Bonding Ritual for Couples

Many teachers of Tantra teach a form of this bonding exercise for couples. We thank Kerry and Diane Riley for this version, and refer you to their excellent book, Tantric Secrets for Men.


When talking is NOT working for the two of you, it's a good time to remember your relationship instead, and physically connect your bodies. It's important that you and your partner will have made a prior agreement to engage this exercise in times of conflict. It will ground you in your sexual passion and enliven the loving bond in your relationship. So, when one asks the other, even though you are so "out-of-there", you will instead say “yes”. It is not based on whether you want to, or feel like it, it is based on a decision you have made to honor your relationship no matter what – to keep the sexual passion and spiritual bond of loving between you alive.


Refusing to honor this agreement threatens the very issue of trust in your relationship. Your partner has trusted you enough to drop the argument and ask for harmony. This is affirming that your relationship is more important than ego, more important than being right in this particular issue.


Suppose it is you who lets go first. You could say, “This is not getting us anywhere. I want to be in harmony with you. I want to do the Bonding Ritual. We can discuss this later when we are not so upset. Let’s put our bodies together.” The steps in the Bonding Ritual are as follows:


Step 1:

Take up the Nurturing Position:

You (the requesting partner in this case) lie on your back while your partner lies besides you and rests her head on your chest. Place your right arm around her in a nurturing manner. She places her right hand on your heart chakra and you put your left hand on top of hers. Bend your right knee and place it between her legs, touching her sexual center. Her right leg is bent over yours so her knee touches your genital area.


This connects your heart center (open to give and receive love again), with your sexual center, opening you to vulnerability and intimacy again. For her, being held in the nurturing position tends to open her heart center again and by touching her sexual center with your leg, reverses her normal reactive behavior to withdraw and close down sexually to you in times of conflict.


Step 2:

Use the breath to let go of any tension. If you are very upset you will find that you will be tensing your body and holding your breath, or you will feel your partner doing this. Breathe in with a long, deep breath through the nose and then sigh as you breathe out through the mouth –ahh! Repeat this at least 10 times, co-ordinating your breaths if you can; otherwise make sure you are both doing the deep breathing. Never allow just one of you to be doing it; both must participate.


As you breathe out, let go of any anger, resentments, or the need to be right. Release all tension in the body, especially in the jaw, neck and shoulders. As you continue with the breathing, allow your mind to become quiet, allow the inner chatter about the argument to be dismissed. Take your awareness instead to the contact points between your physical bodies, especially your opening heart, and feel love, compassion, caring and forgiveness. Feel the warmth of your partner’s hand on your heart center. Focus on nurturing your partner like a child who has been hurt. Focus on that part of her that you really love beyond the part that has upset you.


Partner B ( your lover in this case), focuses on being nurtured and cared for and then shifts her attention to her hand on your heart, healing it and opening you more to love again. If it feels appropriate she can gently move her hand from your heart center to your sexual center, gently cupping this area for a few minutes, while you keep your hand on your heart center. This allows harmony between the emotions and physical sexuality to develop once more. You now exchange roles with your partner, gently repositioning before beginning. You need to spend at least five minutes in each role for it to be effective.


Step 3:

Both turn and face each other and hold each other naturally without your hands holding the heart or sexual chakras. Continue to breathe and let go, but do not say anything. Gaze gently into each other’s eyes with love and compassion while tuning into your own “higher self”, where having to be right or having to win the argument is not important. What is important is to keep eye contact and be soft, vulnerable and see the part of your beloved that wants to be loved and wants to love. Act as healers for each other, showing compassion, care and concern for your relationship.


Keep breathing gently and after a minute or so and when appropriate, one says “I’m sorry (we were fighting). I love you”. The other listens, breaths in and internally accepts this. Then she says “I’m sorry too and I love you.” Finish with a hug or a kiss.


It is most important not to say anything like” I forgive you, but next time...” This would blow the whole process. You may as well not have done it in the first place. Do not talk about the issue, just hug and kiss and suggest a cup of tea or a walk. Maybe several hours later or the next day you can return and deal with the issue. Dealing with it immediately after the Bonding Ritual is dangerous because you are very open and sensitive when you have trusted enough to say “sorry”.


After you have completed this process, you may not even need to discuss the issue again because you will find that the re-established harmony and balance may well provide a new viewpoint or attitude. If you do discuss it, you may come up with other solutions to the problem which you may not have reached while in a reactive mode.


In reality, neither of you are perfect. You both contributed to the disharmony in some way. By looking within and forgiving and by balancing the energies between you, very often circumstances begin to change.


The Power of Surrender

What you are doing in these three steps is surrendering your ego and honoring your true feelings to keep the sexual passion and loving bond between you alive. Surrender is not compromise. Surrender is letting go totally and giving over to a truth higher than yourself. In this case, the bonding of your relationship becomes the highest truth, not you winning the argument or allowing your beloved wants and needs to be more important than your own. It is important to honor your truth, your needs and wants. Surrendering is a powerful thing to do. Once the energy is balanced it is more likely that a solution will be found to whatever caused the disharmony in the first place.

Relationship as Spiritual Path



Weaving Together Spirit, Love, and Sexuality
In Your Relationship (and Everyday Life!)


This is how love ripens us -- by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.
-- John Welwood


Relationship As Spiritual Path

Clarkdale, Arizona
June 6th-8th, 2008

Friday 7-10pm, Saturday 10am-9:30pm, Sunday 9:30am-noon

In previous generations, our ancestors could explore the deeper mysteries of life and spirit in the seclusion of hermitage or monastery. Many societies accommodated the spiritual seeker with built-in structures of church and community, and throughout Asia it was a respected practice for an elder who had completed householder duties to withdraw from the tribe and wander in the wilderness in "earnest quest".


We moderns do not have it so easy. Not only have the old ways become irrelevant in our fast-paced pursuit of individual freedoms, there simply are no more caves left to retreat to! Ours is a landscape of edges and fences, where every woman and man is left to figure out the Great Matter for themselves, a proposition that would have struck our ancestors as the greatest of follies.


And in this new wilderness of "anything goes", men and women come together in their relationships, face to face with all their gods and demons. What to do?


Join us for this timely and magical weekend of re-uniting with Spirit, as we mutually create a safe haven of trust, and explore opening to being together with our partners, instead of merely being together. Using breath and meditation, movement and sound , you will deepen into your unique capacity for open-heartedness and acceptance. With exercises that you can easily learn and practice on your own (and with your partner!), we will gently wake up the Sacred Energy of Life, including sexuality, and practice the amazing opportunity for wholeness and intimacy that relationship offers. This will be a loose-fitting, fully-clothed event.



  • Foster a positive, exciting and ecstatic adventure with your beloved partner

  • Awaken your senses, transform old patterns, heal sexual and emotional wounds, and discover how to transform negative feelings to empower your relationship

  • Enhance your sensuality,sexuality, intimacy and love

  • Nurture yourself in a peaceful retreat setting in the picturesque canyons and mountains of Clarkdale (one hour from Prescott, twenty minutes from Sedona)

  • Recapture the "Honeymoon Glow" and keep it alive for a lifetime of loving


Early Bird Special -
$275 per couple!


(Until May 23, $300 afterwards.
Registration closed May 30)
Easy on-line registration
HERE



Glenn Bourdot and Diana Owens, Prescott AZ, February 2008

Diana is a licensed clinical social worker, certified sex therapist, relationship coach, trained yoga teacher and certified Sky-Dancing Tantra teacher. Glenn is a musician, writer, and trained Mankind Project facilitator with over 30 years experience in Re-Evaluation Counseling. He is also a Sky-Dancing teacher-in-training. Diana and Glenn are life partners, committed to co-creating a joyful and peaceful world, and dedicated to realizing that
this very moment is their Heart's desire.
And yours.


TO REGISTER: go to www.lovingway.net
or call Diana at 928-445-7501 (lovingwaydiana@gmail.com)
or Glenn at 507-649-2488 (gbardo@yahoo.com)



Easy on-line registration HERE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The meaning of sexuality is our capacity to love fully...Our sexual energy heightens our ability to express ourselves fully and lovingly moment to moment and to unite with another. We all have this capacity and can live intimately every moment through this process. As we do this, we start identifying the blocks to our loving, wounds we have that influence us to close down or numb out. This becomes a spiritual path where we have the opportunity again and again to choose to continue to open up and love. This is the heightening of consciousness which is what spirituality is.
Diana Owens, Soulful Sex, Weaving Sex, Love & Spirit into Everyday Life, p. 79


Relationship is a very advanced practice and not for the faint of heart. It’s one thing to practice compassion or loving kindness sitting alone on your meditation cushion. It’s quite another to keep your heart open in the face of conflict or dissatisfaction with your loved one. In the fire of relationship, we are challenged to actually put into practice all the great spiritual teachings. We must learn compassion for ourselves and for the other. We must learn forgiveness. We must loosen our own attachments to how we think life should be. We must learn to release one another from fixed opinions, surrender judgment and come ready to meet each moment fresh – without the baggage of history, blame and hurt.

http://sacredunion.com/site/?page_id=110


My relationship with my partner is just as fraught with tangles and triggers as any other relationship I have ever been in. This seems to be the nature of relationship - working out these tangles. In the past, when the tangles got too bad, it seemed like the only solution was to find someone with fewer tangles. Well, I have come to see there is no such being. We are all eternally tangled. So, how do we stay in relationship and keep it alive?
http://www.tantraforwomen.com/article5.html


Love becomes a path of awakening — rousing us from the sleep of old, unconscious patterns into the freshness and immediacy of living more fully in the present, in accord with who we really are. -- John Welwood (from a review of the film"Innocence")
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=3089


Like the sun's rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love's radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be. The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love's warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely.....The brighter love's radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we've gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively.
John Welwood
Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship,


Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -- by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.
John Welwood
Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

Finding Your Sexual Voice (AND Speaking the Truth!)


An Evening of Discovery, Laughter
and Empowerment

"My teacher used to say, 'The voice is the only instrument made by God. All the other instruments are made by man.' " -- Shabda Khan

WHAT: This Sky Dancing Tantra introductory program will help you to use your throat center as your abode of inspiration, the door that opens to a joining of your heart and mind, sex and Spirit, and to deepen intimacy with yourself, your partner and all your relations! As we mutually create a safe and heart-full space, you will be able to discover and explore your authentic, whole-body voice. Using movement, breath, sound, guided visualization, laughter and unique throat-opening exercises, you will be amazed at your ability to speak from your truth and to express the Radiant Energy of Life we call our sexuality!

WHEN: Friday May 2, 2008 7-9:30PM

WHERE: Yoga Shala, 322 W. Gurley, Prescott, AZ

WHO: for couples AND singles

COST: FREE by donation

Facilitator: Diana Owens, LCSW, CST is a certified sex therapist and Sky Dancing Tantra Teacher

To Register or for more information, call Diana at 928-445-7501 or email at lovingwaydiana@gmail.com or go to www.lovingwayretreats.com.

The Yoga of Love for Singles


A Playful Step Into the Tantric Way
April 11 -13
*Spice up your Love Life and your Love of Life
*Jump into joy with this perfect introduction to Tantra
*Feel more alive and free


Free Introductory evening!
Friday, April 11, 7-9:30PM (couples also invited)
Yoga Shala, 322 W. Gurley St, Prescott, AZ.


Weekend:
Saturday 9:30am-10pm; Sunday 9:30am-12:30pm
Candlewood Retreat Center, Clarkdale, AZ

Early Bird Specials! Only$150 until 3/29, $165 until 4/7.

The wisdom of the instructors combined with the wisdom that the group created while we were all together will stay with me as I travel back to Europe. I can't wait to share how transformed I feel with my loved ones back home. Jim/Germany

I leave with no unfulfilled desires. As a single woman, I appreciated the safe and fun space for my personal growth and experience. Adrienne/Eureka, CA

You Will Take Home:
Four Keys To Ecstasy and Pleasure
Open Communication (be yourself and be loved)
Creative Practices of Intimacy
Unique and Personalized Dating Rituals
Self-Empowered Energy Exercises

For easy online registration click HERE
or call Diana at 928-445-7501

YOUR FACILITATORS: Diana Owens (certified sex therapist and certified Sky-Dancing Tantra Teacher), will be joined by Steve Wismer, a long-time Sky-Dancing Teacher and frequent assistant to Margot Anand and Steve & Lokita Carter in their world renowned workshops.

$175 after April 7th
Invest in yourself and gain skills and loving support
that will last a lifetime!

Early Bird Specials! Only$150 until 3/29, $165 until 4/7.

(still reading? in-depth article and links HERE)

A Valentine's Celebration of Heart




Prescott, Arizona

February 15th and 16th, 2008
Friday 7-10pm & Saturday 10am-10:30pm


(Friday evening's introduction and Loving-Way Circle
is
FREE and open to all - donations accepted)

"The way that you first felt... when you fell in love is the way that you can feel all the time." -- Jett Psaris, Ph.D., Marlena Lyons, Ph.D.

Do you yearn to deepen your love and intimacy? Have you and your beloved ever wondered how to feel the connection between spirit and sexuality? Or do you simply want to make your already good relationship even better?

Join us for this special Valentine's Day, couples-only workshop as we honor and celebrate the energy of life that is so often called "Heart".

As we work with you to create an environment of safety and respect (and fun!), you and your partner will have the opportunity
to become more intimate with your own body, heart and spirit, thereby growing more sensually, emotionally and spiritually responsive to your partner and to life in general.

Diana and I regard relationship itself as a spiritual path, and our workshops derive from a combination of Eastern Tantric techniques and meditations with Western psychological approaches to mental and emotional intimacy, known as Sky-Dancing Tantra, and taught by Margot Anand. As teachers (and eternal students), we share with you the things we do in our own relationship that keep it vibrant, healthy and extraordinarily fulfilling.


HINT!! This is one Valentine's gift that your sweetheart will always remember!



  • Fall in love again with your beloved partner

  • Awaken your senses, transform old patterns, heal sexual wounds

  • Celebrate the miracle of intimacy with a sacred Valentine's ritual

  • Nurture yourself in a peaceful retreat setting in the picturesque mountains and pines of Prescott

  • Discover the amazing power and effectiveness of Sky-Dancing Tantra to help you deepen your loving into a spiritual experience

Cost: $225 per couple (includes lunch on Saturday)
register HERE
or call Diana at 928-445-7501 or Glenn at 507-649-2488


Glenn Bourdot and Diana Owens, Minnesota, October 2007

Diana is a licensed clinical social worker, certified sex therapist, relationship coach, trained yoga teacher and certified Sky-Dancing Tantra teacher. Glenn is a musician, writer, and trained Mankind Project facilitator with over 30 years experience in Re-Evaluation Counseling. He is also a Sky-Dancing teacher-in-training. Diana and Glenn are life partners, committed to co-creating a joyful and peaceful world, and dedicated to realizing that this very moment is their Heart's desire.
And yours.


TO REGISTER: go to www.lovingway.net
or call Diana at 928-445-7501 or Glenn at 507-649-2488