher cause. In terms of becoming a vessel for another's vision. In terms of striving for perfection as the basis for simply being alive. In terms of self-loathing and joy being mixed up in the same thing. And also in terms of feeling a light shine forth from me and feeling a visceral connection with the divine as I did this craft I loved very much.
Last year, about this time, I created a dance piece, not only so I could dance and enjoy myself, but so that I could work out any leftover demons of dance roaming around in my psyche. So I could be free to enjoy this most gorgeous of arts, one I am blessed to be very good at.
And come up the twice-warmed demons did! (You can read old posts from February – May of 2008 to see to track my dancing with demons…) I have never been more challenged, more stretched to the bone to focus, show up, problem solve on my feet. I have never felt more shame at not knowing what I should know, but could only come to know by the experience of going through it.
They say you only get the courage to do something after you've done it. I do believe I'm brave enough to truly dance now.
Here's the piece, for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.beforeplaydance.com/
on one side
are
our lives
discon nected
di/ssected & bi-sected
int er rupted by
(over-technologized)
misunderstanding @
our brutal
isolation
& on the other side
there lives
visceral connection:
beating heart (light!)
and red hot heat
she persists
regard
less
David Deida – dive in or run the other way?
This is an article I wrote for New York Spirit Magazine, Spring 2009. Three couples take on a Deida week-long intensive. I'm one of the couples. Only two couples survive.
Read on here, or use this link:
http://www.nyspirit.com/issue154/Enlightened_Sex/
David Deida: Dive in or run the other way?
Enlightened Sex in the City takes a look at the work of a controversial spiritual master.
Best-selling author, powerfully insightful teacher, and provocative master of his craft, David Deida is arguably your man if you are looking to study sexuality as spirituality.
In addition to countless students, David’s work has inspired the likes of well-known achievement coach Tony Robbins, Ken Wilber of the Integral Institute and minister and spiritual spokeswoman, Marianne Williamson. For as many hearts he’s inspired to ecstasy and minds he’s blown wide open to divine love, there are just as many who’ve come away pissed off and disillusioned, hurt and burnt.
I first encountered David Deida’s work when my fiancée handed me the book, The Way of the Superior Man. Just the title set off alarm bells to my neo-feminist sensibilities, but I read it anyways and became hooked on Deida’s heartfelt prescription for erotically-charged harmony between the sexes. I’ve since read most of Deida’s books, heard him speak numerous times and have placed myself (and fiancée) in Deida’s masterful hands during a week-long intensive.
The heart of Deida’s work is about living your deepest truth and giving your greatest gifts, in the face of pain, broken hearts, confusing partners, and your own personality maze. He offers information, skills and energetic/body practices so as to be of service to the force of divine love in the universe, through your loving, love-making and relating.
In a moment, you’ll meet two other couples: Kendra and Decker and Bryan and KC, who have recently taken a week-long intensive with Deida. One couple finds their marriage deepening and opening; the other broke up as a result of the workshop. What is it about Deida’s sexual and spiritual truths that have the power to send two hearts more deeply aflame in connection, and for two others, sears their relationship to cinders?
Deida offers potent definitions of the essence of – and the interplay between – the divine masculine and feminine.
He describes the masculine as depth of presence; archetypically and energetically it is piercing presence, stillness, purpose and will, a penetrating force by which and through which the world and all experience is felt and known. The feminine is all possibility, all movement and dynamic creative energies; fire and fury, sweetness and comfort changing on a dime, the fierce beauty of life and experience itself. The feminine is attracted to depth of presence and the masculine is attracted to that which is flush with energy.
Deida positions the romantic relationship as a means to understand and be in service of the divine feminine and masculine within your self and within your partner; it is a way of continually opening to more love and appreciation, and for sexuality to be divine prayer. Many people can misunderstand Deida’s work and assume simply that women should be more feminine and men more masculine. As Deida says in an interview with Bodhi Tree Bookstore, “We're multidimensional and fluid beings. There's nothing wrong with any of us identifying with more masculine or more feminine, more consciousness or more light at any particular moment except when it creates closure or problems because we're not using it wisely.”
Another important principle in Deida’s work is that of polarity. As with magnets, there is the most irresistible pull between distinctly different charges – negative on one side, positive on the other. Deida adds, “Any time one person is in their masculine and one person is in their feminine, it's like a magnet or electricity happens between them, and it doesn't matter if they're committed in a relationship or total strangers.” Much of Deida’s work is about cultivating polarity – with masculine on one end of the spectrum and feminine on the other, to maintain and deepen sexual attraction.
Another important aspect of Deida’s work revolves around his three stages of development: “Any time you're doing something for yourself, for me, me, me, it's the first stage. Any time you're doing something on the sense of equality and sharing making sure you’re both safe and okay, it's the second stage. And any time you're doing something for the sake of all beings, it's the third stage. You may die in the process. Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, and Mother Teresa are third stage people, but we could all have those moments every day. All you have to do is be in a disposition of serving, regardless of the outcome to yourself, and that's the third stage.”
It was for this and more that we all came. Kendra and Decker, recently married, were well aware of the potential to get bored and take each other for granted over the span of their marriage and they decided to fix it before it was broken in 5, 15 or 50 years. The wanted to be able to continue to appreciate and truly know each other as well as deepen their sexual connection; they wanted to be able to have moments of tantric merging at will, rather than at random. The urging of their good friend and business partner, Bryan, was the deciding factor to dive in. Bryan is a coach and leads seminars for men – the Authentic Man Program – along with Decker and Kendra, and KC is a meditation teacher and sensuality coach. KC and Bryan decided similarly to do the workshop for similar reasons: a more solid relationship and deeper sexual practices. A long time student of Deida, Bryan wanted to receive the direct benefits and transmission possible through being with him personally.
The week-long intensive I attended with my partner was called the Yoga of Sex and Relationship. Obviously confused at the outset, we thought we were going to do a little yoga and learn some sensual and sexual practices that would amplify our connection. When we got there, we were all told there was to be no touching, kissing or exchanging bodily fluids for the whole week, not even with our partner. The next morning we found out that yoga in Deida-land doesn’t mean familiar stretchy, sweaty, feel-good asanas.
Deida draws a distinction between therapy, yoga and spirituality: therapy is past and healing-based; the whys and hows. To use a metaphor of a hole in a panel of stained glass, therapy is fixing the hole. Yoga – disciplined practice, a means and a way – is the polishing of the colored glass, regardless of the hole, making beauty out of the hole. It is the ability to take whatever you’ve got, whether or not it’s what you like or prefer, no matter how ugly, and transform it into art, surrendering to the divine, regardless. Spirituality? Well, everything’s perfect, as it is; there never was any hole in the stained glass. Deida defines his work as yoga with the goal of making art out of sexing and loving. Although it can be useful to at times go back and do some therapy on stuff, and his work does rub up against spirituality, Deida is about yoga. Attending his yogic workshops for most is like an interactive, intense, challenging co-creation of art – and a certain level of comfort can’t be your priority. At then end of each break throughout the day, I had to gird my loins to go back in and continue to do yoga and make art.
Relationship is as good a spiritual vehicle as any to experience divinity – but possibly the most challenging. For those of us who haven’t committed to being celibate monks and who choose relationship as spiritual path, Deida offers a map. In addition to a greater appreciation for herself, Kendra’s greatest take-away was to see how the masculine and feminine naturally clash and to not take it so seriously when it comes up in life. The problem isn’t over there with the opposite sex; your partner will continue to baffle, annoy, anger and disappoint you; it all comes with the territory. The feminine can often appear as volatile and unstable and the masculine can often appear as dense and inconsiderate. In a moment of humor, Deida says, “Ask yourself, is this the crazy bitch I want to be with?” or “is this the stupid asshole I want to be with?” Rather than bemoaning it, or assuming the next one will be less wacky or less of a jerk, the key is to learn how to dance with the essence of feminine and masculine, as an expression of your greatest truth in each moment.
All of us who took the workshop are facilitators and coaches and represent a younger generation of teachers working with men and women who want deeper relating, the ability to truly connect with others, and greater authenticity. One of the things taught in the Authentic Man Program is how to cultivate connection, to really “get” where another is at, often called resonance. Decker walked away from the week with Deida with the profound distinction of polarity versus resonance. The choice of when to go for resonance and connect with another, and when to choose polarity in order to retain powerful presence and purposeful separateness, has changed his life, relationship, organization and marriage – forever. Rather than always defaulting to being intimate and close, he is grateful for the choice of being able to bring his best, no matter what ride his partner is on.
With tears in her eyes, KC attempts to convey the depth of gratitude for what she got from the challenging workshop and the fallout – her breakup: a space of profoundly valuing herself, the gift of opening heart and body to another, and an understanding of her “blueprint” for attraction. When we take things we think are ugly, dark and wrong and shine light and love through them, they have this miraculous effect of being able to open the heart and body. Deida’s work can be remarkably transformational because he isn’t afraid to go to the dark epicenter and make art by finding beauty everywhere, in every moment. And then we become no longer afraid of ourselves, nor of living fully.
Bryan left with a deep sense of what he is and what he is not; getting himself as perfect, yet wanting more for himself. The workshop compounded issues between him and KC and broke them apart. Although the type of solid masculine man of deep character espoused by Deida is something that Bryan aspires to, he realized it just isn’t him. It’s like going against his natural strengths of fluidity and movement. One of the unfortunate pitfalls of Deida’s work is that many try to become “Deida-bots,” adapting postures or behaviors, developing an exoskeleton (of the kind Deida is actually trying to dissolve), and never make it back to themselves. Although not totally Bryan’s experience, he still says, “For the month after the workshop, I was raking myself over the coals, trying to become someone I am not. I am still sorting through what is true for me,” After periods of mourning and grieving the year of being together with KC, he is still left feeling infinitely deepened. As he says, “Can you stay open in the face of some of the most painful emotional experiences you’ve ever had? The cup of your joy is carved by your sorrow.”
Although Deida’s workshops are not inherently unsafe or dangerous, it is up to each participant to honor themselves. It can be important to separate teacher from teachings, since some masters or enlightened beings still have a shadow side and could do with a little therapy themselves. Deida is the first to acknowledge he’s far from perfect. Deida has profound mastery of his topics, lives much like a social recluse and shirks any markings of being a guru. Whether or not participants make him into a guru is another matter. His workshops are designed as a microcosm of real life and relationship; they are designed to push edges, because this is really how it’s going to feel and be with your partner. If you are not strong and supple, upset in the relationship will just be another excuse not to love.
Looking back at the experience, we all agree: being in the room with Deida for a long week is inherently beneficial for anyone hungry, aware or developed enough to receive it. He’s the real deal. With a bent more toward rigor than compassion, Deida’s work is still that of a living master. It’s not for everyone. Most wouldn’t trade it, but there aren’t many who are clear they’d do it again. As KC puts it, “You have to be kind of crazy to do something like this, but crazy in a really gorgeous way, so hungry for the most beautiful, raw living – and that isn’t always what you think it is.”
Deida offers us an avenue to meet the dark stuff – that we all share, teachers and students alike – with love. It is about cultivating discipline and ferocious intensity, but for the ultimate goal of living in beauty and union, of striving toward the divine through sex and love.
Deida offers a way to open your heart, give your greatest gifts and love as fully as you can this lifetime. Yes, he’ll urge you to push your edges in yoga and in practices, when you have a week, weekend or hour set aside for it. But the rest of the time, he reminds us to make our lives as kind as we possibly can for this gentle soul we find ourselves in relationship with.
David Deida offers a demanding path to become strong – so that we can be sweet.
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LiYana Silver, Relationship Specialist and regular contributor to New York Spirit, is a teacher, counselor and writer – with a reverently irreverent outlook and a true love of true partnership. She works primarily with women and couples in intensives, retreats and in individualized sessions. For upcoming events and more information, please visit her website: http://www.redefiningmonogamy.com.
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To learn more about David Deida’s teachings, books and workshops, visit: http://www.deida.info.
To learn more about the Authentic Man Program, visit: http://www.authenticmanprogram.com.
To learn more about KC Baker’s work: http://www.kcbaker.com.
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You know those people at the gym that jam out on the elliptical machine like they are in a nightclub, lip-syncing along with their ear phoned-in music, arms flailing and hair tossing, occasionally emitting some high-pitched screechy sounds that resemble singing?
I am one of those people.
I jam at the gym. I admit it. (That'd me, above, if I were ipod-ized)
Last week, I was listening to a new Lenny Kravitz song, "Love, Love, Love" (go download it from iTunes or whathaveyou) and got to thinking about Love, God and What Really Matters.
The Cliff Notes version of Lenny's song is that he don't need nothin – like money, fame, jewelry, drugs or someone to get him laid – he's got LOVE. It's a great song, and very conducive to gym-jamming. And, really, what does Matter?
The economy is deeply messed up and we all feel it. So many have been hard-core affected, and those who've only felt it peripherally, it's on our minds. As much as I bow my head to the realities of many people's lives, scorched and splintered by our nose-diving economy, I also still see that this country is still the richest in the world, still happily consuming away. For most (not all) of us, it means we now can't buy a new car, we have to make due with our three-year old one. Or we can't buy the blu-ray player, we have to make due with our DVD player. American consuming and rich livin' marches on for most. Yet still, there's nothing like the threat of recession and depression to get us frightened about all that can be taken away.
But what doesn't get taken away? What feeds Mother Theresa? What sustained Nelson Mandela in prison for all those years? What made Gandhi get up, morning after morning, sore from another beating? What fuels a single mother of three toddlers in the inner city?
I call it Love.
What is it that you Love?
What thunders through you, demanding to be felt? What moves you, taps at your heart and buckles you at your knees? What doesn't go away when your things do? What doesn't go away when your lover or your mother does? What feeds you, but not through your plate? What courses through your veins and comes out as a palpable blast of creativity? What quietly keeps you company when your heart is breaking? What compels you to sing in the shower – or at the gym?
What is it that you Love?
Bow to That. Cultivate That. Honor That. Feed That. Flirt with That.
We could all do with a direct upline to Love, Love, Love.
And while you are madly flirting with the unique expression of Love and experience of Love in your life, watch this clip of Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of "Eat, Pray, Love") speaking on Creativity, Genius, God and Love on Ted TV:
http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
It was my eye-watering, heart-melting, exultant dose of Love today.
Go Love, Love, Love.
LiYana
Soon, I'll get married. And have a baby.
All of which I'm grandly looking forward to.
(Soon being relative, mind you)
I've always done everything in my life back-ass-wards, in my own time, against the current and by my own rules – and the marriage thing and the baby thing will be no different. Personalized vows, a pre-nuptual arrangement (so we both know what institution we are signing up for!), a highly unusual ceremony, living "off the grid," and the child born into the village it takes to raise it: these are all par for the course for me.
Although I do everything unconventionally and it doesn't look like it's about to change any time soon, I wonder about the conventional phenomenon of the decline of sexual desire within long-term relationship. The sizzle subsides. The heat peters out. The comfort of home and hearth replace the fire of the loins. Not for everyone, but for so, so many.
Should we not get into long-term partnership if we want to keep our erotic embers alive? Is it inevitable or can we practice, will, hope, create, connive and reason our way out of the inevitability? And why does it prove to be so ubiquitously inevitable?
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with giving sex a break. After that many years together, some folks might be happy to get a rest, to have time to devote to intimacy, conversation, travel, children, learning, cuddling, what have you. A hot sex life is only a priority if it's a priority.
But what if it is a priority – and it's going down the tubes? I've just been reading and heartily enjoying "Mating in Captivity" by Esther Perel, NYC based sex/couples therapist.
http://www.estherperel.com/
She posits that one cause for the decline is that the safety, intimacy and comfort that are the hard-won results of long-term partnership are often at odds with the unknown, taboo and forbidden that fuel our sexual and erotic connections.
Another is the identity clash some of us feel in our new roles as wife, husband or family maker. A dutiful wife should be self-sacrificing and not tend to her pleasure, right? A caring husband wouldn't have THOSE kinds of thoughts about the mother of his children, would he?
But who says what we want in one area of our life carries over part and parcel to another? Aren't we flexible beings, capable of wearing many hats? Can we be a vixen in bed and a entrepreneur in life? Can't we be a fantastic parent and into whatever kink we are into? Isn't it a paradox in the first place to be human, to be in a relationship, even?
Perhaps including all our oxymoronic parts in one teeming relationship is what the whole thing is about.
Perhaps embracing the paradox and including what would ordinarily be excluded is the key to getting all we want WITHIN the relationship, rather than going OUTSIDE the relationship. The statistic is that somewhere between 50-80% of people cheat. Yowsa.
As Esther Perel writes:
"Family life flourishes in a an atmosphere of comfort and consistency. Yet eroticism resides in unpredictability, spontaneity, and risk. Eros is a force that doesn't like to be constrained. When it settles into repetition, habit, or rules, it touches its death. It is then transformed into boredom and sometimes, more powerfully into repulsion. Sex, a harbinger of loss of control, is fraught with uncertainty and vulnerability. But when kids come on the scene, our tolerance for these destabilizing emotions takes a dive. Perhaps this is why they are so often relegated to the fringes of family life. What eroticism thrives on, family life defends against."
"When we validate one another's freedom within the relationship, we're less inclined to search for it elsewhere. [Infidelity] is no longer a shadow but a presence, something to talk out openly, joke about, play with. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclines to keep secrets."
So, here's to telling the truth – all of it.
Here's to a hearth and home that embraces not only our excellent communication, our brilliant intimacy, our integrity and our loving kindness, but our seducer, our temptress, our shadow, our illicit, and our quickly-beating erotic hearts.
—
Reverse Spiritual Cowgirls in Red
Don't all magical things converge in threes?
One
I lit a red candle today, in honor of my dear father, who passed away on October 23, 2008. Red for Roland (my dad). I'm trying to sense into the ways his essence is still with me. He's not so much a guardian angel type, more like a trickster, a coyote or kokopeli. So as my best plans for efficiency and hard work unravel and snag, I wonder if it's my dear dad, reminding me to lift my head up, sip life, enjoy the art in the making around me, the ordinary made extraordinary by taking the time to see it. And leave time for some mischief, too.
To keep track of our toothbrushes, growing up, it ws Red for Roland, Blue for Beverly, my mom (who is a guardian angel) and Yellow for LiYana (ok, that's a stretch, but what color starts with L? I don't think lime-colored toothbrushes existed in the 1970s)
Two
As I was sitting at my red candle, I saw that the book of matches was stamped with "Camp Reverse Cowgirl" – and remembered getting it at Burning Man this last year. I sparkly woman in a cowgirl hat handed it to me as a reward for making it back alive after flying in an open-cockpit plane with a friend. For those of you that don't know, Burning Man is a 50,000 person summer camp for adults in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. Each year, folks come and set up extraordinary art installations, dance, and bring new meaning to extreme camping, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Many folks form themselves into theme camps, such as the Reverse Cowgirls.
In case you don't know, a Cowgirl is not only an intrepid lass exploring her way to her own personal frontiers, but is also an affectionate name for the sexual position when the woman is on top. Reverse Cowgirl, well, you can probably make the picture.
Maybe you recognize this chic?
And check out the picture, up and to your right, yo!
Three
And then there's one of my newest friends and colleagues, Sera Beak. I met her when we were both interviewed on the Stuart Davis Show, "Sex, God, Rock & Roll" a couple of months ago. I realized her book, "The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark" was hugely helpful to me, years and years ago, as I was redesigning my business and creating www.ReDefiningMonogamy.com.
The Red Book. It's all about "going Red," connecting to the real, alive, beating heart of spirituality, in that kind of raw, outlaw kind of way. The divine is nowhere that you are not; the divine is having a divine/human experience through you.
Sera's up to starting a Redvolution.
Here's Sera, in a phone booth, which I suspect is one of the art installations at Burning Man.
Welcome spiritual cowgirls and boys … This is Sera Beak, a Harvard-trained scholar of world religions and intrepid spiritual cowgirl who spent the last 12 years traveling the world exploring spirituality — from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on her 21st birthday; from taking the host from a Croatian Catholic mystic who had the stigmata (truly) to having life-altering visions with a shaman (and everything in between). She's synthesized her experience and research into a new book and have come to one conclusion:
(it’s not what you think)
The Golden Age of divine booty calls.
Is not in the ancient past.
It’s right now.
So then the question becomes:
How the hell do we wink back?
One answer: By turning red, of course.
Check it out:
http://www.serabeak.com/
"When life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!"
- Anonymous
—
The truth is, these last few weeks have felt like hell. Negotiations with my partner on leaving San Francisco, how to combine keeping my business flourishing and me writing my book while we take off on a sailboat for a year, or two. We are good negotiators, but sometimes our skill level is surpassed by the complexity of the situation. This has been one of those times.
It's gotten heavy, snarled, emotional, chargey and even ugly. I've been scared. I don't think the straightest when I'm terrified.
Today, the last person I expected to be my angel, was.
Nathan, my partner in crime, in life and in love.
Nathan, on a boat, our home to be, in the Caribbean:
The Pablo Neruda part comes after the Skype part.
Our Skype chat from today:
LiYana
1:21 PM
how are you feeling about me?
Nathan
1:22 PM
i'm feeling good about you
i like you
i like us
i like our time together
i don't have all the answers
but i feel like things will work out
with creativity and intelligence and sensitivity
we made it through crazier things and have been the better for it
we'll do the same in leaving san fran / sailing / leaving sailing
come out better for it, is my thought on it.
what do you think?
LiYana
1:24 PM
generally, i like that, it makes sense
i'm having a very difficult time right now
i guess nothing to do about it
Nathan
1:25 PM
anything i can do to help with your difficult time?
LiYana Silver
1:27 PM
i'm shy to express things like that
since it's gotten us intro trouble lately
mostly, it's not your deal, so i try to work it out on my own, but then i isolate and it's hard for me to connect or be vulnerable
if i share, or ask for support, eventually it becomes something that you don't like doing, and it causes problems, and i feel like a jerk for asking, for needing, for relying on you
these last few days i feel lost, like leaving SF now, things seems pointless while we are apart
Nathan
1:30 PM
hmmm
it is hard to have decided to leave, with a transition time
i can feel that
of course, you're welcome to come to the boat and do nothing but work for the first 2 months
though i think some things are better in san fran
i've been thinking about coming back earlier in feb
so as to have less time apart
as another way to do it
LiYana
1:34 PM
that's sweet. i'm surprised and delighted to hear it
i wouldn't want you to miss out on being there, if it's important
i don't have good thinking on it
Nathan
1:35 PM
no worries … i'm thinking on it …
i figure it will all make sense as we go along
mostly
i just come back to
i love you
i feel better with you
life always works out better than i expect
even when it doesn't feel like that will be the case
so not to worry too much, but be healthy, eat well, love a lot, and stay Awake
and make the best decisions with the most information we have
LiYana
1:36 PM
i'm just so scared
terrified, actually
Nathan
1:36 PM
what is your worst fear?
LiYana
1:37 PM
two i think
that i'll give up on myself, what's important to me
that i'll be that woman who follows you and eventually, you'll hate that woman, who has no center
Nathan
1:40 PM
i hear you love
on the first one, i feel like you're doing good at holding out and discussing what's really important to you
and i feel like i've moved a lot around supporting your business, and will only get better around whatever i understand is really important to you
on the second one … i don't think its a real fear …
i think its dangerous to think that way
because it puts you between two losing options
one to not follow me, to be independent, and to lose me
or to follow me, to lose yourself, and to lose me
i don't think either is accurate
LiYana
1:42 PM
that's kind of what it feels like
Nathan
1:42 PM
yes. i think that second one is a construct where its reasonable to be terrified
its an unwinnable construct
not sure how to assure you the 2nd is not true. likely there is nothing i can say around it. but i'd say that's the place to focus your thoughts / talking to others / talking to me
LiYana
1:43 PM
if it's not true, what is?
i get that it's not winable, just not sure what IS winable?
Nathan
1:44 PM
that you are a woman i repeatedly and consistently show affection, love and loyalty too.
and that you being you will cause that to continue
the you that is strong and flexible, and follower and a leader
who negotiations nicely but firmly
who stands for what she wants and needs, but who considers me and my needs as well
the lionness
and the seductress
the woman by my side
and the woman out ahead
i think you are a unique and amazing woman, who has the skills and ability to be with me, and be better as a result
and i don't know any other that will be
LiYana
1:46 PM
those are nice things
thank you
Nathan
1:46 PM
not nice. true.
LiYana
1:48 PM
i don't what to say, sorry, i am crying
Nathan
1:48 PM
its ok. i love you liyana. i think you should keep doing what you are doing. feeling in the dark, doing your best. negotiationg, leading, following, petitioning, giving in, what feels right.
trusting your instincts for when to
go along, when to dig in your heels
i'd look at the current situation
from a place of what do your instincts say would be the best to do, the best to say
if you trust that will be the best thing, and it will all work out in your favor if you follow it
and do that, be true to that, come what will
LiYana
1:50 PM
that is very good guidance
do you always trust your instincts?
or listen to them?
Nathan
1:52 PM
i listen to them
then do everything not to listen to them
and then come back to listening to them, and generally doing what they say
even when it makes little sense
they are my navigation in complex waters
and when i look back on my life, they've always been right
none made sense at the time. all took courage. all were the right thing to do in retrospect
you have developed instincts. listen to them. see what you come up with. trust them. trust yourself. you know!
this is one thing i know to be true about you
no bullshit
we share this trait/skill
LiYana
1:54 PM
thanks for saying all these things about me. it's helpful. i'm not feelng very good about myself. it's good to get a little outside perspective.
Nathan
1:55 PM
you're being great, you know?
liyana, i love and adore you
i'm sorry this is a rough time
i have empathy.. and i feel rsponsible. and i know i'm doing the best i can
you'll get through it
listen to your soul, listen to your pussy
and tell me what they say later on, sometime soon
LiYana
1:55 PM
ok, i will, my love
Nathan
1:55 PM
i love you
LiYana
1:55 PM
i appreciate your seeing and level-headedness and compassion right now
i need it
i wasn't expecting it, and i couldn't ask for it
i love you, too, nathan, this i know
Nathan
1:57 PM
i love you liyana
i always ask myself, do i love liyana, am i better person as a result of being with her
and i consistently come back with
absolutely
LiYana
1:59 PM
this is what i wanted to ask for before, when you asked how you can help me: your compassion, love, tenderness, support
thank you
more than you can imagine
thank you
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly,
without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”
- Pablo Neruda
—–
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