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Healing
and Celebrating Relationship:
The Tantric Approach to Transforming Blocks to Intimacy
We
have all experienced disconnect, disharmony, or emotional pain in
relationship. And when we do, it typically causes us to feel stress,
and our ingrained and primitive response is to "fight or flee."
To move against the other with irritation, defensiveness,
impatience, anger, judgement, or aggression. Or, to move away
from the other with withdrawal, armoring, numbness, denial, repression,
resignation, shutting down, and turning off. Unfortunately, this only
serves to perpetuate disharmony with our partner and, more importantly,
further disconnects us from our ability to be authentic and intimate
with our selves.
The
ancient system of Tantra teaches us to embrace all of our experiences
as opportunities to expand our consciousness and to awaken to our
true nature. Tantra invites us to move toward pain, resistance,
and disharmony. It teaches us to acknowledge and nurture those blocks
to intimacy, and to ultimately transform negative energy into positive
results – a greater sense of aliveness, an integrated wholeness,
and the ability to fully reconnect and express our true self…
which leads to the ability to connect more deeply with others.
You
were born ecstatic - full of aliveness, sensual awareness, joy, divine
energy. Your true, innate nature is to be fully intimate and authentic.
To love and accept yourself. To dwell in the fullness of your being;
living in the moment and expressing yourself freely. But then, you
began to learn from and be re-patterned by the people and culture
around you. You learned which behaviors brought acceptance, approval,
and love; and which brought rejection, disapproval, and pain. You
likely began to learn to hide and deny parts of yourself that were
not acceptable to your parents, your family, friends, society and,
most importantly, you began to hide and deny your true self.
Tantra
offers an alternative and profoundly liberating approach to relating
to your self and to others. It teaches you to acknowledge and embrace
the very things you are most afraid of facing. To unlock the energy
required to keep parts of your self hidden. It provides a template
for practicing the art of conscious relationship – bringing awareness
and intention into the moment; naming, healing, and releasing fears;
and identifying truth and communicating what we want. It also teaches
us to listen well to another's truth, to receive that truth without
judgment, projection, or resistance.
When
you cultivate this art of giving and receiving truth, of expressing
in the moment your deepest and most important feelings, you create
more energy and aliveness, and establish a bond of authenticity and
trust with yourself and with your partner. You rediscover the freedom
to experience the full range of human emotion and the full spectrum
of experiencing being in a vulnerable human body with a tender human
heart.
You
can open to the magnificence of your true nature. You can
restore yourself to wholeness. You can become transparent.
Where nothing is hidden, nothing is denied. Not even the parts of
yourself that you didn't want to look at or acknowledge. In fact,
this is your birthright! As you choose to be more visible to yourself
and others, you become more authentic. As you practice the art of
ecstatic love, you open to that innate place within yourself that
accepts all of who you are, and surrenders to potential magic of each
interaction and every experience with your self and with another.
Enjoy.
Namaste. And be well!
