Presence is an interesting thing. We might think we’re present or feel like we’re present, but just beneath the surface we’re holding tension or pushing away aspects of our experience in a way that’s so habitual and familiar we don’t even realise we’re doing it.
Whilst this might appear insignificant, it’s not.
When we’re not present, when there is this subtle tension in the body, the flow of connection with life is disrupted.
Disconnected from this moment, ourselves and, unsurprisingly, our partners.
How many times does your partner say or do something that makes you react?
The negative stuff is easier to notice. The tension in the chest, the anger, the sense of being hurt. And, of course, the easiest path is to blame outwards. Because feeling it is too painful.
But how about the good stuff? The “I love you” or “I miss you” or “I’m sad” or “I need you What happens inside you when you’re looking into their eyes as you make love?
Do you hold your breath? Do you quickly say something? Close your eyes? Make yourself return the gaze? Do you fall into them, to increase the intensity? Do you feel suffocated?
These very subtle movements are worth listening to because they’re keys to our unconscious.
YAY! That’s right! Yay!!!!
Because right there, in that moment ... life is calling us back into itself. It’s calling us to follow, to stay with, to go where we’ve never gone before.
It’s calling us home, into the present. Into the places we haven’t yet learnt to inhabit.
This is where we’re limited. This is where life grips us. We keep trying to fix it out there!
When we FEEL what IS actually happening, we move from doing into Being.
That’s it! Simple but paradoxical. It’s in the opposite direction to where we’ve always gone.
When we come back to where we really are — the nervousness, the fear, the anger, the sadness, that weird tension in my chest that I don’t even know what it is — something radically weird happens!
We come home to ourselves. When we see this, we are able to see more deeply into our partners, our children, our friends.
And when we meet from where we truly are, life becomes a creative unfolding of what has never been able to happen before.
Meditation and therapy are all about this!
So WHY INTIMACY? Why S*xuality and Self-Love?
Because everything is magnified here! When you bring mindfulness into the body, into the very moments that things are being activated, you get to see what is normally hidden. What is usually so quick, so imperceptible, so habitual!
When you feel the moment of just coming back to where you are ... the doorway opens!
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LORELLA RICCI - Certified Hakomi Psychotherapist, Somatic S*x Educator
This quality of embodied mindfulness is at the centre of all my work and practices. What I’ve described above is what I do in my therapy sessions, the Self-Love practices that I guide and the relational practices I teach.
My work is in service to supporting people to bring into conscious awareness the very moments they leave themselves. As we follow these movements back into ourselves, embodied insight happens.
We can do a lot of work on our own or on the cushion, but when we are given the space and supported to come back to the aspects within ourselves that we habitually reject, we see so clearly that we have spent our lives protecting ourselves from being hurt, and inadvertently, blocking ourselves from loving and being loved.
To find out more about individual sessions, couples sessions and workshops, please visit my website.
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