Yes, monogamy is more and more proving itself to be a prison of flatness and boredom, but I don’t think monogamy is on its way out - at all. What needs to change is how we relate to our partner and where we are relating from! 

Relationships in which one or both people are emotionally shut down almost always have an expiry date or a certain depth beyond which there is no access. Such relationships tend to lack aliveness as well as richness and warmth. They tend to be driven by fear, more than by love and joy. 

Boundaries are psycho-energetic membranes that both define and protect what’s sensitive, vulnerable, or wounded in us. A healthy boundary in a relationship can also be seen as a healthy expectation. Becoming aware of our boundaries is to become more fully human and to wake up to what makes fulfilling relationships possible.

To me, being intimate carries a quality of freshness and innocence, of curiosity and openness. When I feel open to Life in this way, my moment to moment experience is transformed regardless of what I’m going through.

Anyone can fall in love, that’s easy. But to sustain, deepen, and celebrate love through ups and downs of relational challenges - that’s an art well worth practicing.

Relating is among the most fulfilling experiences of our lives. When we feel deeply connected with someone (or a group of people such as a community) we feel truly at home and at peace, thoroughly enjoying what it means to be together.

Very often confused with both hatred and violence, anger by itself is simply a human emotion just like any other. For as long as we are alive, each of us is going to feel angry at times just like we are going to feel sad, ashamed, scared, etc.

Anger comes with being human. What matters most is how we choose to handle our anger.

Shame is arguably our most hidden (and perhaps also most painful) emotion. When in the grips of shame, we often feel flat, numb, collapsed. We might want to isolate - dig a hole in the ground and never come out.

Shame can be so painful that we feel like we’re dying. No wonder why we say “mortified” when talking about shame!

When couples struggle in their relationship, it is often because they aren’t taking care of one or more of these three domains. Either we aren’t taking care of ourselves or we aren’t truly respecting our partner or we are simply neglecting the needs of our relationship.

How we handle conflict in our relationships can determine whether or not our connection with our partner will grow stronger over time.

Even though conflict is part of any relating, a lot of us have such fear of it that we would avoid conflict even if our lives depended on it.

The concept of “co-dependency” has been around for a very long time. It has also been used to shame people into thinking there must be something wrong with them.

An individual cannot be “co-dependent” since “co” implies there is more than one person. Therefore, we can only call a relational dynamic “co-dependency” and not the person(s) involved.

In great relationships, our desire for autonomy and closeness are not seen as oppositional or contradictory, but as dance partners.

Practising the art of closeness without fusion and distance without disconnection, we can find joy in the spaces between us and freedom through our intimacy.

Perhaps the most essential work for couples is to establish a great foundation of safety and trust with each other. If we rush into our romance and go too fast, we fail to establish such a foundation.

You must allow enough time to digest the experiences in your intimacy with each other. Don’t rush anything. Wanting to rush intimacy is often a sign of fearfulness. Explore your fears.

I’m sure you’ve noticed our culture’s obsession with perfection. What is perfection? Has anyone been able to define it? Has anyone been able to achieve it and for how long?

“Perfect” is what we believe we must be in order to not feel hurt/ betrayed/ rejected/ abandoned/ you name it. Perfection and our attempts to be perfect are the reasons why many relationships fail.

Monogamy isn’t doing so well these days. Divorce rates are higher than ever and so are the numbers of unhappy couples stuck in boring monogamous relationships across the globe, everywhere.

In its place options abound: Casual dating forever, choosing a no-sex life, open relationships, monogamish arrangements, etcetera upon endless etcetera.

The importance of expressing ourselves in our relationships cannot be overemphasized. It is essential that we speak up so that our partner knows what’s going on for us.

Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t grow up learning how to effectively express ourselves and because of this, a lot of our communication stays mind-based instead of coming directly from our hearts.

A truly demanding partner will not put up with your self-deprecating inner talk, but will ask that you confront and beat your inner critic. A truly demanding partner will not be enamored by your potential, but will ask that you embody your gifts here and now. 

In somatic therapy sessions, I help my clients get in touch with themselves using role-plays, empty chair practices, by giving them unfinished sentences that they complete spontaneously, and by allowing them to express themselves freely in a truly respectful, safe, and supportive environment. 

Trauma is the wounding generated by an overwhelming experience in which we felt unsupported, lonely, and powerless. Just about every person on the planet carries at least some trauma. When we are not aware of our traumas, these wounds tend to create chronic anxiety, depression, worry, panic, perpetual feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, as well as deep shame and guilt. 

If you are like most people, your parents didn’t know how to make space for your emotions when you were a child. Each one of us got hurt, felt abandoned, rejected, unwanted, to different degrees, when we were a child. Each one of us felt jealous, resentful, and angry many times as children. These emotions (and wounding) don't disappear as we get older, but get buried deep down in our psyche.

The body, as the realm of the instinctual and the intuitive, as the level of feeling and sensing has always been unknown to the intellect. In much of our society today, the body is used merely as a means of transport for our heads and as a means to extract pleasure from what we can eat and drink as well as from sex.

Without healthy power, an open heart doesn’t have the necessary grounding and safety to let it dance freely and fully. Exploring our power includes deeply investigating and becoming genuinely curious about the impact of our behavior on others. This is the birth of true responsibility and maturity, born not out of a sense of burden or obligation, but out of genuine concern and mature love.

Have you ever felt desperate for attention? Have you ever craved company? Have you ever felt lonely even though you were surrounded by people? Have you ever felt powerless and hopeless? Getting to know the child in us very well is a major step in our maturation as human beings. The inner-child carries our early wounding as well as our precious, child-like qualities such as innocence and spontaneity, openness and joy.

Self-compassion can seem like a vague concept. There are many who believe it’s about doing what we want regardless of the consequences, confusing carelessness and rebelliousness with genuine self-love. The essence of self-compassion is being gentle with the part of us that is wounded. This is the child in us. Self-love is the profoundly empowering and humbling practice of accepting, caring for, and protecting our vulnerability and wounding.

Sophia adapted to her environment for reasons of pure survival by repressing how she actually felt. This is the only way she was able to get her needs met. Later in life, now an adult, she finds that she’s having a very hard time expressing herself when she is upset or angry. She automatically smiles and tries to please her partner in moments when she would rather express herself and make a request or say “no” to him.

Alex is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy. His friends describe him as “kind and thoughtful” and he describes himself as “a nice guy who loves to help people.”

How many times have you felt ashamed to show your emotions? How many times have you been put down for being “too sensitive” or “too emotional”? What if there is nothing wrong with what you feel. What if emotions are a lot more beautiful and important than you have ever thought.

Children have a lot of needs that need to be tended to for their optimal development: To be seen and honored for who they are, to know they are wanted and that they belong, to feel loved and cherished, and the list goes on. Unfortunately a lot of our needs don’t get fully met in childhood.

Wherever I went, he was surrounded by flowers and trees if not entire forests. Even in city temples in the busiest areas, he was adorned with petals of various colors, scents, and food offerings. 

I saw a Buddha not of overly detached transcendence (like a Sky God), but one of profound connection with Life - a Buddha of the mud.

When we expect sex to make us feel better, we might forget that true freedom has no problem at all with feeling one way over another. It has room for all, it is that free! Yet, anything can be a doorway to primordial peace. So why not sex?

In the world of spiritual correctness, there is no room for critique. When you criticize someone or something, you sure aren’t being spiritual - at least according to those who are under the spell of such “politeness.”

This is how you get spiritual bypassing: The use of spirituality to bypass, downplay, or deny the impact or importance of different dimensions of our lives. Such dimensions include the physical, the social, the emotional and relational, and the personal and anything else that could simply be called, “the practical.”

Do not underestimate spirituality’s power to further delude people. A whole lot of spirituality is no different than empty beliefs and assumptions about the nature of Reality.

When we sit, we are not in a state of frenzied doing. We rest and soften, and touch the ground of Being which is ever full and complete exactly as it is. Already whole. Getting established in Being is a requirement to live as Being.

Acceptance is the process of our will’s alignment with What Is. Moving through resistance, denial, and often deep pain (including grief) brings about acceptance. When something is thus “accepted” which is not at all a merely intellectual process, it is also gone beyond.

What is called “presence” in spirituality is actually an absence. An absence of what? An absence of resistance. When we are not resisting What Is, we find ourselves experiencing a kind of fluid groundedness. We are alert yet softened, awake yet at rest at the same time.

Power, love, humility - precious capacities of our selves that we recognize and deepen into over the course of our whole lives. Each a mystery, each longing to be honoured and embodied. To understand power, we must explore powerlessness. To feel powerless is to feel depleted, flat, incapable of action. It is common to feel powerless in moments when we actually are not powerless.

Spirituality is not immunity from pain. It is not a hiding-from-life strategy. Not a self-numbing technique, nor is it a place of untouchability from life’s challenges. Spirituality is non-fixation. It is neither duality nor non-duality. It is the inquiry into every place of hiding that masquerades as us. It is the ultimate home coming, having never left.

The evolutionary impulse towards freedom from suffering comes with being alive. This movement of Life is both the best and the worst thing that can happen to you, through you, as you. A quest for spiritual freedom can help gather the energies of our dissatisfaction to such a degree that we are fueled from within to transcend our illusions.

Let’s explore what a nuanced and all-inclusive vision for true well-being and sanity can look like. This essay is for those who no longer wish to settle for partial views on healing, growth, and awakening - and for partial lives.

Many of us take ourselves to be this limited-human-separate-from-everything-else. The illusion of separation permeates every aspect of our lives. No wonder why we feel alienated from the World and each other! There is also trauma that contributes to this, but for the purpose of this article, let’s leave that out for now. 

I used to expect meditation to cure my depression and anxiety, to take away my emotional pain, and to remedy any kind of relational challenge I was going through. “It is enough,” I thought to myself “to be aware of pain.”

God is a big word, no doubt - a word that comes with much baggage. To me, God is that which makes dissatisfaction disappear. Call it Love, call it Peace, call it non-separation, call it the Unknowable Mystery of our Being. Labels cannot define God. 

There is nothing extraordinary or special about these experiences. They are the taste of the most ordinary, most fundamental truth of the nature of reality and our being.

Maslow called these experiences “peak experiences,” but I’m intentionally changing that. That which does the “peeking” is God, it is Reality itself and not the individual who is trapped in (and as) the illusion of separation.

How could anyone overemphasize the significance and beauty of love? Love makes life worth living. Love dissolves each paradox. Love resolves each conflict. Love loves love. When my heart is open, a deep stillness takes over my being even when I might look very active on the outside. Moving from the heart feels natural and ease-y.

I can say so much about love. Love makes life worth living. Love softens and grounds our being. Love celebrates with all there is. Love is the essence of all religion and spirituality.

It is also so easy to be confused about love, to mistake love with pity, to mistake love with enabling of hurtful or unhealthy behaviours of others, to mistake love with blind tolerance.

To me, spirituality is about what we take to be the most sacred and significant in our lives. For a lot of people on a spiritual path, these include Truth and Love.

Relationally, we can translate Truth as authenticity and honesty. Am I betraying myself by saying “yes” to my partner’s request right now? Do I express what I truly want or need?

A lot of people get involved with spirituality for reasons that have little to do with awakening or Enlightenment. Many seekers hope that their very human struggles and relational pain would simply disappear if they had an awakening. I used to think that way.