298: Part 2: 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 2 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 298: Part 2: 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

Get the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

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In this Part 2 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 to help couples deepen their sense of truth in the world, what to do when partners have different levels of sexual desire, the most common ways couples start relationships, how to help partners share what they truly want with each other, and how couples can practice these concepts at home.

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

• Why are you alive, why are you in relationship, and why do you want sex?
• Debunking the persistent myth that desire naturally fades over time
• What is the pattern Arjuna sees most?
• Ram Dass and the question of whether you need a partner to access love
• Why mismatched desire is often traceable to how the relationship began 

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

TaoOfDeepIntimacy.com

Instagram @TheTaoOfDeepIntimacy

 

Show Notes

• 298: Part 2: 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
• [0:28] Welcome to part 2 of the interview of Arjuna Ardagh, author of The Tao of Love, Sex, and Deep Intimacy
• [1:21] Ram Dass and the question of whether you need a partner to access love
• [2:47] Why spiritual metrics and relational metrics are entirely different conversations
• [4:12] The famous teacher who went blank when asked about love
• [6:36] The Disneyland analogy: no ride is more advanced than another, and no path through life is more correct
• [9:00] Why sex belongs in this conversation 
• [10:59] The Taoist reboot on sexuality is that pleasure is a gate, not a destination, and what lies beyond it
• [13:18] Where most sex therapy stops is where Taoist practice begins
• [14:45] What happens when sexual energy is transmuted upward
• [16:38] Why uncovering what you truly want is foundational to conscious relationship
• [18:04] The 3 core questions Arjuna starts with
• [19:33] The longing for the sacred and why intimate relationship may be the most potent path toward it
• [20:30] When couples eliminate conflict but still feel like something's missing 
• [22:24] 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
• [23:50] Shane's RLT background and the clinical reality
• [25:50] Why mismatched desire is often traceable to how the relationship began 
• [27:30] How most relationships start: loneliness, attraction, endorphins, and slowly distorting yourself to avoid abandonment
• [29:28] What is the pattern Arjuna sees most?
• [30:27] Where does resentment come from?
• [31:53]How Gay and Katie Hendricks began their relationship with radical honesty and intentionality in 1980
• [35:47] What it looks like to start over with an existing couple
• [38:37] What happens when two partners honestly discover they want different things 
• [40:29] Why "higher desire" and "lower desire" framing can be shaming
• [43:23] How differences in prioritization don't have to be deal breakers when core values align and partners complement each other
• [44:23] How that fear keeps couples stuck in appeasement
• [45:42] What consistent practice actually requires
• [49:05] The couple in Peggy Kleinplatz's Magnificent Sex who devote Thursday afternoon through Sunday night to their sex date
• [50:30] How couples who commit to even one hour a week notice enough benefit that they naturally want more
• [51:55] This isn't about shame, it's about being honest that results require real investment
• [53:49] Find Arjuna's book and resources at TaoOfDeepIntimacy.com
• 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
Each partner has ignored their own values and preferences in order to fit in with the perceived agenda of the other.

00:13
The podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.

00:28
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist 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.

00:58
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. Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and today I'm sharing the second part of the interview that I did with Arjuna Ardagh, the author of The Tao of Love, Sex and Deep Intimacy.

01:21
So I hope you enjoyed the first part. If you haven't had a chance to go listen to it and I hope you enjoyed the second part today. Thanks everybody. You must be familiar with Ram Dass. Yeah. I used, knew him when he was alive. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. I've listened to so many of his talks and, and, read his books, but, um, you know, I feel like he talks about the, like, like, tell me if I'm wrong, cause you, you know, better than

01:50
better than I do. I feel like the way he would say it would be that you actually don't need another person to connect with the love that's true. Like fundamentally as a human being, like while you were sitting on your your porch when you were describing your story, you were connected to the love of the universe or something like that already that you don't need a person. but the the person that we that we choose to be in relationship with

02:18
is an avenue toward connecting with the truth of that, of that essential love that exists all the time or something like that. Yeah. Thank you for saying it that way. To be honest, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't, if I'm understanding you correctly, I don't think I would say it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Is that okay? Yeah. Let's just imagine, for example, let's imagine black and white. There's like an image or something that's black and white. Another one that's color, right?

02:47
You've got the black and white image, it's going to be all about the sharpness of the lines, the exactness, like a black and white line drawing. Everything you're looking at will be to do with the preciseness of the lines and how, you know, like that. But the word purple or yellow wouldn't even show up in the conversation, right? When you shift to a color image, there's a whole new set of criteria that become activated because now we're talking about color, right? So.

03:17
When we look through a spiritual lens, then some of the metrics we use are like the distillation of the ego, attachment, there are all sorts of metrics we use to measure spiritual advancement, but the metrics of love don't even sharpen the conversation at all, you see, except maybe some kind of vast impersonal love of God or vast impersonal love of all of humanity.

03:45
When you actually start to pay attention to relational love, there are all these metrics show up that were not even in the conversation before. So I just tell you one thing, you know, there's, are many people today who expound, you could say a non-dual view. Are you familiar with that term? Yeah. That's like, no, but I think it makes sense to me. Yeah. So that would be like Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, those are the teachings in Tibetan Buddhism. There are many things.

04:12
non-duality. you Google it, there are lots of non-dual teachers, right? that non-duality means the realization that who you truly are is infinite, unborn awareness. That's your true nature. That can be realized now. And so the past and the future and all the stories, they're just made up mind, you know? And so then to realize this spaciousness and to be stable in it,

04:41
That is kind of called awakening, right? So this is a big thing. not quite, used to, was huge in the nineties. It's kind of dissipated a bit now, I think because we've become much more trauma informed, you know, but a few years ago, I don't know how many, I'm guessing five or six years ago, I was putting together something and I went to interview one of the most famous and popular and successful exponents of this view.

05:11
I'm not going to say too many details because I don't want to say I don't want anyone to guess who this is. But this is somebody definitely, you know, recognises an authority on this. Right. And I had a video camera and we did a very long interview, like four hours. Right. And this person was talking all about, the different stages of liberation. Right. Like a very, very precise map of, like, different stages of. And basically in the higher stages.

05:40
the example of somebody in the higher stage would be living in complete isolation alone, right? So very, very precise, almost like academic understanding of awakening. And about a couple of hours in, I was listening to all this and I said, okay, I what about love? You know, some people experience huge opening through love, sometimes through grief, sometimes, you know, and this person who was single,

06:08
actually just like stared into the camera. for about, I still have it on video. I'm not going to share it with anybody, but just stared into the camera like a, a frightened deer. Like, because I had just brought in a metric that did not exist in this model of liberation you see. So honestly, you know, the way that I see it, Shane, the whole thing is a bit like Disneyland. Have you ever been to Disneyland? Oh, when I was a kid, yeah. Was it Disneyland or Disney world? Disney world.

06:36
Oh yeah, that's in Florida, right? Yeah. Well, as you know, they have a lot of rides, right? Many rides. And when you, once you bought your ticket, you can do any ride you want, right? There's no, nobody's telling you, there's no order. You can do whatever you want. Right? So you, there's one ride called splash mountain, where you're to go up, up, up, up and go, ah, should you get really wet? I used to go with my kids. I had two boys, you know, when they were the right age, they just want to run around and get back. They could just do splash mountain all day, you know,

07:06
all day, right? Then there's another ride, I forget what it was called now, but you basically sit in this little teacup and it kind of spin very goes very slowly around and there's all these little people going, it's a beautiful world, you know, and it's like, oh, koochie koo, you know, like that, you know, and if you know, I now I have a stepdaughter, you know, she would love that she, at least when she was younger, she wouldn't want Splash Mountain, she'd want the tinkly tinkly fairy things, you know, now.

07:32
There is nobody in Disneyland telling you which ride you should go on. There's no more advanced or less advanced. Like you, go whatever ride you want and you have your own experience. And I feel, honestly, this is a bit cliche. This is like sort of hallmark wisdom, but I feel a bit like life's like that. You know, it's like, there's no rules about how you dedicate your life. If, if it feels important to you to make tons of money and have a lot of power.

08:02
That's what gives your life meaning. If complete transcendence and dissolution of any reference of individuality is the thing and just complete immersion in vastness, if that's the goal or the prize for you, that's what's true for you. So when I speak about the prioritizing of love, I'm not saying that that is the meaning of life. I'm saying that's what's true for me. And it's not everybody's cup of tea. There are some people who like to be alone.

08:32
That's what's true for me. And that's what I feel qualified to guide people in. But I, I'm very much aware it's sometimes it seems to me like each person is on their own kind of quotes path or each person is following their own personal religion. know, the nature of a well lived life may be completely different for each person on the planet. know? Well, I really appreciate some of the things you were talking about as far as, you know, when

09:02
And you can correct me if I didn't get it right, but when we're struggling with our partner, let's say in a relationship, that it's such a huge opportunity for me to learn about myself. And it doesn't mean that there's necessarily anything wrong with the love or the connection or anything. It's just part of the journey and it's part of something I need to learn at that moment and an opportunity to learn about my partner and about myself. And I think that I totally agree.

09:31
that a relationship is an amazing, uh, opportunity, unlike maybe unlike any other to have an experience to, to deepen our sense of, of truth in the, in the world. Yeah. Brilliant. I love it. Uh, you know, there's one thing we haven't touched on and I think this whole conversation would be really incomplete unless we gave it a very, a very loud introduction now, which is sex.

09:59
Okay. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's very important to give a big shout out for sex. When I coach couples, I coach people in conscious relationship. And we use daris tools to basically to reduce conflict and misunderstanding. But in my opinion, anyway, that this kind of intimate romantic relationship, the real like, if you want to go all the way to the pinnacle, and if you want to go to the peaks,

10:29
you need to activate sexual energy and it needs to stay constantly activated. Now this is, you know, there's some dissipate, there's some, there lots of different opinions about this. You know, you could say the prevalent myth in the collective still remains that sex is hot at the beginning of a relationship and it's going to naturally dissipate. So it's considered to be normal, you know, that couples have been together a long time are going to have sex, you know, once a week or once a month or something, you know.

10:59
But one of the things that Taoism brings and that particularly that Mantak Chia brings, and it's the primary focus of my work anyway, the way that I choose to work is a complete reinvention, a complete reboot on what sexuality is, okay? So sex has the potential, if we learn to go about it in a different way, and this requires learning new skills, to take...

11:26
What we've talked about so far, talked about appreciation, leaning in with curiosity, taking responsibility, commitment. You can take those qualities and you can shift them from functional relationship to ecstatic devotion when you add sex. So sex in Taoism is known, the sexual energy is, see Taoism, because they have no God, no punitive God,

11:56
They also got no problem with sex because those two things generally go together. Like Puritan monotheistic religion is often tied to a problem with sex. If you look at it, that's where most of our difficulties with sex arise from is like a moral code that comes from a monotheistic religion saying you shouldn't fiddle with yourself. In Daoism, they don't have that. Sex is just energy.

12:23
And in fact, you know, they didn't have it in tantra. They didn't have it in the ancient tantric traditions, you know. So anything that precedes monotheism, there's much less problem with sex. Right. So in Taoism, they understand that we have energy in our body and it goes through different stages in the pelvic diaphragm, the pelvic floor. It's known as Jing and it's quick to arouse, but also quick to dissipate through release. Right. When we learn to move it up.

12:51
it kind of centers here and it centers in the lower dantians or it centers down here and it becomes chi and that's your life force that keeps you healthy. If you move it up some more, it becomes Shen, which is where we start to have the capacity for spiritual experience and union with the whole universe, right? So the way that we commonly understand sex and the way that most therapists

13:18
work with sex and the way that most sexologists work with sex is trying to move sex from repressive and guilt and shame into pleasure, right? So you're probably aware of Emily Nagoski, who I have great respect for, but most of her work is about taking off the brakes and allowing yourself to experience pleasure, make it pleasure-based, you know?

13:46
So to some degree, Peggy Kleinplatts in Magnificent Sex also emphasizes that, although both Nagoski and Kleinplatts, they do open to what's beyond that. So in Darius Sexial practice, we see pleasure as a gate, not as a destination. Pleasure is not the point. It's a gate. Now, when you have a gate, you don't keep away from the gate, you move through the gate, right? When you move through the gate,

14:16
of pleasure. Pleasure is important, but when you move through the gate, it leads you to what the main thing that happens is when you learn to transmute the energy, so you no longer release it in the genitals in the same way. When you transmute the energy, when it moves up, the most interesting thing is when it moves up into the chest, it becomes Shen. And that now becomes love on thousand X steroids, like love that you

14:45
cannot imagine, if you keep circulating, if you take that sexual energy and you keep circulating it maybe for an hour, I don't know if you've ever done MDMA, you don't have to admit to it on camera, but you know, you've not haven't know. Oh, okay. Well, you got you got the best of your life still ahead then. So yeah, so I often work with couples who have already done MDMA. So MDMA is a psychedelic. It's the main psychedelic that

15:13
maps the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies is focused on because there was a big push to decriminalize MDMA make it a schedule to drug because it is so helpful with the healing of PTSD right but it's also used you know it's used in other contexts as well so a lot of couples who are in an evolutionary conscious relationship they have at some point decided to do MDMA together right and what they experienced because of the way they did effects endorphins and serotonin and so on

15:42
it opens up huge amounts of love. When you're on MDMA, all you can see is like, you look at your partner, you just see God looking back at you. It's like, oh my God, you know, so it, and when that's happening, you don't feel drugged. You'd like, oh my God, now I see you and I'm not judging and thinking and I see you in your beauty and your amazing effervescence of brilliance. So it takes a while, but when I train couples to use sex, your practices to transmute energy,

16:12
If they've done MDMA before, the most common thing that I hear after a few months of practice is they'll say, once I learn to transmute the sexual energy, it's like stronger than MDMA. And that's a pretty strong thing. It's stronger than high dose MDMA. And it makes sense because when you actually move that amount of energy up in the body,

16:38
completely changing hormonal balance. You're releasing all kinds of chemicals that we don't even know about, you know, to allow you to experience huge love. Now this is important, okay, for me, it's important for a reason. And it comes back to like the discovery of what you could call endogenous values. Like Katie Hendricks talks about endogenous and exogenous values. Endogenous values are the values that we find from within ourself, right? You discover your endogenous values by going on.

17:07
treat by meditating by really paying attention to what's arising from within you. Exogenous values are the things we've been taught to value from the outside. Like, for example, having a lot of likes on Facebook is obviously an exogenous value. You weren't born with that. Even wanting to earn a lot of money is an exogenous value because it's not something that babies and animals feel. You have to be taught, right? So you could say, I would suggest

17:35
that there is an endogenous value in all of us to deeply know love to the degree that we know divine love. Right. Now, I'm not talking about religion now. I'm talking about like where you see this shimmering sacredness looking back at you. Right. So this, you know, the pivotal thing here is to be and this is something I do with couples right at the beginning of a coaching relationship.

18:04
we go through a process of rediscovering values. And the first question is, which we have to go examine quite deeply, is why are you alive? Why are you in a body? What's the most authentic expression of why you are alive? What gets you out of bed? When it's not anxiety or fear of missing out or something, right? And then there are many ways to approach that. So you get to a really authentic answer of what's really important to you. I had a moment like that on the deck, you see, where I shifted from

18:34
I thought enlightenment was why I'm alive, but then I realized love is why I'm alive. So everybody has their version of that. So once we get clearer and clearer, it takes time to know why am I alive? Then we can ask, well, why are you in relationship? You it's easier to be solo. It's easier to be single. It's more convenient. Why do you want to be in relationship? And it might be insecurity. might be financial security. It might be raising a family, but there's something else emerges, right? And then we can ask, well, why do you want to have sex? Is it just for pleasure?

19:03
Is it for release or is there something else? If we dig deep enough, I would suggest, I can't prove it, but I would suggest that deeply buried in all of us, there is a longing for knowing what I would call it, knowing the sacred, right? There is a longing to know the sacred for real. You could attempt to know the sacred through religion, through a charismatic teacher, through being in the wilderness, through psychedelics.

19:33
I personally feel that intimate relationship is one of the most potent ways to come to know the sacred, but it takes cultivation. It takes cultivation until you get to the point that you can look into your partner's eyes and go, whoa. You know, I had gotten used to you as like Mary or John, right? But whoa, when I actually wash my eyes, I realized there is a creative intelligence. There's living, vibrating love.

20:01
pouring out of your eyes like, wow, you Now, that's why sex is so important. You can do a lot of therapy. You can get to the point where you've eliminated all the glitches in the relationship. There's no more conflict, right? You're operating harmoniously. Good morning, darling, good morning. You're going through the day, everything's, you're a great team together, right? But for a lot of couples, for some couples anyway,

20:30
Let me put it, reframe that for some couples, it poses the question, is this all? Is this all there is this functional, stress free, conflict free life where we're having fun, we're going on a yacht. Now we're going to, you know, now we're going to Italy. We're doing the, is this all there is, you know, and not everybody, but some people get an intuition that there is something more. There is a deeper meeting that I can look.

21:00
with, I can wash my eyes and look more in a more awake way and really get curious about who is really looking back at me. And this is where, in my opinion, you need sex because sex, if we move beyond pleasure and release, sex is a way of generating a ton of energy in a way that you can't do in any other way. And then moving it in the body, repeatedly circulating it through the body until your eyes are washed clean.

21:29
And then you can see that luminous love looking back at you. Now in the book that you kindly mentioned, this is a chapter called ecstatic union and it's the fruit of a lot of practice. But you come to the point where you are mutually seeing the divine in each other. For me, I can't say for anybody else, for me, that is the point of being alive, to have that. That's the point for me where I go, that's it.

21:57
It was worth it. You know, all the sickness and the income tax and the stress and everything. It was worth it to have this, to be able to experience the divine and masculine and feminine. I'm in a heterosexual relationship, but to experience the divine in masculine and feminine incarnation, recognizing each other. This is it. This is, this was the ride that I came for, you know, and, then to be able to have it repeatedly. Now that may not be for everybody.

22:24
That's definitely what makes life worthwhile for me. And I have definitely found ways to support people to have that for themselves if they want to. Building a private practice can be challenging. 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.

22:52
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. 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.

23:20
visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more. And I look forward to reading the book and understanding on a deeper level. One thing I'm thinking about with all the couples I've worked with over the years. You work with couples, right? You're a couples therapist? I'm a couples therapist. You mind me asking what was that particular training that you did that was was. I come from a lot of RLT background. Oh, okay, great. Yeah, great.

23:50
So you know Terry? Yeah. I'm just about finished with it. I'm just completing his training now. Oh great. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that's the world that I, that's the way I think about relationships a lot. So he lives quite, you and he live quite close, right? Yes. Yes. I used to go down to Boston a lot to, when he used to do things live. He doesn't do that as much anymore. Are you personal friends? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Terry's great. I Terry. He's really good. Yeah.

24:18
Yeah, he's a great, he's amazing teacher. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I mean, as I said, I'm almost finished his training. What I was going to say is that, um, I'm thinking about this thing keeps coming into my mind. Yeah. When I'm, when you're talking about this, where the, couples who I've worked with, and you don't have to go into this too much, but I just wanted to name it that there would be one partner who would be like, on board with everything you're saying.

24:47
And who'd be like, Oh yes, absolutely. Let's like, let's, uh, deepen our sex life and understand how to be connected in this way. And, and, and, and, want to be on that journey. And there would be another partner who would be like, well, we have the kids, we have the vacations, we have the life. It's, it's all good. You know, maybe the lower desire partner in the sexual, in the sexual life. And they're like, well, why do we have to make such a big deal out of this?

25:17
Yeah, I don't I'm not really I think I feel like everything's fine. And yeah, I don't want I don't want to have sex in the first place. And I feel like there's a different way of approaching it depending on which partner you're talking to got it. There's a very different way of approaching this conversation, perhaps. Got it. Yeah, I have a lot to say about that. So what you've just described is like, 50 % of what I have to say. So that's guy can I can. So here's the first thing I would suggest, right?

25:50
The situation you're describing is often attributable to how the relationship began, right? And even if it didn't begin that way, people grow and change, right? So.

26:05
Yeah, so let's just find an analogy. It doesn't really matter. Any analogy will do. But let's just imagine like, I don't know, going to Italy, right? Equally, you could say go to Burning Man or, I don't know, go do anything, you know. You could just go, oh, I want to go to Italy. So you just kind of get on a flight. You arrive in Rome. You don't know anything, right? So you just like stumble around like, oh, yeah, there's a, you know, something to eat there. Oh, you know, you could just stumble around and you wouldn't know anything what's going on.

26:35
And then you'd come back and they go, Oh, went to Italy. Did you see Venice? I don't know what Venice is. Well, where did you go? I just went to Rome. Well, did you see the Palazzo Navarro? No, I just wandered around, you know, so that wouldn't, you know, generally speaking, if you're going to go and do something, you need some clear intention about what kind of experience you want to have. Right. Does that make sense? If you, if you don't set that intention, it's going to be floundering around and you could have

27:02
apply that to just about anything. You could go in the kitchen, go, I'm hungry. And you could just like randomly take ingredients. Oh, ketchup. That's good. Oh, I like ketchup. Oh, cheese. What cheese in? Oh, there's some chili. You could just like do that. But no, you need a recipe, you know, and or you need to create a recipe. Right. So basically, there are there are many areas of life where you kind of need to set some intention and know what you're know what you're trying to create. Does that make sense? Yeah. Now, for the

27:30
great majority of the time, relationships do not begin that way. Okay. So what happens is you're lonely, right? Feeling lonely, feeling horny. So what do you do? You used to go to a bar. Oh, you look good. Nice, you know, nice breasts or nice biceps or nice chin or something like, let's go, you know. And then of course you have sex and then all the endorphins start to flow. Once the endorphins start to flow, go and I mean, is what Stan Tatkin's

28:00
talks about a lot. He's really good on this because he's a neurologist as well as a psychotherapist. He says, once you have sex, you're basically on extreme drugs. Once you have sex, you're on drugs, you know, and you're going to completely tune out all the warning signs and you're just going to see what you want to see because you're on drugs. It's endorphins, right? So that's generally how relationships begin. Or these days you get your little device and you go, oh, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe that one, right? Well, what are you basing that on?

28:28
You deciding the one, that one, because it reminds you of somebody or because of the color of the eyes or I don't know, the chin line or, you know, whatever. Or it just says, you know, it just says, oh, I'm into being the best version of myself. People fucking lie. That's not reliable. Excuse me. Right. So I could swear on your podcast. But, know, it's like so that's how we generally start to have relationship. People have sex fairly early on. And essentially what happens mostly then is

28:58
you get locked in. Okay, now look, I've got somebody. This is now I've got somebody. I was lonely. So I want to hold on to this somebody. So you start looking for the signs. What is it that I need to do or say or show an interest in, in order to stop this person from leaving? That becomes a big preoccupation. Oh, this person's interested in sports. I've never shown any interest in sport in my whole life, but I'm going to go to games now because I don't want to lose this person, right?

29:28
Oh, this person's interested in, oh, very common thing. This person's interested in polyamory, right? I've never even dreamed of polyamory. But if that's what I've got to do to keep the relationship, I'll do polyamory. And mostly, when I meet couples, this is what has happened. Either at the beginning or somewhere along the line, each partner has ignored their own values and preferences in order to fit in with the perceived agenda of the other. Am I making sense?

29:58
Yeah, yeah. Does does that match your experiences? Yes. Yeah, as a licensed couple therapist, right? Okay, definitely. Okay, so that is destined for disaster, because you keep distorting yourself bending yourself out of shape. You know, I think Bob Dylan wrote a song called tangled up in blue, which kind of describes, you you, keep bending yourself out of shape to try and not get abandoned. And then at a certain point, usually after about three months, the whole thing explodes.

30:27
with massive amounts of resentment, okay? Partly because the description on what is the app, what's the app called that people go on? don't know. I don't know, like Match or... Okay, what's the most popular one? it? Oh, Tinder? Tinder's like for, okay, great. So, you know, the description was not true. Like, I'm a loving person, take, you know, blah, blah, blah. It was all just marketing, you know? So you get massively resentful. That's where people start to resent each other.

30:56
And that's actually where the whole four horsemen starts to kick in, because then you start to criticize, you start to experience contempt. But then by that point, depends how far down the rabbit hole you've gone, if you've had children, now you're kind of locked in, you know, and it's a big deal to separate, right? So the entire thing started out like going to Rome without having any clue what's in Rome and just like wandering around randomly. You it's not going to work well, OK? You're not going to get the...

31:24
best value out of a trip to Rome, but just equally Burning Man. You know, if you had no idea about any of the cat, have you ever been to Burning Man? No, I haven't. You've not done MDMA and you've not been to Burning Man. Dude, we've got to live a little bit. Okay. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, anything like that, if you just, if you have no clue what's what you want to create, it's going to be random and you're going to get disappointed. Now, now let me tell you a story. Okay. Which is inspiring. And the story is about

31:53
Um, I have several mentors like right now I really like Terry real, but for a long time, I studied with gay and Katherine Hendricks. I'm just seeing if that book is here because that their book kind of wanders around. don't know where it's gone. So they wrote a book called conscious loving. Okay. Yeah. Came out in 1999. I know where it is. It's usually right here. It came out in 1990 and I actually, Oh, I was just reading. I was just reading, um, the big leap. That's the same guy, right?

32:23
Same guy, but not same focus. Different concepts. So they wrote this book called Conscious Loving. I actually read it as a spiral bound pre-publication edition in 1988. And it's, I would say they were the first people to articulate the skills needed for a conscious relationship. Nobody had done that before. They actually started to talk about articulating appreciation long before Gottman even got started. They were doing this, right? Or probably around the same, maybe the same time that Gottman was starting his lab.

32:53
But okay, so here's how they started out. And this is a great, this is like, nobody does this, nobody does this, but let me tell you how they started out, right? This was, I'm guessing it was 1980. Katie Hendricks, who was pretty young at the time, she was doing her graduate, her PhD at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, which was in the East Bay. It was like a.

33:20
You know, it a fairly alternative psychology school. She was doing a PhD in dance therapy at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. So they invited Gay Hendricks, she didn't know him, to come and to give a talk. He was, he had been a Stanford, he was a Stanford psychology PhD. He had previously taught at Stanford. Now he was teaching at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Right. I believe in Boulder anyway. So they invited him as a teacher.

33:50
Right? I know him quite well, right? We actually wrote a book together that never got published, but anyway, so he had, I just know from the background, he had been through several not good relationships and he was single at that point, but he'd been through some really bad relationships, right? And I'm saying this because he has freely spoken of it. I wouldn't want to betray any confidence, know? So this particular graduate seminar was like a circle. They were sitting in a circle, not in a, theater style.

34:20
So he's sitting there and they're all sitting around and he's looking at each person. So he's just, he's not saying he's looking at each person in the circle. And then Katie, who's sitting there, she realizes, oh my God, he's reading energy. He's not asking for information, not saying, who are you? He's just looking at each person and just taking like 30 seconds to read the energy of each person, right? She thought, whoa, this is scary. So he went around and then he got to her and she thought a shiver through her body. So he's like reading her energy.

34:49
And then he goes to the next person, but then he comes back to her. So he goes to the next person, comes back and looks at her again, continues. So she's like completely, oh my God, like such a rush of energy, right? So it came for the break. I think it was the lunch break, right? She thought, oh my God, this guy's incredible. So she wanted to like create some connection. So she did what we all do. She kind of came up with a random question. Like, I want to ask you about blah, blah, blah. know, I think she was not.

35:17
She could have got the question some other way, but she just wanted an excuse to connect. So she goes up to him and she says, I want to ask you a question about this thing. And Gay responded in the way that Gay lives his whole life, because he's very direct. He said to her, hmm. He said, yeah, I am very attracted to you. Because he could feel that's what it was about. Yes, I'm very attracted to you, but I'm interested in having a relationship based in taking full responsibility.

35:47
Practicing appreciation and bringing forth the full creativity in each other. Is that at all interesting to you? Right? And if so, would you like to have coffee? Right? Her response was, let's make it lunch. Right? And basically they got together the next week. She went to Colorado and they've now been together 46 years, I believe. Yeah. I think it's 46 years. Right. So if you think about it, nobody starts that way.

36:16
You know, it's like very rare. Like I'm interested in having a very unusual kind of relationship based in the practice of appreciation, the practice of radical honesty, you know, about vulnerability, you know. And then they made a work of it. It wasn't like heaven overnight. They made a work of turning their relationship into a practice and they've done really well with it. My current relationship that I'm in now, it began the same way. You know, we got together.

36:44
I was older by this point, you and when she said, I'm starting to feel attracted to you, I said, OK, great. I'm interested in having a relationship like this. Does that work for you? She went, whoa. He said, like, I would have to change a lot of things, but OK, you know, and we've been practicing now for many years, you know. So that here's the thing. Most couples don't start out that way. And that's why you get a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement and feelings of betrayal. So

37:15
Either so there's two things. If I'm right now, I'm working with like, I think I'm working with four single people at the moment, each of them working with me, because they want to find a great mate, you know, so they've engaged me to coach them to prepare themselves for a stable, healthy relationship. So we have to go through all this, like, what is it you really want to create? When when the moment comes? What are you going to say?

37:42
When you meet somebody as a candidate, you need to be able to say, I'm interested in having a relationship like this, this, this is that interesting to you. They have to find out what they're interested in creating. You Yes. But if I work with a couple, we have to start over. see? Yeah. Because because we didn't start that we've got to start over. Individually, we've got to find out what are your values, right? What are your values? What is it you want to create?

38:08
Let's get really clear about that. So we completely pull back the entanglement of trying to please the other person. What is it you want to create? What's the experience that you want to have? So you get to the point of, okay, we didn't do this back at the beginning. We're doing it now. Moving forwards, I want to create this. Is that interesting for you? Right? Yeah. Now, here's the thing, we have to get radically honest. So to come back to your thing, if one person says, I want to have a relationship based in

38:37
divine, you know, feeling this huge amount of love that we have to cultivate through practice. And I want to experience transcendent sex. I want to experience constant appreciation and gratitude. Is that interesting for you? And the other person says, honestly, not really. I want to play golf and go on cruises. Then we got to be able to say, okay, it's been a great 20 years, but actually we're not on the same page anymore. Thank you so much. And that's where we need to consciously uncouple because truthfully,

39:05
we don't have the same values. can't force somebody to be interested in something they're not. But I wanna just loop back to something you said, because you talked about higher and lower. And I think it's dangerous to view it that way, because if somebody is actually interested in making money, stability, all of that, that's not lower, it's just different. It's just like we talked about Disneyland, you can do anything you want with your life. You can create any artwork you want.

39:34
We just want to be on the same page. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. I was saying, I was saying higher desire and lower desire to describe the dynamic. Yeah. Is there a different way you would describe that? Well, I think so. Yeah. of sexual, like I was just trying to describe the way in which that those types of people often find each other or the relationship evolves in a way that that happens.

40:01
Yeah, there's one partner who's interested in having sex and one who's less interested in having sex. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Got it. I'm not saying one's better or worse. No, but the trouble is I think the difficulty is like, I'm thinking right now of a particular couple. I'll describe them in such a vague way that nobody would know who it is. Right. The woman, she wants to do her trauma release work. First of all,

40:29
She wants to do like the Terry real, you know, level two and level two, level three, you know, or the sec second and third stage work, you know, she wants to practice conscious sexuality circulating. She wants all that. He wants to stabilize his business. He's done very well. He wants to invest in properties and he wants to enjoy the fruits of all his labor and go and play a lot of golf and do stuff. Right. Okay.

40:59
Here's the problem. If you start to use words like higher and lower to describe the difference, he's going to feel immediately shamed, you know, that, that, that he's inadequate, not good enough because he's interested in kind of grounded material things, know? So that's why I think I definitely want to avoid that. for sure. Yeah. So I think, you know, the, yeah, even when you talk about, I love the way you're talking about wanting a wanting more from your sex life. Yeah.

41:28
it's a choice. It's not right, wrong, good, bad necessarily. If somebody wanted to choose to not have sex at all in their life or not be in a relationship, there's a lot they could learn from that journey, Yeah, but it's not just that they're not choosing sex, they're choosing something else to prioritize, which is also important. Yeah, that's a good... Right. So I think...

41:58
Yeah, I think a good way to understand this is to go to Ken Wilber's model. know, Ken Wilber has done such a good job. This this little book here, the integral vision is very helpful. And he talks about lines of development. So he took instead of talking about human evolution as a as one line, which people often do, he talks about lines of development. So relationality is a line of development, you know.

42:27
intellectual ability is a line of development. Service, know, service to humanity is a line of development. So they're all being entertaining and funny or playing the piano well. These are all lines of development. And essentially in a human life, you can't prioritize all lines of development simultaneously. There's not time. So if somebody is really prioritizing their psychological healing, their sexuality, all this.

42:54
they're probably not prioritizing something else, you know, and sometimes you can find a balance where as a team, you have certain shared values, but then you say, okay, you'll take care of this. I'll take care of that. Now, for example, with my current partner, she is a master at creating physical beauty. You go into her house, like, it's like the, the entire house is like a work of art.

43:23
You can't see here, but if you if I showed my camera, I live, I'm a slob. I've got piles. I've got piles of books. I've got, you know, sometimes there's even like bowls that I forgot to take downstairs to put in the sink. You know, I've often got what's it called? Like dishes piling up like I'm just so much involved in my creativity. I hardly take any notice of the environment. Right. But that doesn't need to be a deal breaker because we can understand she's going to know she's going to focus more on the

43:53
The beauty, I'm really good at fixing things. I've got a whole, you know, I've got all the tools you need to build a whole house. I can do plumbing, electric, everything, you know, so I can fix stuff like that. She doesn't know how to do that. So that way we can compliment each other. So that's okay. But there are certain core values which we need to align on, you know, for example. Yeah. Well, and I love the idea of, um, for a couple, uh, whether they're just starting a relationship.

44:23
or whether they've been together 20 years, you can always come back to this, to have this conversation about what do you truly want? And for both people to think about that for themselves, define it for themselves, and then to share it with each other. And I think a lot of people have some fear of doing that because obviously if you've been together 20 years and you get really honest about that, it could mean that their relationship might end.

44:52
And so people stay kind of miserable for, because they're kind of stuck in this middle place where they're not owning what they really want. And they're also appeasing each other or something like that. Yeah. That's pretty much what you've just said there. That's pretty much a good definition of codependency, right? Yes. Yeah. But

45:14
I think there's a, yeah, that's a wonderful thing for people to do to truly, to connect with what they truly want and to share with each other. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I mean, the other thing we didn't really emphasize is everything I'm describing here in terms of like really pushing the edge on conscious relationship and really pushing the edge on sexuality. takes a lot of time.

45:42
A lot of time. I'm serious. It takes a lot of time and priority. Yeah. have to make it a big part of your life. You know, like my partner and I, have a love date once a week to practice what's called dual cultivation. That means you're practicing these dowries techniques, but together with sexual penetration, right? We do that every Thursday from.

46:12
5pm till 10pm for five hours we're sexual practice, right? And we have sex most days as well, right? To keep the energy circulating, yeah? With no ejaculation and often no orgasm for the woman either, you know? And then in terms of ironing out the kinks, you know, we're doing these conscious relationship practices throughout the day, you know, like practice appreciation. Oh, there's some blame, let's pull it back into response.

46:41
You have to be pretty dedicated to this. is not like this is not like go see a therapist for a week and you're done. You know, this requires really making it a priority, you know? Yes. And not everybody wants to do that. Not everybody feels they have time to do that. You know? Yes. But this is the thing, you know, that I noticed, for example, in John Gottman's The Seven Principles That Make Marriage Work, you know, you know that book? Yes. Yeah.

47:10
So he goes through this whole thing. It's a very good book, you know, about the seven principles. And at the end of the book, he explains how you can do this. And it's going to take less than two hours a week. But you don't get good at anything with less than two hours a week. It's like, no, what, why having read all these, all these seven principles and having read about how amazing it could be, why would we want to put the minimum possible time into it? That doesn't work. You know, if you want to be

47:38
Like, let's say you want to be a really great pianist, you know, right? Really like a concert pianist. OK, here's how to be here's how you can become good at the piano in less than five minutes a day. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not that's not a good idea. If you want to be a great pianist. Spend five hours a day, you don't have to do 10 minutes a day or five minutes a day. like, why are we orienting everything to the minimum amount of time and priority? If we care about something, let's give it all the time and priority that it needs.

48:09
And some people have kids at home, they go, I can't do it because of the kids. Actually, all the conscious relationship practices like appreciation, responsibility, you can do all of that in front of the kids. You can practice conscious relationship with the kids there, and they will, it will rub off on them. Obviously not with the sexual practices, but usually for couples who have little kids, when we start out the coaching, you know, we don't usually start with sexual practices because we've got to clear up some of the

48:38
We've got to use Terry Real's eight diagnostic lenses to see what's going off. So we don't introduce the sex of practice right away. If they've got kids at home, I'm going to say, well, we need to devote some time to the sex of practice. And they go, OK, well, how much time? I say, well, let's start with an hour a week. I go, are you crazy? We've got an hour. We've got kids. You must be mad. We're lucky if we can fit in 10 minutes. And then.

49:05
What I like to do, I like to get this book, Magnificent Sex. Do you know that book by Peggy Kleinplatz? Yes, I do. Fantastic book. It's like the best sex book ever written. She was on the show before. Oh, right. Yeah. I just talked to her the other day. Yeah. She's in Canada. great. Yeah, she's awesome. Anyway, she's got this story in the books. My favorite story, right? It's this couple who are semi-retired. Semi-retired, right? So they tell the story to Peggy Kleinplatz. say,

49:33
We used to have many dates a week. We used to have sex many times a week. But now we just have had once a week, right? Once a week we have a we have a sex date. So we have to work because we're semi-retired. We work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, right? Thursday lunchtime, we come home and it's the beginning of the long weekend. So what we do is we cook, we cook a ton of food and we put it all in the fridge. Then we go upstairs to the bedroom and our

50:02
our weekly sex date starts Thursday, early afternoon, and it continues without a break till Sunday night. So that's all Thursday afternoon, all Friday, all Saturday, all Sunday. So when couples tell me they can't manage an hour, I say, here's this couple in Peggy Kleimpach's book who do three and a half days a week. You can manage an hour, you know, but here's what happens. OK, here's the thing. Couples generally, it's like hard.

50:30
but they managed to commit to an hour a week and they get a babysitter or the grandparents. And then they notice how they feel, right? And then, so they go, it was an hour. And then after like a month, they go, well, let's do two hours, because it works so good, know, because everything gets better when they practice in this way. And there was a great story that I had one couple I was working with and they were not living together. Like she was a single mother with children. They had not yet moved in together. So once a week,

50:59
because they wanted to practice. Once a week, she would get a sitter and she would go to the guy's house to have their weekly date, leaving the kids with the sitter. And the kids complained, particularly the younger child complained like crazy, you know, like, oh God, I hate the sitter. I'm not going eat my dinner. mean, she's like complaining. But then after a few weeks, the younger child noticed that after these weekly dates,

51:26
Mummy was in a way better mood for the next day and the day after. So after a little time, this younger child would go, Mum, when's the date? Oh, it's tonight. Go to the date. Go to the date. And Mum would say like, well, I need to make you know, no, you don't have to make my dinner. I'll make mac and cheese. Go to the date, Mum. So the child didn't know what was happening on the day. She didn't know it was sex, you know, but she knew if Mum goes to this date, then that couple of days afterwards, she's going to be super chill, you know. Yeah. So yeah. So these practices, they do take time.

51:55
but you just have to test it out because you give it a little time. It has so much benefit that then you naturally want to give it more time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My, my only, I was pausing a few minutes ago because I just want to make sure people don't take it as though there's a right wrong way of doing this or,

52:22
Like what's wrong with you that you can't make an hour for? Oh, right. Or, you know, like, like, like a shaming kind of thing about, you know, um, and I know that's not what you're saying. I totally hear the value and the benefit of what you're saying, but it goes back to what you were saying before about like, this is all an empowered choice that people can make. And you've seen how beneficial it can be when people do carve out the time and dedicate themselves to a certain type of practice.

52:51
Yeah. That, um, you know, there, there are a lot of benefits to that. Well, and I think there's a certain responsibility as a guide or as a trainer or as a coach to be honest with people about what is needed to get benefit, you know? So if you go to the gym and you work with a trainer, the trainer is going to tell you, you need to come back on your own and do these exercises three times a week in order to gain muscle. Well, if you go, sorry, I can only come every two weeks.

53:21
then it's only fair for the trainer to say, okay, you can come every two weeks, but you won't get the benefit that you want that way, you know? So that doesn't have to be shaming. It's just, it's just being honest that this does take time and repetition in order to get the benefit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. I really appreciate all you taking the extra time and can you mention your book again? So people know the title and yeah.

53:49
Yeah, so the book is called the Dow that's T a o the Dow of love, sex and deep intimacy. But the website is just Dow of deep intimacy.com likes T a o o f deep intimacy.com Dow of deep intimacy. And there you'll find you know, there's some videos, there's some podcasts, there's all kinds of stuff, you know. Yeah, that's great.

54:16
Hopefully when this is released, it's about the time that the book is coming out so people can find it on Amazon and everything else. So. Great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate such a, uh, an enlivened and like intelligent conversation. It's been really a pleasure to get to you. Thank you. Yeah. I learned a lot. really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Take care. Hopefully we can catch up again at some point. Yeah. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma.

54:44
They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. 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. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Burkle 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!