Relating: a workshop series on understanding and healing relationships [from the 20.09 to the 11.10]

In this course we will study trauma and love, hormonal cycles in men and women and their effect on our relationships, and the harmonization of the male and female sexuality. We will discover our own relational needs and what we truly wish in a relationship, and learn how we can maintain harmony in our relationships.

Human beings are relational creatures. We develop and grow by relating to each other.. From the moment we arrive in this world, our beliefs, values, emotions, thoughts, opinions and behaviors are formed in interaction with our parents, siblings, family and friends. These patterns influence our entire lives, and also play out, either positively or negatively, in our adult relationships. Hence, being in a relationship can be the most healing experience we can live, but also the most difficult.

What kind of partner we attract, and are attracted to, is a question of the subconscious mind, in addition to the state of our hormonal health. Most relationships are little more than mutual acting-out of trauma. We seek something from our partners that we fail to give ourselves, or that we did not receive as children. We play out traumatic models in our relationships, such as the victim-abuser or the parent-child, and we silence the signals of our bodies.

In order to have a healthy relationship, which can be a true source of long-lasting happiness and a deep, genuine feeling of safety, we must first see ourselves clearly. We must have a firm understanding of our own patterns of being, so that we clearly can communicate our needs, values and ideals to a potential partner. In order for someone else to truly know us, we must first know ourselves.

Moreover, a solid relationship requires tools and skills. This is unfortunately not communicated clearly enough in our modern culture. We expect love to fall into our laps, we think that “the right one” just has to be found in order to make us happy, and that our wounds and negative patterns will just disappear if we fall in love reciprocally. In this series of educational, clarifying and healing workshops, you will be introduced to these tools and skills, and the science underlying them. We will examine some of the world’s most longitudinal and precise research on healthy couples. We will learn what happy and functional relationships have in common, and what behaviours mark dysfunctional couples. We will moreover learn about the three models of healthy, long-term relationships, so that we can evaluate which category might feel the best suited to us.

We will also study the nervous system in relationships, and how we can navigate through trauma-responses, both in ourselves and in our partners. We will learn to recognize the physical and mental signs that ourselves or our partner is in a trauma-response, and how we can give ourselves and our partners the necessary support in those situations. We will expose ourselves to our own unhealthy behaviours, and learn how we can move away from reactivity and towards health, on all levels.

We will study what yogic science refers to as samskaras, or psychosomatic, unconscious patterns that influence how we see the world, and how we can change them. We will study the spiritual aspects of relationships, and how to bring our soul into a partnership, so that these can become tools for spiritual growth, rather than barriers to it.