Daring to be sexually healthy

By Michael de Glanville & Viola Edward….

Trust and relationship

The sexual relationship provides one of the deepest channels for the expression of love and appreciation. Regular demonstrations of approval and tenderness between partners builds trust in the constancy of love and the durability of the relationship. We are deeply nourished by the love and appreciation that we receive from our partner simply for being who we are. This is why it is so important for us to be able to express easily, in return, our own love and appreciation for our partner. This depth of mutual trust in a relationship is created gradually, progressively, through a continuity of positive experiences of a partner’s dependability. Trust develops a couple’s capability to resolve, side by side, the trials that life will inevitably bring to the relationship. Trust is something that is earned, it has to be deserved, to be merited and, in return, the self confidence generated by the feelings of being trusted by your partner is, like an award, a wonderful gift to receive.

Daring to be vulnerable

When you feel trusting and trusted and in safety with your partner, the feelings of security make it possible to really open yourself up to them with your defences lowered, vulnerable and fully present with nothing withheld, expressing your deepest longings, talking about and maybe even releasing, the fears and shames that you may have been secretly shouldering for years. We often conceal these self-doubts and shameful feelings because we fear that our partner’s knowledge of our weaknesses will diminish their love for us. But this self created shield of protection, unfortunately, will also mask and cloud over many of our deepest qualities. We will actually be camouflaging our true selves, our core vibration, from the one we love. This gap, created by our fear of being too deeply known, will stand between us and diminish our ability to get really close to them, into that slot, that safe place by their side where we can feel, so strongly, the security created by our relationship. Daring to be vulnerable is no small achievement.

The key to sexual intimacy

To allow vulnerability to appear, we have to overcome our fears and face up to the risks of losing our loved one, plunging ourselves into the pain of separation and loneliness. Exploring those dreads, feeling the fear and releasing it from deep within yourself will reveal the courage you require to become vulnerable. After all, if your partner fails to appreciate you for whom you really are, maybe it is time to be moving on. The paradox is that giving yourself permission to become vulnerable, an action of removing your body armour and throwing open the windows of your heart, revealing your precious soul to the steady gaze of the other, is the key to a real and profound sexual intimacy. Nobody can know the healing flow of that intimacy until they have known vulnerability.

“In true intimacy, the other one is our inspiration.” Michael Gurian.

Our delicate nakedness

Our capacity to go into deep intimacy with a partner will have a strong influence on how we live our sexuality in the relationship. Our physical surrender to the other, our creative and spontaneous expressions of joy and pleasure and the carefree movements that characterise healthy sexuality, will all find their place in that intimate atmosphere. We entrust our partner with the freedom and knowledge of our most private spaces and truths, knowing that they will respect the delicate nakedness of our body and mind. Secrets no longer find a place to hide. With the courage to develop intimacy, we can ride “the unbearable lightness of being” that characterises conscious loving relationship.

Basic Urges

Healthy sexuality is a rich development of our instinctive genitality. It goes far beyond the sexual interaction driven by the hormones of physiological need. Simple genitality satisfies the primary urges stirred up in the context of a “one night stand”. The sexual relation has its initiation and its culmination in the bed and though the sexual excitement can be hot and physically satisfying, the time spent together is usually limited and the genital satisfaction will not last long. Later, there will remain little depth to their knowledge of each other beyond the recognition of the strong and mutual basic urges that brought them together.

Between the Sheets

However, for the couple who have decided to build a conscious and loving sexual relationship, what happens between the sheets, at a chosen moment, is not the beginning of that particular sexual connection, but actually the culmination of a whole series of meaningful contacts that the partners have shared during the day, connected by their complicity with one another in a mutual pampering. They have been walking together throughout the day on a soft, erotic, underlay which has cleared their hearts and fired their spirits, releasing their bodies to share and enjoy their sexuality.

Preparing Erotic Availability

The couple get together with the days tasks completed or not, but holding no resentments or secrets in their hearts, because their day’s conflicts and misunderstandings have been resolved with care and then let go of. Their day has in fact been a journey lived with awareness of the loving, intimate simplicity of its shared moments. Activities such as a pre-breakfast walk in the rising sun, the joint choice of her day’s earrings, the lunchtime conversation about the complications that have come up for him at work and the actions needed to help heal a child’s illness have touched them both. Contemplations of the evening beauty of the sea and the sky, sharing during the cooking together in the kitchen, incidents remembered together, of the excitements of first loves, accounts of dreams dreamed in each other’s embrace, talking over ideas and feelings and accepting differing points of view, and all this amongst a scattering of tender passing glances, touches and smiles, intimately exchanged here and there among the routine duties of the day. Even if this couple may not have the time intentionally set aside for making love or creating the comfortable and intimate surroundings that they most enjoy, they are openly sexually available to each other, relaxed and full of affection and desire.

Blocking Sexual Energy

Could another couple, in crisis, with emptiness in their communication, eaten dry by the bitterness of unresolved conflicts, harried by persistent criticism and disrespect, harbouring mutual feelings of chronic mistrust and without shared horizons in front of them, could such a couple have any motivation whatsoever to agree on generating the erotic charge which would allow them to move together towards a loving sexual encounter?   Inspired by Sergio Sinay, ”Healing the couple”.

The Essential components

In the conscious relationship, healthy sexuality, intimacy and elements of eroticism are essential components of each day, alongside love, communication, trust and commitment, where the shared journey is nourishing and self sustaining. Situating where you are today with your personal attitudes about sexuality is an important step in the process of developing a deeper consciousness of the subject.

We would love to hear from you with your comments, experiences and questions. Contact us at info@violaedward.com, 05338673685. FaceBook click here  We will continue with this fascinating and infinite subject of Conscious Relationship next week.

Find out about Michael’s 2015 Home Massage Training Course by clicking here  or discover Watsu, a relaxing warm water flotation massage by clicking here 

Download a free copy of Viola’s Book “Breathing the Rhythm of Success” from  www.violaedward.com

Viola came to Cyprus from Venezuela in 2002 to join Michael who was born on the island and had returned from France in 1999. Viola and Michael are both therapists and trainers in Breathwork and they founded Kayana Ltd. in 2003. Viola specialises in Relationship Coaching, Business Consulting and Colour and Image.  Michael has an engineering background and specialises in Massage and Watsu.