I was in session with a couple recently, looking at some challenging aspects of their relationship, when one of them said: ‘I guess you have to wade through your shit to get the insights to make change…’ and I responded with: ‘You’re not wading through it, you’re composting it!’.

They loved the analogy! And it’s a good one. We’ve all got our shit – defences, traumas, fears, confusions, resentments - that has accumulated over our history. If you don’t deal with it, it ferments and turns bad. But if you do deal with it, you are composting it, turning it into fertilizer for new growth. read more...

You can live life to the full or you can sink into dreary monotony. You can mature with vibrancy or you can grow old and tired. You can have a relationship that continues to explore and grow or you can have one of complacency and dullness. You can see your parenting role as one of keeping under control or as growth and delight (for you and your children).

It’s a choice. There is nothing ‘inevitable’ about how life turns out. The only thing inevitable is that life mirrors your attitude and beliefs. If you believe life, relationships, anything is all downhill after the early flush, it will be. If you believe life can continue to open up and bring new and interesting experiences, it will. read more...

Sex within intimate relationships can be an extraordinary place to grow spiritually, to deepen in love, expand conscious awareness, to feel more peace, bliss, ease. But it’s also very easy to fall into what’s called spiritual bypassing, thinking that you’re becoming more spiritual but actually doing some or all of the following:
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The clitoris is a wonderful thing, one that leads to many and varied delights - but it is not an on / off button.

The clitoris is not the spot that turns a woman on.

In fact, a woman has to be already turned on before you touch her clitoris. read more...

Phase One: Two Become One

When we fall in love, there is so much newness and discovery that it’s very easy to feel like ‘two become one’, you feel you have so much in common! It’s just like the fairy-tales and you feel that you really will ‘live happily ever after’!!!

This is the ‘symbiotic’ phase of a relationship. It’s a very important part and builds a strong foundation.
 
Symbiosis or Fusion?

However, inevitably, you start to realise that two have not become one, two are still two. The cracks start to appear, your differences are more obvious and unsettling. I call this the ‘aargh’ phase of a relationship.
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One of the absolute keys to good sex is the ability to let go, to surrender to the experience.

I'm going to speak directly to female readers here, because I find that women have more trouble in this area. Yet it’s actually more important that the woman let go for the couple to be able to reach heightened states of arousal and pleasure.

Essentially what women need to do is allow for self-indulgence.

Now there are some ‘precious princesses’ out there who are all about self-indulgence: me, me, me. I'm not talking about them. I’m talking about all those women I see in my clinic and at workshops and in the street and in the school playground, etc, who can’t allow themselves to indulge. Especially sexually. read more...

 At the end of my last Couples Retreat, one participant, who’d had quite a challenging time of it, declared with a big smile and evident relief that she realised that prior to the retreat she had not been relationship-oriented.

I see this a lot, in various manifestations.

In some couples, one declares they are quite happy in the relationship and so their dissatisfied partner must have their own issues to deal with. Well, no, I’m afraid that if one person is not happy then there is something wrong with the relationship not with only one of the individuals in it. Thinking otherwise is not being relationship-oriented.

I see other couples where they might both be feeling dissatisfied in the relationship, but one claims to know what the problem is, and the problem is the partner, who needs to sort out ‘their’ issues. This person is also not relationship-oriented.
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In the Tantric yogic traditions they talk about ‘actionless action’ or inaction through action. This is part of the karma-yoga tradition, developing spiritually through right action. Rather than renouncing the world and avoiding actions, karma yoga is about engaging in the world - cultivating wordly life and spiritual life simultaneously.

In the Taoist tradition there is the concept of wu-wei ‘action through non-action’ or action without intent, which leads to a life of harmony, aligned with the Way or the Tao. read more...

An orgasm is good, great in fact, but it gets better than that - it gets orgasmic!

Yes, the range of orgasms and orgasmic experiences we can have is mind-blowing. If you think sex is about stimulating your genitals until you have an orgasm and then you’re done, oh boy, have you got a long way to go! And what a journey! read more...

It's Autumn, the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” to quote Keats - a time of ripening and reaching fulfillment. Mmm, doesn’t that sound so sexual!

It’s not an intense, fiery time of year though and I don’t advocate an overly intense approach to sex.

Too many people go too far too quick, rushing into it, without allowing the time for the ‘ripening’ in order to achieve real sexual fulfillment.

Truly awesome sex always takes connection, a 'sinking in' within oneself and with each other. It’s different from the rapid-fire approach to sexual excitation, which is the more “normal” mode in this society. With this sinking in comes a ‘syncing in’, where you can let go and really feel each other, really tune in - and for a while the two can indeed become 'one'.
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