Recharging Your Relationship: Day Twelve

(This is day 12 of 21 days of games to recharge a relationship that wants to be more fun, more loving, sexier and more connected to real spiritual growth.

There are a number of exercises that have been worked up to one by one.
This is an advanced flavor of a life that could be lived as a completely different level.

For a free half hour of coaching and exploration of how you could have a magical and awakened relationship, call 360-317-4773.
Well: email first with what you want.)

Here's day 12:

Day Twelve: Setting Goals as a Way Out

Remember myth #3: there is no way out. By now you’ve got a basketful of ways out and this goal thing, especially if written when you are by yourself, or spoken as a “we” goal when you are with your partner, is one of the most potent ways out.

Attention is powerful.

If we put our attention on our complaints, we stir ourselves down to bitterness and frustration.

If we put our attention on what we want, we tune ourselves toward a better life.

And here’s the deal: We want to speak to our partner, and write (in handwriting) our goals in two segments:

The masculine segment: What we want to get done, or what we want to have happen.

The feminine segment: How we want that to be as it gets done.

I can have the goal of finishing this book by December 15. That’s the masculine goal.

I can have to goal that this is done without pushing, and with a lot of ease, delight and discovery. That I am present and relaxed and happy as I write.

That brilliant ideas come naturally and easy to me.

That the catalog of all my discoveries over all of my years be easily and readily available to me.

So that’s the goals you want to say in your “we” goals.

What you’d like to happen:  “My we goal is that our communication improve.”

And how you’d like it to happen: "My we goal is that we easily and almost magically keep discovering ways to communicate that help us to talk and hear each other in ways better than we can even imagine.”

Ask for it all.

Point the arrow of life where you really want it to go.

And what helps give fuel to this arrow:

Being present.

Being grateful.

Being in like and love.

Being in the learning mode.

Being in the laughing mode.

Love, laughter, learning and listening: Listening to the now. Listening to the other. Listening to your intuition. Listening to your body.

All these will fill you with a kind of love/ divine/ happy power energy to get your life going toward these goals.

LEARNING VIA MOVEMENT WITH AWARENESS AND VARIATION.

Learning is the noticing of differences that make a difference.

Over and over we alternate between hanging out in the complaining mind and the real you, the you that is present and grateful and likes and loves, and is in your body in this moment and is aware of the outside world at this moment.

As part of your rapid development, and as a gift from the Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel training, here is another movement to fuel both learning and presence and deeper and more pleasurable breathing.

Stand and put your hands behind your head.

One: arch up your head and breathe in deeply as you push your belly out.

Two: shift your weight to your left foot and bend forward as you breathe out and move your right elbow toward your right knee.

Three: Keeping the weight on your left foot, raise your head and body and elbows and rotate your left elbow up and to the left as you breathe in and push out your belly.

Four: Breathe out and shift your weight to your right foot and take your left elbow toward your right knee as you lean forward and round.

Five: Breathe in and keep your weight to your right, and push your belly out and lift your gaze and your right elbow up and to the right.

Back to two. And keep repeating a number of times.

Notice lots of differences: weight on the left foot and weight on the right. Breathing in and breathing out. Belly in and belly out. Back arching and back folding. Twisting to the right and twisting to the left.

Do this a lot.

Enjoy it.

And now let’s do day twelve:

Have a big fat complaint in your head.

Stand opposite your partner and do three rounds of the above movement.

Partner A now starts.

First: Saying I like… I love… I am grateful for… twice each.

Second: shift to another spot and think the complaining thought.

Third: come back to in front of the partner and share observations in the present, now standing but as before: “Now I am aware, in myself of…” ( Picking something below the waist). “Now I am aware, outside myself of….” “Now I am aware, in myself of… (Picking something above the waist). “Now I am aware, in the outside world…”

Fourth: Move back to the complaining spot, think the complaining thought and feel the shift.

Fifth: Come back to the real you spot and do the arching/ rounding and twisting movement

Sixth: Go back to the complaining spot, thinking the thought. Feel the differences in your mood and your body and your breathing.

Seven: Come back to the real you and formulate a “we goal,” that includes both what you’d like for the two of you and how you’d like it to be.

Eight: then fuel this more by any or all of the real you energizers:
Commenting on the present.
Liking / loving and gratitude.
And, aware movement with variations and presence.

Then smile.

Say “thank for listening” to your partner, and each take three deep breaths together.

Reverse this.

And do it again. Each way, all eight steps.

This is a  lot.

So what? We’ve spent a lifetime programming ourselves to believe the nonsense of our complaining minds.

Now we have the contrast to feel

Now we have the fuel to energize our goals as to what we really want.

To have different results we get the great joy of “working on ourselves.”

If you want a meaningful life, this is the price of admission. Pay in time and attention and notice the differences.

Don’t believe anything you don’t experience.

Hell is your state of mind that is complaining.

Heaven is reality.

Enjoy the difference.

Shut up and Listen

Listening

I once had this marvelous girlfriend. We met when I went to her yoga class. We bonded in a garden and in nature. We had a sweet connection. Our first night together was in a futon bed that was in a garden, under the stars. She was frisky. I was frisky.

Life was good.

Our talk was good, I thought, and yet: I was the oldest child, and we like to hear ourselves be the teacher. (Love to hear ourselves teach, actually. Alas.)  She was the youngest and had been married 18 years to a semi-famous artist who took up all the air in the room.

I didn’t know how much better things could get in talking until I tried this one night, this game that will be your first gift from the world of radical listening.

We used a timer.

She talked for five minutes. I didn’t interrupt. I was present as I listened. I followed my breathing. I didn’t say a peep. I looked at her and took her in.  If she didn’t know what to say instantly, I didn’t “help.” I waited. I listened.

I took a turn.

She took another turn, and in this turn began to cry.

No one had ever really listened to her for five minutes without completing her thought or interrupting her to tell her what she was “really” trying to say. Or the usual human thing: interrupting to say their ever so important thing.

Ever notice how your interruptions always have the assumption that what you have to say is MUCH more important than letting them finish?

Well, with Marlie, this had been endemic enough for her never to be heard.

So she cried.

This was profound for her.

And profound for me.

Let’s see how it will be for you.

Sit across from a friend, a business colleague, or your love partner. (With the love partner, this listening in the now can deeply improve the sex connection. Don’t believe me. Discover it for yourselves.)

You are going to take 3 minute turns talking and listening. Three turns makes it 18 minutes. You can do four minute turns (24 minutes). Or 5 minute turns (30 minutes).

And you might get hooked and want to keep going and going.

After Marlie and I got into it, we’d go for hours sometimes. It’s so nice to discover what you have to say when the pressure of interruption is off.

 In the beginning levels of this game, you don’t say anything about what the other person talked about.

This has two advantages: One, you don’t have to worry about what another person thinks about what you say when you talk, because they don’t get to say their ever so important opinion.

Two, as the listener, you aren’t going inside and rehearsing your response instead of listening, which is what we do most of the time. This helps create a condition of ONLY LISTENING.

ONLY LISTENING

Not interrupting. Even a squeak.

ONLY LISTENING

Not “thinking” of our response to what they are saying.

ONLY LISTENING

Not rehearsing over and over our response to what they are saying.

ONLY LISTENING

Not having any commentary in our head about what they are saying.

ONLY LISTENING

Not even “remembering” what they said awhile back.

ONLY LISTENING

One word at a time, one sentence at a time, one breath of this life, this now, this miracle of being alive and…

ONLY LISTENING

This creates a delicious savoring of our partner as they speak and we are ONLY LISTENING.  This creates a great ease and possibility for inner discovery in the one talking.

This is good.

This is very good.

Here’s the game

Set up two chairs facing each other and sit in them

Grant yourselves at least 20 minutes

Turn off cell phones, though let one be on airplane mode to be used for a timer

Set the timer for 3 minutes

Pick who starts first today. We’ll call this person, Partner A, or A.

Start the timer

Partner A talks, while being present

Partner B listens, in only listening

3 minutes

Partner A talks of anything except…

1. No talking about “the relationship”

2. No talking about the other person

It can be ramble.

It can be exploration.

It can be memory.

If “nothing comes,” these four always work:

The present

What you like/ love/ enjoy about life.

What is important to you in life

Saying nothing

It’s fine to say nothing.

You get attention, ONLY LISTENING, whether you have words or not..

The timer goes off.

PAUSE FOR THREE BREATHS. TAKE THE THREE BREATHS TOGETHER.

Then switch to partner B talking for 3 minutes and partner A, ONLY LISTENING.

Partner B ( and partner A in all subsequent turns) has three restrictions now. One more.

1. No talking about the other person,

2. No talking about the relationship,

3. No talking about what the other person just said. No commentary, feedback, reactions, “improvements ” (aka “one upping”),  opinions.

As said before, this helps ONLY LISTENING immensely. Knowing that you won’t have a chance to yak about your important reaction to what you just heard helps calm down the mind for ONLY LISTENING.

Knowing that your partner won’t get to yak their important response gives an ease and a safety to the one speaking.

At the end of the three minutes, PAUSE again, and again take three deep and sweet breaths together.

Back to A. Who has the same three restrictions.

Do this at least 3 turns of talking  and ONLY LISTENING for each person.

You might want to take a quiet walk after, holding hands if you are a couple, simply being quiet and present to each other no matter what. And NOT talking, as you walk.

Enjoy deeply this gift of presence and ONLY LISTENING you have given yourself and your partner.

This is a delicious daily practice, a nourishment to your ability to listen and your need to/ wish to be heard.

Connection to another in the present. One of the best presents in the world.

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