297: Part 1: The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy with Arjuna Ardagh

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this Part 1 of 2, Shane talks with Arjuna Ardagh about The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 297: Part 1: The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy with Arjuna Ardagh

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

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In this Part 1 of 2, Shane talks with Arjuna Ardagh about The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy. Arjuna supports couples in the practice of conscious relationships and Taoist sexual practices. Hear how he became so in love with love, his unique approach with couples, the history of relationships, helpful exercises related to Taoism, and the difference between healthy connection & codependence.

Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

• How the five organs map to emotions
• What Gottman, EFT, Terry Real, and others agree on
• The healing sounds practice in action
• You can't bypass when your partner is your mirror
• Why what we're attempting in relationships today has no historical precedent

To learn more about Arjuna Ardagh and The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy, visit:

TaoOfDeepIntimacy.com

Instagram @TheTaoOfDeepIntimacy

Show Notes

• 297: Part 1: The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy with Arjuna Ardagh
• This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more
• [0:36] Welcome to the show Arjuna Ardagh, author of The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy
• [1:34] Why Arjuna sees intimate relationship and sexuality as a powerful path toward self-actualization
• [3:28] Why you can't bypass when your partner is your mirror
• [5:16] Tendencies go latent in isolation and resurface the moment you become relational again
• [7:32] Why what we're attempting in relationships today has no historical precedent
• [9:00] Marriage as survival, from colonial homesteading through the early 19th century
• [10:26] The romance era arrives through Jane Austen, the Brontës, and the first flutters of "is this the one?"
• [11:25] The 1950s experiment: the suburb as prison, chronic depression, and why the "find your soulmate" model failed
• [12:53] Shifting from finding the perfect partner to becoming one 
• [14:41] The worst relationships in history and the best relationships in history, happening simultaneously
• [16:32] Trying to get something from someone vs. bringing love forth from within
• [18:30] Why codependence gets confused for loving connection
• [19:58] This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more
• [20:54] Defining Taoism: origins in China, the Yellow Emperor, yin and yang, and the five elements
• [23:19] How the five organs map to emotions 
• [24:47] What Gottman, EFT, Terry Real, and others agree on
• [26:44] What all the major models share
• [28:13] Where Taoism fits in to address the energetic layer
• [30:37] The healing sounds practice in action
• [33:09] Applying the same approach to contempt, grief, fear, and distrust 
• [35:36] Neither Taoist practice alone nor therapy alone is sufficient, you need both
• [38:03] Gottman's behavioral lens, Terry Real's wounded child, trauma awareness, and Taoist energy work together
• [40:54] Arjuna's personal story: a February night in 2002, alone on a deck, realizing the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall
• [44:38] Not achieving enlightenment would be forgivable, but never fully opening to love would be a wasted life
• [45:36] A 20-year evolutionary relationship, an honest ending, and a new partner dedicated to embodying love
• [47:05] Tune in next episode for part two of the conversation with Arjuna Ardagh
• This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

  

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00
So there are very simple practices, extremely simple practices we can do, that take a few minutes to learn, which can, over time, help you to release stagnant energy from these organs.

00:20
to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.

00:36
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist's Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

01:05
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. This is part one of a two-part series with Arjuna Ardagh. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Couples Therapist Couch. I'm Shane Birkel and today I'm speaking with Arjuna Ardagh, author of the new book, The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy. He supports couples in the practice of conscious relationships.

01:34
and Taoist sexual practices. Hey Arjuna, welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much. I'm really stoked to be here. I've seen some of your other guests and it's a, it's an honor to be a part of this noble company. Yeah, it's great to have you. Why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself? Wow. Well, uh, let's see. I think probably what's relevant to this conversation is I really love love, you know?

02:02
Love kind of drives my life. And I don't just mean kind of spiritual love and loving humanity and that. I mean, love that gets embodied and actualized and tested in our closest relationships. So I tend to feel like intimate relationship, including sexuality, is a very, powerful portal.

02:29
into what we most long for, into like the sacred or the divine or whatever. And the reason it's so effective is a lot of other ways of trying to find self-actualization through, for example, spirituality or meditation or even psychedelics can easily allow for bypassing. But the beauty of making conscious relationship and sexuality into your way of growing is it really

02:59
It kind of requires you to bring everything into the journey, you know, so I regard intimacy, conscious relationship, intimacy, sexuality as a very powerful path towards perhaps an endless path. don't know if there's any goal, but a really potent path towards fully knowing yourself and actualizing your gifts. Yeah, that's great. Can you say a little bit more about

03:28
how that's different from like meditation or you mentioned psychedelics or those can be more like bypassing versus experiencing that in a relationship. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, the I think the main way is if you, I mean, I've done a lot of spiritual practice, a lot of meditation, a lot. I was a spiritual teacher for a long time. I've I've done a lot of psychedelics. I still do quite honestly. I I think it's very helpful.

03:58
And I'm happy to talk about psychedelics here if you'd like to. So the thing is when when you referencing or accessing your internal state, and the words internal, external are little bit misleading, because when you go deep enough into the internal, it becomes infinite. But when we're using practice in that way, you don't get so much feedback, you know, so you could, you could have a very deep

04:26
experience of like spiritual awakening and then feel I'm one with everything. I'm just illuminating light. I'm like, it's actually what Terry Real calls grandiosity, you know, and you're not getting a whole lot of reflection of how you're being received, you see. there's a one time I used to be a spiritual teacher, like a lot of these books are like referencing that.

04:50
And I knew a lot of spiritual teachers and a lot of people would get very inflated like, I feel one with everything. My mind is still like, and then my question was always, well, that's great. What about what happens when you're with your teenage children? That's a good measure. How you respond to your teenage children is a really good measure of your real level of maturity. So the beautiful thing about intimate relationship,

05:16
If you dedicate it in this way, that's a very important caveat, but if you dedicate, if you consciously and deliberately dedicate relationship together as a crucible for evolution and maturing, then it becomes extremely powerful because you don't have that bypassing anymore. Like your measure of how present you are is in the way that your partner receives you. Your measure for

05:43
everything is is in the way that your partner receives you and that can become that can become both encouragement and also helpful coaching of how you can show up with even more love and presence. Yeah, I love that. mean, I feel like there's maybe different opportunities, would you say there's different opportunities, whether you go to a cave, but all by yourself and you spend time alone and meditation or something versus

06:10
you're in the middle of New York City with your teenage kids and the chaos of life. It's a different growth opportunity perhaps in each of those situations. Absolutely. If you're in the cave alone, there are all sorts of tendencies that become latent rather than overt. And when a tendency becomes latent, appears, it seems like it disappears. For example, you go and meditate for a year in a cave, you will not encounter

06:40
your arrogance or your controlling or your shutting down or any of that. It's latent. kind of, seems like it's gone. But then when you enter, when you become relational again, it will all come to the surface. So that's where relationality is such a wonderful context for full, real full self-actualization, you know, and, also the embodiment of love, you know, not just the

07:05
realization of spaciousness and limitlessness, which is often what meditation leads us towards and dissolution of the separate self, but the full embodiment and actualization of love. Yeah, that's great. There's a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. I'll let you choose which one to to go with. I will go with whatever you like. Go for know you, in one of your chapters, you kind of describe the history of relationships, which I think was very interesting. Yeah. But the other

07:32
The other question was about just sort of maybe defining Taoism just as a starting point for everybody. Well, why don't we do those one by one? Well, in terms of the history of relationship, I want to really give a deep bow to Eli J. Finkel's book, The All or Nothing Marriage. He is a professor at Northwestern University. And I think that's really the most concise

08:03
clear book that puts what we're going through now in its proper context. And honestly, many people, including couples therapists, don't necessarily remember that what we are doing today in them, you know, when a couple goes to a therapist, know, couples therapists, what we are attempting to pull off today has basically zero historical precedent, right? It's completely new.

08:32
It's like, I mean, like the way that we're going about relationship now, it's like AI, it's like never been done before, you know, or it's like computers, you know, it's like, you can't go back, you know, you can't go back to ancient Greece and learn about microchips. They didn't have them then, right? Now in the same way, what Eli Finkel points out, he does it mostly within the context of America, like colonialism onwards, but it applies in other cultures too. Marriage,

09:00
long-term relationship and marriage, whether it's sanctified by church and state or just a long-term committed relationship, was for the longest time, forever actually, primarily dominated by pragmatism, which means how are we going to survive? Now he gives the really great example of Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, right, whose wife died when the kids were very little.

09:27
Now, what that really meant at that time for people that were homesteading is it was a matter of are we going to die within a year or not? Right. Because one man with a bunch of children and no partner, that's a death sentence in colonial times, you know. So he found actually a childhood friend who had also lost her husband and they got together for pragmatic reasons. Right. Basically to survive. If you I've just been watching the the new

09:57
The new version of A Little House on the Prairie, know, which is very nice on Netflix, lovely, heartwarming story, you know, it's all about pragmatism. Everybody's just trying to survive, you know, get through the winter without dying. So for the longest time, relationship was pragmatic and also was determined. It was negotiated between families to consolidate wealth and so on. So that lasted basically up until the early 19th century, about 1830. That was where

10:26
very, very early stage industrialization, not factories and stuff, but just the very beginnings of industrialization allowed for a completely new factor to enter in, which was like feeling love. We didn't really do that before, but suddenly like, is this the one? And so you can see that, that the first flutters of excitement of that kind of consideration would be like Jane Austen novels, or the Bronte sisters, I'm in love.

10:54
That was not a thing before. Nobody had the, nobody had the bandwidth to think about that. So, and as you can see in, in particularly in Jane Austen's world, you can see this conflict constantly between what the family wants to plan and what the lovers feel. Now you saw that briefly in Romeo and Juliet, for example, back in, know, much earlier, but it didn't end well, right? I mean, it was back at that point. It was like, forget it, you know. So in the early 19th century, love started to become a factor or romance, you know.

11:25
but it didn't really get a chance to fully flourish. was like, there was so many things in the way. First of all, it wasn't really accepted as we got into the early 20th century. Then we had the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War. So there was no chance to really give this full, to really take it for a test drive until after the Second World War. So people talk about the 1950s. It was actually a long decade. That period really lasted from like 1947

11:54
till 1963, right? So was like more like 16 years. That was what we call the 50s. And that was what we really got to try it out. the whole thing was find your perfect mate. So for a man, find your soulmate. So you marry for love and then you create this security, this bubble of security in the suburbs. And what we discovered, and Eli Finkel does a great job of demonstrating this, it was a mammoth, resounding disaster, right? I mean, it was complete failure, right?

12:23
For the first time, women were experiencing chronic depression, isolation. The suburbs became a prison of isolation, because all that kind of contact with the family was gone. Men were going out to work and completely divorced from their feelings. Men were either going to gruelling jobs or joining the army. So was like everybody lost out during the experiments of the 50s. So that switched around again in the 60s, where we began to see the beginning seeds.

12:53
of what we could call conscious relationship or evolutionary relationship or self-expressive relationship. And it started in very tiny ways, really with what we now call the personal transformational movement or self-development. It's the beginning of self-help and all that. And that's where we just began for the first time to realize instead of trying to find the perfect partner,

13:22
You are on a journey to become the perfect partner. And so is the other person. So you are both on a journey of finding, of releasing the love within yourself, not trying to find love from another person. So this was actually first really given full expression. Who's that guy who invented encounter groups? I forget his name. Um, you know, uh, it's not coming to my mind. know what? It's like, he's like one of the forefathers of modern, modern psychotherapy.

13:51
It's gone right now. I'll find it in a second anyway. It's just slipping my mind. He's famous for discovering encounter, but creating encounter groups anyway. It's, feel an idiot. I can't remember it. Cause he said so well known. It's like Eric something anyway, he wrote this book where he starts to ref for the first time he refers to relationship in terms of personal growth. He actually dedicates the book.

14:15
I'm going to pull this up on the screen because it's annoying me so much. I'll just, is it Carl Rogers? Yeah. Carl Rogers, not Eric. Yeah. Carl Rogers. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So he dedicates his book. I think it was called growth. I can't remember or becoming. He dedicates his book to his relationship with his wife. And this really set off a cascade, you know, of long-term relationship being about

14:41
self-discovery. And honestly, at this point, it's still, it's not, it's not dominant. I mean, Eli Finkel points out that when right now we are in this transition between romance-based or happiness-based relationship and evolutionary relationship. And Finkel says we have no way to know what the ratio is at this point. He estimates the majority of relationships are still dominated by trying to find something missing.

15:10
for you in another person. But a growing minority of relationships are about self discovery. He says we don't know the ratio, but this is what he concludes. That today, long term relationships or marriage in one way have never been worse than they have ever been in all of history. If you look at like divorce rate and the way people evaluate, it's like couples therapists are completely booked up,

15:40
tons of time ahead and they don't get on like consumer reports, they don't get very good marks, you know? So there's like, the way that we're used to relationship is floundering and Finkel gives a whole catalog of reasons why. so most relationships are in the worst state they've ever been in, but the relationships that get this kind of dedication

16:04
are the best relationships we've ever seen in all of history. So we've got like the worst, it's like Dickens, know, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. So this is not me saying this, this is what Finkel says in his book. We've never seen worse relationships than we do today, we've never seen better relationships than we do today. And the pivotal pivot between those two things is whether the relationship is based on trying to get something from someone or whether the relationship is based on a journey of.

16:32
bringing forth love from within yourself. Oh, I love that. Yeah. When you were talking about the history, I was thinking of Esther Perel, the way she talks about, you know, if you was a thousand years ago, you it was very much about the function of the marriage. And there wasn't a lot of stress about being in the relationship because it was like, well, this person, you know, is the other person my age in the village. And we're just sort of

17:00
you know, getting together for the sake of surviving, you know, this life together. And I know my role and they know their role and it's clear and we have the village to support us. And it's like there was less stress about what the meaning of it was or something like that. And that's what I was thinking of when you were just talking about like the reason why so many of their relationships feel like the worst that they've ever been. Part of it is because maybe people

17:30
are just evolved enough that they know there's a possibility for some sort of deep connection and they don't understand why they're not feeling that or getting that or they think that they need the other person to complete them in some way. Like you said, when you use the phrase evolutionary relationship, that what you, is that like a healthy conscious relationship? I'm just using different, different words. You could say conscious relationship, evolutionary relationship, think or cause it to self-expressive relationship.

18:00
It's all the same. just means that there's some intentionality brought to it, that you're not just like finding somebody to make you whole. And then you just, you're going to stay like that, but you're actually, you, you see yourselves both as malleable and evolving, constantly evolving into the most loving conscious present version of yourself. Yeah, that's great. And I think that it's, um, so many people can view, you know,

18:30
The way you were describing it, I would call it codependence. The idea that my partner is going to fulfill something for me that would make me happy or something. That so many people confuse codependence for loving connection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very good. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a distinction that Terry Real makes in his book, Us. Yes. And also Stan Tatkin in the book Wired for Love.

19:00
The point that terry real makes in us is that we have this kind of glorification of autonomy. In particular in america which is completely unrealistic nobody's autonomous you couldn't survive for a day without interdependence with other people you couldn't eat you know you couldn't do anything you would you would die in a day if you didn't have other people involved in your existence so but this doesn't only apply to physical survival but.

19:28
Emotionally our well-being is completely intertwined for most of us completely unless you're extremely introvert but for most people our well-being is completely intertwined with with touch and pleasure and and expressing and receiving love so Yeah, we are. Um, we are relational beings for most of us our our experience here on planet earth is a relational experience Right, right Building a private practice can be challenging

19:58
Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients. That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment.

20:26
Plus when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform. Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more. And would this be a good time to define Taoism? Sure.

20:54
So Taoism is a tradition that originated in China. It goes back at least 5,000 years. And the most kind of prominent expression of Taoism came at the time of the Yellow Emperor. So that's when what we now understand is Chinese medicine had its origins, right? It's also the Yellow Emperor received sexual teachings from three women who were perhaps real, perhaps mythical, we don't know.

21:23
known of these is called today is called the plain girl and that text is called the Sunu Jing and these are like this is the origin of Taoist sexual practice so Taoism is not a religion in the way that we commonly understand it because there is no god there is no like cre like you know in Christianity or other religions we have like a creator father god who is somehow like who existed prior to creation and kind of

21:53
Created, know, there's nothing like that in Taoism in Taoism. It's much more It's much closer actually to physics that that they would say so they kind of intuitive actually Modern physics, know that originally there's just emptiness. There's just like a state of pure potentiality But with no form that's in thousand that's known as Wu Chi, right? So prior to that, there's just formlessness It's almost exactly the same as what an astrophysicist would tell you about the Big Bang, you know and then

22:23
In Daoism, they would say out of that first emerged two forces. One was more penetrating and moving forward. One was more receiving. That's yin and yang. That's the first relationship within emptiness. As yin and yang emerged, it turned into five forces, which are omnipresent through the whole universe. And these have five different names, right? So we can experience those five forces in nature. So as

22:52
five elements of like, so fire is a force that rises up rapidly. Water is a force that falls rapidly. Growing things are a force that bursts forth with creativity and zest and joy. Oh yeah, the earth, the earth is a heavy grounding force, you know, and then I mentioned a metal, yeah, metal is a highly contracted condensed form. So you can see that in.

23:19
That you can see all of nature is made of those five elements, but you can find them also in the body as the five organs, five major organs of the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, the heart and the spleen. They have minor organs as well. Those are the five major organs and those have emotions attached. This is where it becomes relevant to relationship. Right. So you could say if you feel angry, right. Mostly we think, oh, I feel angry because you said this.

23:49
You said this, you made me angry. That's the most common explanation for anger. Then we might get a little deeper and go, oh, well, actually I'm angry because of what my father said when I was four years old. That would be more psychological. That would be more the lens of psychological history. In Taoism, we would say there is anger, there is a predisposition to anger because of an imbalance in the liver. So a predisposition towards sadness would be an imbalance in the lungs.

24:18
predisposition towards fear and insecurity being imbalanced in the kidneys, a predisposition towards distrust and worry would be an imbalance in the spleen. So where this becomes relevant to relationship is two things. First of all, by now, the kind of latest wave, you could say, the most recent wave of understanding of relationship psychology is probably John Gottman and,

24:47
other people in that vein. And you could say, mean, some people might disagree with me, but you could say that the kind of the most, the kind of edge, the pioneering edge of relationship psychology is to realize that although internally, although in our personal process, we may carry trauma and unresolved things, the actual health of the relationship is determined by

25:18
the expression of certain behavioral and linguistic patterns and relationships are equally undermined by unresolved behavioral and linguistic patterns. So although there may be subjective reasons why you express in a certain way because of trauma, actually the relationship itself is determined by how much we express in a certain way. So John Gottman, for example, he has the four horsemen, you know, and then, so most of the...

25:48
the kind of current gurus of relationship, including Sue Johnson, John Gottman, Terry Riel, Gay and Catherine Hendricks. Most of these models, define Stan Katak and also David Snarch, they define certain behaviors as detrimental to relationship, certain behaviors as conducive to good relationship, irrespective of what you're feeling subjectively. So there's some kind of an agreement.

26:15
you know, that relationship is undermined primarily by criticism and complaint. You know, that's the that's where that's where the four horsemen begin, you know, of John Gottman. And then that that if it's unattended to that turns into contempt, which is a much more like much deeper like disgust, you know, that tends to create defensiveness and pulling away. Right. And stonewalling. And I've forgotten the last of the horsemen now. But anyway, we get the gist that there are certain patterns, you know.

26:44
And so Gaye and Catherine Hendricks kind of started this out with conscious loving in 1990. And they also talked about different principles. So there's a common understanding, right, that expressing appreciation improves the health of the relationship. Expressing complaint, criticism or contempt tends to undermine the relationship, right? I think coming back to the Four Horsemen, think the way it goes is defensiveness and then stonewalling. So first there's defensiveness and arguing back and then completely pulling away.

27:14
So equally, relationships thrive on being committed and leaning in and being curious. They tend to be undermined by pulling away. Relationships thrive on vulnerability and honesty and telling the truth about what you're feeling. They tend to shrivel with withholding or lying or secrecy. Relationships tend to thrive on taking responsibility. Oh, my bad. I'm sorry, that was my thing. And they tend to shrivel with blame. You did this and you need to change.

27:44
But there's a fairly widespread understanding now about the behaviors that cause relational health and the behaviors which undermine them, right? Now, generally speaking, the way that psychotherapy tends to go is, let's look at where this comes from. And that usually leads us to psychological history. okay, these losing strategies, they're because of these unresolved memories from childhood.

28:13
Now, in doubt, and that to some degree can be effective, you know, but it's slow and doesn't always work. Now in Taoism, this is not a replacement, it's an adjunct, you know, rather like acupuncture, it's not a replacement for going to the doctor, it's an adjunct, right? So the thing is Taoism, in Taoism, we would recognize that anger is not just a response to something in the environment. It is not just unresolved trauma.

28:42
It is an energy. It's an energy. Anger has an energy to it, a vibration. Sadness has a vibration. And so these vibrations originate in the organs. So there are very simple practices, extremely simple practices we can do that take a few minutes to learn, which can over time help you to release stagnant energy from these organs and then to fill those organs with

29:12
fresh life force or chi as it's known, right? Now again, this is not, I'm not suggesting that you just like forget all about therapy and just do this. That would be very foolish. This is an adjunct to a therapeutic approach that by adding these tools, you actually address in addition to addressing, in addition to addressing the behavior and the speech and the psychological origin, you also address the energy, right?

29:40
Now, here's the thing, I'll just say one more thing. These tools have been proven over thousands of years to be undeniably effective in changing the health of the organs. And in the last 30 or 40 years under Mantak Chia's guidance, he's a Taoist teacher, they've been proven to be indisputably effective for changing your emotional state, right? Feeling less sad, feeling less angry.

30:11
What has not been done yet, which I've kind of stepped into the vacuum because it hasn't been done yet. So I wrote this book is to apply these tools relationally. Right. So you can actually use these tools instead of using them alone. You can use them with your partner. So can I briefly explain what that would look like? that's great. Yeah. Super, super simple. Right. Yeah. Very, simple and very effective. So let's imagine you need to this is not going to be like a quick fix.

30:37
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting if you've got years of resentment built up that you do this practice and it's all gone, but it helps, right? So let's imagine that a couple frequently gets into feeling angry and frustrated with each other. And usually it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that usually goes backwards and forward. And it's like, you say this and they can trigger each other, right?

31:00
And they get to the point where they realize, this is a repeating energetic pattern. It's just a, it's a familiar neural pathway of triggering each other in this way. So here's what we do. This would involve the liver, right? So there's a healing sound for the liver. So this is what we do. You sit together, you do this on a repeated basis. Like you could do it every day, you know, it's very, very quick. And you might notice, oh, I'm holding onto a story of feeling angry about this thing, right?

31:29
And it's almost always in the past. It's either in the recent past or in the far distant past, because generally we hold on to anger in memory, right? It could be a quick flash in the moment, but most often you hold on to resentment. So you notice, oh, I'm holding onto some anger or frustration about this thing. And then you do this particular healing sound, right? This is what it's called, the healing sounds. Very well documented. In this case, you raise your arms up above your head, interlace your fingers.

31:59
you turn slightly to the left side and you lean so you're kind of exposing the liver and you make the sound like you're telling someone to be quiet. So.

32:18
and you let that drain away. And then the next time you do it, you say, I've been holding onto some anger and frustration that you didn't pay the gas bill last month. And now I choose to let it go. And you come back to the position.

32:39
Now that's just an example of one healing sound and one example. But what I've noticed, again, this is not like a magic trick. It doesn't work overnight. But what I've noticed when I coach couples, they might be holding on to some irritation. And then we catch it and go, let's try the healing sound. we do the healing sound. And when they come back from doing the healing sound, which just takes two or three minutes, the charge is much less.

33:09
Now you can still talk about that the gas bill needs to be paid. You can still talk about that the kids lunches need to be properly dealt with. You can still talk about the thing, but the charge, that kind of, ah, is less, right? The same thing applies. You can release contempt from the heart. You can release longstanding sadness and grief from the chest, which sometimes comes up when there's been a betrayal or infidelity that's holding onto sadness.

33:39
You can release insecurity and fear, like, don't leave me. You can release that from the kidneys and you can release distrust, like that I don't feel safe with you from the spleen. Now, when I say release, I don't mean we're going to release all of it all at once. It becomes something you do frequently together. You get used to it, you learn it together. And then during the day, you might notice, oh, I'm spinning right now in distrust and my

34:08
This flavor of distrust, it's coloring my perception. It's putting a negative sentiment override on my partner through this lens of distrust. So now I'm going to, I'm going to release the distrust and then see what I have to say. So that's one of the ways, one of the many ways that these Daoist practices can be immensely helpful to supporting the good work, which couples therapists do with their clients. Yeah. Yeah. This is great. mean,

34:37
I love the way you were talking about there's different angles to approach the relational situation. And they're all true. Yeah. As far as like, could talk about behaviors. Yeah. Right. Which is, which is helpful. And like as human beings, we're just trying to put words to things that might be sort of on a feeling level or underneath the surface. Yeah. But we could describe the behaviors. We could describe the feeling reality. We could describe emotions.

35:06
We could describe the meaning that we're making up about what's happening. We could describe the psychological history that's connected to the meaning, that's connected to the emotion that's coming up. And now you're talking about, we could talk about the actual embodied experience or what organs this is connected to and the healing of those things on that level as well, which I think is, this is super meaningful to be able to have this

35:36
this lens to add to it as well. Yeah. I think it's really good how you said that to add to it, because I'll tell you straight up. Okay. I'll tell you straight up now. Okay. So there's no, I don't want to, you know, sometimes people get carried away with their new discovery and they think it's like the universal panacea for everything. So I'll tell you straight up. Okay. I've been in the world of relationship psychology and for a long time. I don't actually.

36:05
haven't a license because I don't really want to have a license. I prefer not to work in that way. So I prefer the coaching model, you know, because I work all the time with aspiration, not with pathology, you know. So, but what I see is from, because I have so many friends who are colleagues who are, you know, therapists and coaches, sometimes things take a long time because they're habitual, you see. So you could, you could clear the issue.

36:35
Relationally by talking it through by listening you could clear it using, know, john gotman's gotman rapaport process That's in one of his books. You could clear it by going into past trauma, but sometimes The anger or the insecurity or the distrust. It's a neural pathway, right? So what I can see is if you just do the therapeutic work sometimes things just That they just stay habitual but on the other hand, I want to be clear that

37:05
I also am very down the rabbit hole with Taoist practices. I'm certified in 20 different, I don't want to be boasting here, but I'm really into Taoism. So I'm certified in 20 different Taoist methodologies. Mantak is my main teacher. I've studied with other teachers as well. So I know a lot of Taoist teachers. And in that world, people might say, oh, you just do this healing sounds and this inner smile and your relationships will be great. And it's blatantly not true.

37:35
Okay, so it doesn't work out that way. It's not true to say that you just in practice that you just do these Taoist methods and everything's great. It does not work out that way. What we need in my opinion is, is both like you said, we need to have both all these lenses active together, right? So like Gottman emphasizes, need Gottman and also Gay and Kathleen Hendricks. We need to emphasize what are the words coming out of our mouths, right?

38:03
What are we saying? What are we doing? That's what Gottman emphasizes a lot. We need to have some awareness of the wounded child and the adaptive child, Terry Reel's work, right? And also to some degree, Sue Johnson, you know? We need to have an awareness of unresolved trauma, right? We need those lenses. Then also we can have an awareness of the, we can clear up the energetic pathways. That's what Taoism is. Qi Kung, Qi Kung.

38:32
Qi means energy, life force. means practice, right? So qi kong just means to practice with energy. So if we keep all these plates spinning to some degree at the same time, then you have a chance of each one enhancing the other. But we don't want to go all Daoist or all trauma-informed or all behavioral because you miss how they can feed each other, you see.

39:02
I want to be really clear with that because it's, yeah, you know, it definitely doesn't work to just in my, in my observation anyway, it doesn't work well to just use one and not the other. Yeah. And could you speak a little bit to how you think about the, the idea of a healthy connection versus like a co-dependence or the feeling of like using your partner to feel okay in the world? Yeah. Cause I feel like when

39:31
you know, the other, the other part of that is the difference between like my, my personal accountability or responsibility for my own, you know, spiritual health, so to speak versus like being distancing myself from a relationship and not being connected. Well, okay. So let's add a little piece you see, cause that's a, that's good. What you said, you know, oftentimes

39:58
We want to focus on my spiritual wellbeing or my health or my, and those are, when it comes to your health, you can go to see the doctor once a week. You can also just do Google searches. You can take care of your health by yourself. If you want to go meditate for five days, you can do that by yourself, right? However, so that explains my financial wellbeing, my career.

40:25
my creativity, those are all solo things, right? For the most part. However, if you want to take care of your relational health, you can't do that by yourself. You can maybe go play golf by yourself, but you're not gonna have much fun playing tennis by yourself, right? There are certain activities which are defined as relational, right? So personally, I tell you, can I tell you a tiny story from an... Yeah, absolutely.

40:54
Yeah, this is like a little bit of a red herring of deviation. But it's a meaningful story for me, if you don't mind. 2002, right in 2002, I was, I don't know how old I was maybe in my 40s, right? By that point, I was a fairly successful and widely known spiritual teacher, right? And I don't want to be like self inflating, I feel embarrassed when I think about it now. But I was, you know, I was traveling around the world with pretty decent

41:24
size crowd, you know, being a spiritual teacher, because I, I had met in 1995, I met this man, whose name is HWL punja punjaji. And he was his he was an intern, a student of this man. What I'm spilling things everywhere. But Romana Maharshi, right? So this is a tradition known as Advaita Vedanta, right?

41:54
And it's a kind of direct thing. you don't have a path. It's just direct. Who is here? Who is it? So he asked me to teach on his behalf. Initially, I was a little shocked, like, whoa, that sounds like a big responsibility. But that's what happened. And that's what I did. So by 2002, that was kind of happening. That was really happening. I had several books out. I had people representing me in about 12 different countries. I was like, happening, right?

42:23
One particular night in February of 2002, I was sitting on the deck of my house and it was up high on a hill, quite near here. way above, you there was no, you could pin drop silence. It was on the top of a hill, quite remote, couldn't hear anything, right? I was sitting and I was divorced, right? I had gotten divorced in the years before. My kids, both my kids are with their mother.

42:51
And I was sitting there on the deck of the house alone. I had also just split up with another girlfriend, you know, because what I see now is all this spiritual teaching actually just translated relationally into massive grandiosity, like thinking I was better than other people, know, it's a subconscious thing, right? And that that's actually true of many spiritual teachers, however enlightened they seem. If you look at their behavior, their relational behavior, it's often accompanied by massive grandiosity, you know? So

43:19
I was sitting on the, I didn't know that at the time. I was sitting on the deck of my deck and I realized like, wow, you know, I am alone. Not just tonight. I'm not just sitting on this deck alone, but basically in life, I am alone. My parents, you know, my mother had died. I didn't have much connection with my father. I had no brothers and sisters. I was divorced from my ex-wife. I'd just split up a relationship. I am alone.

43:45
In other words, I could die here on this deck. It might be a few days before anyone even noticed. Right. So I felt like deeply alone, like really like, my God, I'm living in ISIL in, in, I'm doing all this spiritual teaching. I'm actually relationally, I am alone. And then I had this blinding flash suddenly. Right. Cause I had been, I'd focused primarily on spiritual stuff since I was 14 in 1971. I'd gone through all this like massive amounts of meditation and retreats.

44:16
My whole, up to that point, my whole life was about spirituality and quotes enlightenment, whatever that may be, right? And then I just had this blinding flash and I realized, wow, I could die today. Because I was thinking about dying, you know, like would anyone even notice or even care, you know? And I thought, wow, I could die today.

44:38
And I could go to the pearly gates or wherever you go. And if I had not achieved the peaks of enlightenment, I would be so okay with that. I would be full of self-forgiveness. But if I die one day and I realize that I never fully opened my heart courageously to love and be loved, that would be a wasted life. That would be a truly wasted life. And that was a big shock.

45:08
Because I realized all of my adult life, right up to my mid 40s, the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. And so that was a huge blinding flash. And then after that, I just rededicated myself to realize the primacy of love. That enlightenment and being one with everything's fine, but actually, and people may be a different. For me, the value of my life.

45:36
is determined by love and not big impersonal love for everything or love of God, like love for the person close to you. Soon after that, I got into a relationship which became a very evolutionary relationship and that lasted for quite a long time, 20 years. And then at a certain point, my now ex-wife, God bless her, she realized this is no longer a primary evolutionary context. It's very brave of her to see that. Like we are no longer really

46:06
evolutionary catalysts for each other. So over many years of like, you know, therapy and stuff, we realized we actually need to dissolve this. And then I found another partner who's like, you know, incredibly fantastic, awesome partner. We've been together for several years now, and we teach Taoist practice together. And she is like, an absolute like Bodhisattva. She's like, totally, totally dedicated to the embodiment of love to the point of like, being willing to like, yeah, to unearth any hidden pattern and bring it to the surface.

46:36
Yeah. So that's my story, you know, is I just realized that I had been, I had thought, I had thought that you could achieve complete liberation of fulfillment, right? By bypassing the personal and going straight for enlightenment. But now I realize maybe that's fine for some people. It's actually not interesting to me. I'm interested in the rest of my life in constantly turning up the volume on love. Yeah.

47:05
Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Thank you for opening up and sharing that story, that personal story. Tune into the next episode for part two of the conversation with Arjuna Ardagh. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more.

47:32
Thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!