The Tantra Fusion Blog

Greetings from Vietnam! I’m here for two weeks doing a spiritual retreat again. This week my partner, Oscar, is doing it as it’s his first time, and I’ll be doing next week’s as it’s my second. So I have a week to relax and reflect in an extremely beautiful and serene garden resort on the shores of the South China Sea.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing for my next book on female sexual archetypes - which will be a world first in the new literary genre of therapeutic erotica! More of that another time…

What has been interesting has been observing the participants of this week’s retreat. Over the five days of the retreat there has been an observable change in them, and they all report a significant change within themselves. Five days of guided meditations and discussions clearly shifts ‘stuff’ for people. This is a great example of neuroplasticity - the brain changing its circuitry. Given the opportunity for stillness and guided reflection, the circuits of these people are changing quite rapidly. This change in the brain allows for definite and continued positive change from here on.

I love the fact that brain researchers have proven this plasticity. Many years ago as an undergraduate biochemistry student studying neuroscience, I was dismayed that the thinking of the day was that the brain was simply a computer and the job of the scientist was to figure out what the bits were and how they interacted. I remember being scoffed at for suggesting it might be otherwise. So I didn’t pursue that line of study.

Now we know that the brain is a wonderful organic system that constantly changes and adapts to the inputs coming into it, all through life. So if your life is stressful and you input negative thoughts, your brain circuitry will reinforce and reflect that reality. That will become the filter through which you experience the world - as negative and stressful. If you have positive thoughts and experiences then your brain will reinforce and reflect that reality - you’ll be looking at the world with a rose-coloured brain!

It becomes a feedback loop - either increasingly negative or increasingly positive.

The exciting thing is that you can change your circuitry. Working on your personal growth is essentially about rewiring your brain.

Which brings me to sex. If you have negative views, expectations and experiences around sex you can change them to positive ones. You don’t have to be stuck in your ‘story’ (brain circuitry) that says that sex is scary/disgusting/sinful/odd/boring/painful/unnecessary/addictive. Your story about not being into sex because: you’re a mother/disabled/old/from a repressed background/a victim of abuse/too busy/too tired/too whatever; or your story that you’re entitled to sex because you’re a man/married/a helpless addict/a victim of abuse/stressed/whatever - can be changed.

One of the wonderful things about sex, is that you can change your neural wiring to more positive circuits while actually having sex, assuming it’s intimate sex. Just as the participants on the retreat here are making huge changes in a short amount of time through quietness and concentrated reflection, so can you make major sexual changes through a more sensual, subtle approach to sex and intimacy.

Making love in a beautiful environment, calm, soft and inviting is the start. Then progressing slowly with loving touch, melting hugs, feeling each others' presence as much as your bodies, gazing into each others yes, gives your brain the time and space to rewire in positive ways. Over time, the wiring in your brain will respond to the thought of sex in a positive way, knowing that it is an enjoyable positive experience. It will send messages throughout your body to prepare it for pleasure through the release of hormones, muscle relaxation, slowing your heartbeat, etc.

When two people’s brains are wired sex-positively, they come together in openness, not anxiety/resignation/annoyance/fear of rejection, etc. The more you come together in this way, the stronger the wiring becomes and the easier it is to enjoy love-making.

This applies to solo sex too. The more you send positive messages to your brain, the more you experience enjoyable solo sex, the better the brain rewires to reinforce the view that solo sex (and the genitals involved) is good.

It’s important that you reinforce this rewiring in the whole of your life. Surround yourself with things and experiences that heighten your senses, your enjoyment of life. Avoid people with a sex-negative view of the world and reach out and interact with people with a positive view. Reading this newsletter is a great example! As is attending my workshops, or seeing me privately.

Remember it’s a positive feedback loop, the more positivity you put in your life, the more positive it becomes, and due to neuralplasticity, it becomes increasingly easier to be more positive - until you get to the point where it’s your natural state of being and you can’t help but be joyful!

Who’s brain are we talking about? Yours. So it’s up to you to take control of your brain, make the choice to feed it positively. Honour your life and your role in creating it whichever way you choose. Your brain will back you up on that, but you’re the creator.

Available as a podcast: download here!

Sex is the one thing in life we seem to think should just happen ‘naturally’ without any focused attention and study. Which is completely absurd, and one of the reasons why people don’t have good sex lives!

 

The only ‘natural’ part of sex is the basic putting-penis-into-vagina, which anyone can manage with a modicum of bumbling and fumbling around. To do any more that requires application and research. Yes, research - trying things out, exploring, making mistakes, being creative, and discussing what you’re discovering.

 

I take my research seriously. As my partner said to me with a mock pout not long after we got together: “I’m just a guinea-pig to you, aren’t I?” I had to agree it was true to an extent. I do want to know what he’s doing when it feels good to me, what I’m doing when it feels good to him, how it feels with subtle changes and different approaches. This is how we get to know each other’s bodies, arousal and eroticism. Without that we’d just be thrashing around in the dark.

 

I tell my clients and workshop participants, get down and have a good look at your genitals and your partner’s genitals. Go for an explore, with sensual touch of course, and get to know your genitals thoroughly. Get to know what feels good, where and how. Get to know how the feeling changes with different states of arousal. Explore different feelings and sensations. Find different ways to get to orgasm and experience different types of orgasm.

 

Ideally your early sexual experiences would have had a strong element of natural curiosity (fortunately mine did, I was blessed with a wonderful young lover). You would have been two young people exploring and discovering with gentleness and opening up to the full potential of their sexuality. Then you would have carried this sense of curiosity throughout your lives, constantly seeking to explore and discover your partner and find ever more wonderful ways of connecting.

 

Unfortunately most people’s early sexual experiences were nowhere near as tender and beautiful as this. More likely they had the opposite effect, shutting people down early on and making them reluctant to expand.

 

Even if it did start well, you can easily fall into the know-each-other-too-well syndrome, where you get locked into views of each other and feel there’s nothing more to explore. You accept that you’re just the way you are and sex is going to be just the way it is (which usually means it gets gradually worse over time).

 

Worse still, and so common, is that people lose their sense of self in the relationship and can no longer push their boundaries for fear of the other’s reaction. This more than anything keeps people locked into routine sex:  “I’m not going to say or do anything for fear of how s/he might respond.”

 

But you have to do your research, and you have to discuss what you find (unless you’re single and doing solo sex research, which is also very important). That means talking about it, as you do it and after you do it.

 

 

Considering your sexual experimentation as ‘research’ can make it easier to do and easier to discuss. If you know you’re experimenting, then it matters less if you ‘fail’, in fact, finding what doesn’t work or feel good is just as important as finding out what does.

 

It’s a collaborative project, team-work, you’re both on the same side seeking the same outcomes. With this approach, you can’t get it wrong.

 

And you know what? It’s fun!

 

Available as a podcast: download here!

Given how busy and distracted we all are, it's the 'getting to sex' stage that's the most challenging for modern couples. I call this stage of sex 'beforeplay'. It's the transition phase necessary to remove you from the stresses of the day, and get the two of you connecting, maintaining the 'mmm' factor and building up some of that erotic tension...

- Lounge around the house in sexy and sensual lounging-round-the-house gear (a la Peter Alexander, ie comfy and sexy)

- Take the dog for a walk together in the evening (preferably you in a skirt with no knickers underneath)

- Sit on the back verandah together after dinner drinking wine and looking out at the stars (above dress code applies)

- Read good quality erotica

- Cook/eat/clean up dinner naked, or wearing just a robe and nothing underneath

- Hang out in your bedroom together having a cup of tea and a chat

- Play backgammon or do a jigsaw puzzle together

- Sit either end of the couch and give yourselves foot massages

- Have a bath and have him come in and give you a foot massage, or just sit on the bath and chat

- Take dessert up to the bedroom and finish it there

- Throw away the TV (ok, maybe a bit distract, but the TV is the biggest anti-sex device ever created)

It's not the most 'out there' phase of sex, but it is the most important. Most people need time to transition into sex (men as much as women).

So, with these ideas in mind, what gets ­you warmed up and ready for some lovin’?

Get this phase right and you’ll set yourselves up for sex that is as hot/sensual/wild/loving/kinky/adventurous/deep as it can possibly be!

Self help books, women’s magazines and traditional therapists extol the virtues of intimacy as the way to improve your relationship and therefore have better sex. The two key aspects to this ‘intimacy’ are:  1) to become more connected by spending more time together, and 2) to communicate (by speaking) every little thing about yourself, and conversely listening wondrously in rapt attention agreeing in perfect accord with every utterance.

 

Which would imply most of us haven’t got a snowflake’s chance in hell of having a decent sex life…

 

Fear not. You can breathe a sigh of relief because this means that in fact you will avoid that stifling arrangement of co-dependent ‘intimacy’ we too often think is the prerequisite for ‘happily ever after”.

 

Now certainly intimacy does require connection and communication, but it’s the how, the what and the how much that matters. Let’s look at the two fundamental aspects of intimacy - connection and communication - debunk a few myths and look at what really matters.

 

First, connection. Supposedly we need to have lots of quality time together to feel intimate. But in fact you don’t have to even be physically near each other to feel connected. Especially in this digital age there are myriad ways to connect without being physically present. Even when you are together, it doesn’t have to be ‘quality’ time, i.e. time that is spent highly focused on each other, more of that rapt attention stuff. Just spending time together in an unfocused hanging-out kind of way can actually be a better way of enjoying each other’s company than high intensity time together. (How often have you seen couples in restaurants eating without speaking? Not a lot of intimate connection going on there. They’d be better off doing the gardening together or going for a walk where there is more distraction, less intensity and surprisingly more ease of connection).

 

We’re also supposed to improve our ‘connection’ by sharing common interests and learning to enjoy those that aren’t in common. Well, that’s not necessary either. While it’s good to have some interests in common, you don’t have to have everything in common, and there’s no onus on you to learn to like those that aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with having different interests, it doesn’t mean you’re not suited, it doesn’t mean you’re not close. Quite the opposite, maintaining connection in the face of difference is bonding if you respect and appreciate the difference.

 

This can be intimidating for some people though. They fear that sense of separateness. They fear that if they’re not fused they could lose the other person. These people become jealous and fiercely attached to their partner. Any sense of flirting is felt as potential or actual infidelity and is the hovering angel of death to the relationship. There is no trust, only a desperate clinging. This is not true intimacy.

 

It’s also intimidating because of the threat of rejection. If your partner is different to you then they may not agree with you and that can be a frightening thing. It’s scary to know that the person whose opinion you value the most and whose agreement you crave might reject your thought or action or opinion. Shock, horror, that could cause disharmony, and we all know that the “perfect relationship” is harmonious.

 

It might be, but not through fear of difference, only through appreciation of difference. If you’re holding yourself back and not expressing your true self, not living with a sense of integrity, because you fear your partner’s disapproval and crave their validation, then you are not being truly intimate.

 

When you interact like this you cannot have good communication, that quality so espoused by the self help gurus. Look, of course communication is essential, it’s how it’s done that matters. Too often communication is equated with speaking, whereas communication is effected through so many ways, not just spoken. Even considering the verbal aspect, more is communicated through tone of voice and body posture than the actual words (which is why arguing never works because the arguers are reacting to the tone not the content). But communication also occurs through touch, looks, through silence, through action, and definitely through sex. In fact when a couple have truly intimate sex they communicate their inner beings far more profoundly than any conversation could ever do.

 

Receiving the content of the communication is also crucial to effective conveying of meaning. But what is receiving content and how are you expected to respond? When the communication is spoken, listening openly to the other person is important, but it doesn’t have to be in rapt wonderment, affirming every utterance in mutual accord. Listen with respect, certainly, but not under any pressure to agree.

 

Just as importantly, being open to communication in non-verbal ways is essential to true intimacy, you can’t just expect verbal cues. Your partner expresses feelings and thoughts constantly, in actions, gestures, moods, silences, and of course, in making love with true intimacy.

 

Even being open to this type of communication requires true intimacy, because it requires you to show your real self without needing validation from the other person, and without feeling that you have to give it to the other person. True intimacy is not expressed through jealousy, fear or anxiety.

 

True intimacy requires integrity of your self. You need to show yourself and be seen. To do that you need separation, difference, distance, a sense of ‘other’.

 

This is essential for good relationship, and it is essential for good sex. Why? Because only with true intimacy can you express your sexuality without fear of rejection or displeasure by your partner. It’s only when you can truly know and express your eroticism that you can enjoy the other key element to extraordinary sex: erotic tension.

 

Do you love unconditionally, or are there conditions to your love? You might have some romantic illusion that your love is pure, but really, it probably comes with a lot of strings attached. “I will love you if you love me” is the most obvious. There there is: “I will love you if you are nice to me”, “I will love you if you share my values and beliefs”, “I will love you if you agree with me”, “I will love you if you validate me”.

You might think you love the other person, but are there these requirements that come along with it? Do you really love the other person for who they are and who they’ve become over your time together? Or do you love your version of who you’d like them to be, or who you’ve convinced yourself they are? Do they need to fit some image of who you think or want your partner to be?

What are these conditions based on? Generally fear. The inability to validate yourself creates a need to have the other validate you, to make you feel ok about yourself and your own values, beliefs and world view.

This conditional loving commonly goes both ways. Both partners have entered into an unwritten agreement that they will validate the other so that their unit stands strong. Neither will risk upsetting the other by challenging their norm or challenging these unwritten conditions they’ve both ascribed to.

Until things go pear-shaped. And the reality that they are both living in a fantasy world that they both adhered to becomes apparent. One or both becomes so miserable that they just can’t do it any longer. The pretense is too hard. They feel too stifled or too unappreciated, too used or too abused. This will present as some kind of crisis - a health breakdown, mental breakdown, an affair, a mid-life crisis, a major change in behaviour, a complete withdrawal, walking out on the relationship seemingly out of nowhere…

When this happens you have three choices:

1. separate and take your dysfunctions out into a new relationship, feeling bitter and twisted about the one you just left

2. stay in the relationship and flat-line, not addressing the issues, covering them up and pretending everything’s ok (until the next crisis emerges)

3. learn to self-validate.

Most people choose the first two options. They are the easier ones.

I recommend the third. It’s hard though, hence the benefit in having someone like me help you with it. To start, you have to be able to examine yourself so openly and honestly that you can know and accept your flaws, and your strengths, and know that your world view is simply that, yours. The next is to be able to accept the reality of your partner in their entirety, warts and all. That requires open, honest and real communication. Genuine sharing - and this is the most important point of all - without needing them to validate you. That means you don’t get defensive, you don’t tell them they’re wrong, you listen and feel and accept with a completely open heart. Don’t get me wrong, this is not easy. But it’s the only way that two people can be real with each other and thereby grow as individuals and as a couple. No defences, genuine meeting.

If in doing this you realise that the other person is not for you, or you’re not for them, then fine, you end the relationship with maturity and love and walk away as a whole person, not one desperately seeking validation elsewhere.

This is the beauty of relationship. David Schnarch calls it ‘the sexual crucible’, it’s how relationship allows you to grow, if you let it, if you’re willing to do the work.

Otherwise, be bitter, or flat-line. It’s your choice. It’s all your choice, once you realise it’s your choice. You don’t have to bind another to you with conditional love, and you don’t have to be bound by it.

You can both love unconditionally. You can both be free. If you're brave enough.

And need I say, sex within an unconditionally loving relationship is far far better as you can both let yourselves go with realness and genuine passion.

The masculine sexual energy is like fire: it comes on quickly, burns brightly and extinguishes quickly.

The feminine sexual energy is like water: it’s slow to heat up, but once it’s boiling it will boil and boil and boil and boil…

So if we divide sex into two phases, desire and response, then the masculine has more energy in the desire phase and the feminine has more energy in the response phase.

This is why men generally tend to have a stronger libido, and why women have a greater range and intensity of arousal and orgasmic response.

Ideally in the sexual act, the man will use his fire energy to heat up the woman’s water energy. She’ll reach heights of arousal and ecstasy that will make him feel absolutely fantastic because he’s the one who got her there. He’ll probably have an orgasm too, but his satisfaction is primarily in the pleasure he’s given her. The release of all her sexual energy satisfies and nourishes him completely. In this way the sexual circuit is complete and sex is a wonderfully fulfilling, healing, liberating and bonding experience for both of them.

We do have both masculine and feminine energies within us and a well-rounded person will have a reasonably good balance within them. There are also some people whose energy is more the opposite than their own gender. But for most people men tend to have a fire-like sexual energy and women tend to have a water-like sexual energy.

This is why men’s libido can suddenly arise out of nowhere. He can get an erection with very little or no stimulation, he just feels horny. This is the fire energy that simply ‘switches on’. Given that a man’s body is more testosterone driven, this makes sense.

Whereas it’s pretty rare for a woman to suddenly feel horny out of the blue. Women don’t go “oh gosh, I’m lubricating, I must want sex.” Rather, a woman’s desire is contextual, it depends on how she’s feeling, how she’s getting on with her partner if she has one, what kind of environment she’s in. All these factors will affect the temperature of her water energy.

As I wrote recently, when a woman has a high libido, it’s not because she has a masculine fire energy, it’s because she keeps her water energy simmering. She lives in a way that makes her feel good about herself, she avoids getting too tired, and together with her partner they actively work on keeping their connection strong and making the time and place for sex. This is what keeps a women’s water energy warm. The warmer her water energy is on a day to day basis, the more open and receptive to sex she is. The colder her water energy is, the more effort is required to heat it, and some women have sexual energy that is frozen hard, tundra even!
It does work both
ways. There are plenty of men who find that their fire energy isn’t igniting, and there are many reasons for this, which I will write about separately.

When two people come together as lovers, whether it’s for a brief encounter or a lifetime, when her water energy is good and warm and his fire energy is switching on efficiently, then there’s a meeting between them. His desire is neither too needy nor too apathetic and her interest is neither too conditional nor too stifling. Rather, there’s an easy balance and fluidity between his desire and her openness to meet him, which takes them both to wonderful places.

I know men intimately. It’s one of the blessings of my work. Hundreds of men have opened themselves up to me, baring their souls, telling me how they feel at the most basic, the most sensitive, the most intimate levels of their being.

One thing I have come to realise - men need a muse.

To a man, his beloved is so much more than just someone to have sex with. She is his inspiration, his reason for being, she is what gives him meaning and drive in life. When a man connects deeply with his woman, when he makes beautiful love with her, he feels all-powerful, as though he could conquer the world - and he does!

Unfortunately, because we’ve had a back-to-front view of sexuality in western society for so long (millennia), society as a whole doesn’t realise this. Men aren’t going to say anything because they’ve been brought up to suppress themselves and their emotions. They’re also dealing with a male stereotype that doesn’t match them, so they often feel wrong.

Worse still, women don’t get it. They’ve bought into the myth that men are these sex-driven creatures who just want to ‘get their end in’. It’s so not the case. Men need to connect with their woman. They don’t want obligation sex. I get plenty of men coming to see me who are having sex with their partner, but they’re not happy because she’s not into it. Yet she thinks she’s doing the right thing because that is what she thinks he wants.

It then gets complicated because when a man isn’t getting the deep sexual connection he craves with his woman, he often becomes even more needy of sex, which turns her off even more. He does become the stereotype of the sex-obsessed male.

Or another very common scenario - he’s given up. Often a man has had so little sex with his partner, or only obligation sex for so long, for whatever reason, that he stops trying. He loses his libido and becomes completely emasculated. If he’s lucky, he’ll find passion in some other part of his life, his work usually, but it’s not the same.

There’s no blame here, to either sex . It’s simply a result of centuries of sexual repression, which has led to a society which is completely sexually dysfunctional.

Women are much more resilient than men, in so many areas of life, including sex. Women get their meaning and satisfaction through a broader range of life interests - children, friends, home, hobbies, work, as well as through their partner. Their life energy is shared more roundedly. For a man, the woman is central. With a strong partner to inspire him, he can be all he can be.

And when a man is fully into his masculinity, fully into adoring and loving his muse, his woman, wow, how wonderful is that for her, how fully does he support her and enable her to be all she can be!

Again, it’s all about complementarity - different but equal and complementary.

When a woman allows her man to love and adore her, worship her as his muse and inspiration - they both go places physically, emotionally, spiritually. They go far beyond the mundane limitations where most people, mired in the myths of society are stuck. Together they become free.

As I’ve described before, the masculine sexual energy is like fire, it comes on quickly, burns brightly and extinguishes quickly. The feminine sexual energy is like water: it takes longer to warm up, but once it’s hot it will boil and boil and boil.

The warmer the woman’s water energy is, the more open and ready she is for sex. If she enters the sex act with icy cold water energy, even frozen, then it’s going to take an awful lot of work to warm it up. She’ll either be averse to having sex or it will take so long to heat her up that one or both of them will give up before she gets anywhere.

So the common scenario of a busy modern couple, hard at work all day, occupied with kids/housework/work brought home/etc in the evening &/or vedging out in front of the TV for hours watching people being murdered and cut up on mortuary tables, getting into bed late at night and then thinking about sex…. Well, it’s not surprising that she’s not interested, her water energy is stone cold. (In fact, this scenario also causes many men to be unable to ignite their fire energy, but that’s another story.)

My feeling is that when women have high libidos, it’s not because they have a masculine fire energy, it’s because they keep their water energy simmering. (Although there are some people who have predominantly the opposite sexual energy.) What ‘keeping her water energy simmering’ means is that a woman and her partner do things to keep her open and receptive to sex.

Too many people think that a woman’s libido should be like a man’s. They feel that desire should somehow just descend upon her and she’ll be ready and gagging for it. But women are not like men, women’s sexuality complements men’s sexuality. Equal but different. The two work together to create something new and wonderful.

In the early days of a relationship women do generally feel more desirous. This is simply because all the conditions are there to keep her water energy on the boil! There’s so much anticipation, always thinking about her man, he’s on his best behaviour, treating her well, they pay attention to the way they look, what they say, what they do.

But as time passes, they get complacent. There’s no anticipation, there’s no going out of their way to make themselves special to the other. The masculine fire energy might continue to work under those conditions, but it’s rare that the feminine water energy will.

A woman’s desire is contextual, it’s not simply a biological urge. It depends enormously on how she fees and what’s going on around her.

What a woman needs to ‘keep her water simmering’ is fourfold:

- She can’t be too tired, tiredness kills a woman’s ability to get in the mood;
- She needs to be a pleasant environment, somewhere that makes her feel warm, safe and sensual;
- She needs to be feeling good about herself, attractive and desirable; and
- She needs to be getting on well with her partner.

Some of these elements she can focus on herself, and others depend on the interaction between her and her partner.

The good news is that it’s a positive feedback loop - the more these four elements are improved, the better the sexual desire and the better the sexual response, and therefore the more life improves and the sex improves!

I ran a Tantra workshop last night, here on a permaculture farm in northern Thailand.

It was magical. The fact that the lights blew just as we started and we had to rely on candles added to the magic.

Twenty of us sat in a circle, alternating men and women, in the open-aired pagola which is the hub of the farm. The night was still and the candles cast a soft flickering light around the group.

To bond the group we shared yellow energy from our left ears, passing it through to the right ear of the person on our left, till the whole group was connected through our ears by this yellow energy.

We then moved into breath work. This is the basis of all energetic and spiritual work, sexual or otherwise. Bringing your breath deeper into your torso, so you’re breathing with your belly, is fundamental to linking your entire body and being able to circulate energy freely.

Then we worked our pelvic floor muscles. This girdle of muscle in our pelvis needs to be toned to keep us strong physically and to be able to move energy.

From there we practiced moving energy, circulating it around our bodies, following the Microcosmic Circuit. Using breath, the pelvic floor and an uncluttered mind, this is a powerful way to move energy around the body, keeping it charged up and vital.

Next we focused on our chakras, with a guided meditation to identify and feel them, then to breath to each using the Flute Breath.

Once everyone was breathing freely and the energy flowing internally, we did partner work. First, a fire breath kneeling a facing each other. This is the one which often gets people going into a whole body energetic orgasm. No-one overtly did this time, although one couple told me they had to stop for fear of embarrassing themselves, and a few others were clearly shaking and trembling, if without the accompanying sounds.

A calmer exercise followed, to sit cross-legged facing each other and touch each others heart chakras, and lower chakras (couples who were actually lovers touched the base chakra, pairs who weren’t touched the second chakra), circulating love energy and sexual energy.

Finally, we stood and held hands. The women circulated their love energy from their heart chakras, down their left arm and into the person on their left’s right arm; the men circulated their sexual energy from their sexual chakras up their torso and down their left arm, so that both energies merged and flowed around the circle. Then we swapped. Then we circulated both love and sexual energy within our bodies and around the circle, hands touching, then slightly apart.

I had to stop there as I was about to go into a full-blown energy orgasm - pure ecstasy!

Wonderful stuff!

As I said to the group, this is permaculture on the inside. They were there studying how to harmonise the world on the outside, this is how to harmonise themselves on the inside.

This is how we will transform the world, inside and out.

• Here I am sitting in the depths of the jungle in northern Thailand, spending some time at a permaculture farm. Last weekend I was studying spiritual healing. Over Easter I attended the Xplore festival on alternate sexuality. Three quite different experiences, but all united – sexuality, spirituality and connection to the environment.
  
  What unites them? You, one, the individual. The individual is the basic unit and it is only through you that change happens, or doesn’t. It’s up to the individual to find their spiritual connection, their connection to the environment, and their connection to their sexuality.
  
  The basic sexual unit is one.
  
  You’d hardly think so, given our society’s obsession with couples. Not that I have anything against couples, pair-bonding is a normal human activity, and it is the social norm. The problem is two-fold:
  
  The first is that people feel that they need to be in a couple to feel complete. This places enormous pressure on the other to live up to this expectation. Even the archbishop who married Will and Kate last week in his sermon said that one of the problems with modern couples is that they expect the other to be everything to them. This is simply not possible, totally unfair and one of the reasons why so many relationships are dysfunctional.
  
  The expectation of your partner to complete you, also removes the responsibility of the individual to develop their own personal self awareness and growth. It’s so much easier to expect the other person to fill your deficiencies rather than work on them yourself; and then you’ve got someone to blame for what you lack in yourself.
  
  The other problem is that people think being in a couple is somehow normal and natural and therefore doesn’t need discussing. It absolutely needs discussing. Everyone’s idea of what constitutes being in a couple is different. We all have different boundaries and expectations, some culturally defined, others personal. And these change over time.
  
  You need to come back to yourself first. What do you want, what do you need, what are your expectations/hopes/fears regarding your partner? Once you’re clear about this, you then need to be able to share those openly and honestly, without fear of rejection, without judgement of their input. Only then can the two of you create your own individual relationship, one that is unique to you. And one that continually changes and evolves over time.
  
  Think of yourself as a circle, and your partner as a circle – how big is the over-lap and what does it cover? What only happens within the overlap, and what is yours alone?
  
  There will be many other overlapping circles too – work, children, friends, activities – some of which overlap with just your circle and some which overlap both of your circles.
  
  Try drawing this for yourself, then compare with your partner. Use this as an exercise to understand yourselves and each other more.
  
  If you’re single, do it anyway to get clearer about what you want and need in a relationship. In doing this you’ll understand yourself more and you’ll attract someone appropriate, with whom you can share openly.
  
  Two whole people who come together in realness and with individuality, it’s a beautiful thing.