“When people meet and fall in love, there’s a sudden rush of magic. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it’s usually too late, we’ve used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It’s hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”
— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
I want to let you in on a secret—there is a place to go where you can rediscover the magic of love, learn the trick to making that magic with your beloved(s), and practice the skills that makes love stay. Try a Relationship Workshop at HAI. If you live your life in relationship, this workshop is an opportunity to go deeper. To find tools and practices for inspiring love in your daily life.
5 Remarkable Lessons from HAI Workshops
1. Talk: It is a paradox that the on-going intimate connection we feel in relationship, often builds more and higher walls between us than when we were just starting out. It’s as if, as we learn each other at a deep level, we begin to expect our partner(s) to just “know” what we want and desire. So we actually communicate less. We no longer say when feelings get hurt over small things, hoping that not saying something will help erase hard feelings. We need to make time to talk about our hopes, fears, upsets, hurts, joys and sorrows in order to have sustainable intimacy.
2. Listen: And, equally important, we need to listen to each other. Not that half-hearted, half-attentive, half-open substitute we so often put forward as listening. Real, intimate, caring, heart-opened, empathetic listening. Though it can seem challenging, we need to avoid the temptation to try to fix another person’s problems or offer unsolicited advice.
3. Choose being in love over being right: No one wins an argument. Even if you “prove” you are in the right, it does nothing to “prove” you are in love. The only reason you are arguing is because somewhere in the twists and turns of your psyche you think being right will feel good. You could just skip the argument and go to “I love you.” It’s a much faster and more direct path to feeling good. And you’ll likely feel “good” for longer.
4. Focus on what is good: What you focus on is what you see. Focus your attention on all the love around you and you will see all the love around you. (Simple, but not always easy.)
5. Work on increasing passion: Try new things in bed, tell each other a secret fantasy. Passion is like a garden, it needs to be tended regularly or soon all you will have is weeds.
Learn how by joining us for our Connecting in Love (Level 1) workshop!
By Pauline Volvo
