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Yoga and Sex

On Feburary 27, 2012, William Broad’s article “Yoga and Sex Scandals: No Surprise Here”appeared in the New York Times. If you’re not part of the yoga community (or even if you are), you might not have heard about the recent scandal surrounding John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga. Broad blames yoga’s origin as a “sex cult” and argues that, in many ways, such scandals are hardly a surprise.

While it’s true that there’s definitely a much stronger relationship between yoga and sex than most people within the practice will acknowledge or admit, it’s also worth mentioning that the core issue is not the link between yoga and sex, but rather personal responsibility, ethics, and leadership. It’s hardly surprising that people who lack discipline, maturity, and self-control will mis-use sexuality.

Sex scandals (and sexual violence in general) outside of yoga are just as common as within the yoga community. The mis-use of sexuality is rampant in our culture. Opportunities to learn how to responsibly use sexual energy are rare. And as a culture, we shy away from frank and open discussions of sexuality. Anything that isn’t openly acknowledged and talked about has the potential to “go underground,” to become something hidden and shameful.

It’s unfortunate this is the case, because it denies many people the opportunity to learn about themselves and their sexuality in an environment of open-ness and non-judgment. And it contributes to the kind of scandals we hear about all too often. Far too many leaders in the yoga community have been the subject of sex scandals. Broad’s article mentions a number of them, and Friend is by no means the first. Unfortunately these type of scandals cause people to distance themselves from the practice and give it a bad reputation.

Spiritual growth includes a period of spiritual adolescence. Sometimes people spend a long time in a place where they are “talking the talk” before actually “walking the walk.” There’s a lot of lip service paid to concepts of peace and love and oneness in yoga, and in spiritual community in general. But underneath that, there are a lot of people who are still angry, still hurting, and still have a lot to be healed.

Sometimes we are guilty of looking up to the wrong people, of looking to flash and charisma over substance. Who’s making the loudest noise or attracting the biggest crowd – in other words, that person who’s talking the talk. Sometimes we don’t exercise enough discernment. An impressive facade can make us gloss over inconsistencies. Sometimes those who appear to be the most impressive don’t have the qualities we would want real leaders to possess.

And sometimes those who do have those qualities, who are walking the walk, who truly possess leadership potential, want to live quiet lives removed from the world. I would have said, not long ago, that there’s nothing wrong with that. But the more I realize what a scarcity there is of true leaders, the more I realize that those people with substance, with integrity, with maturity, have an obligation to step forward, to build real leadership skills on that foundation, and provide an example that other people can truly look up to.

The Yoga Industrial Complex

On February 10, 2012, William Broad was interviewed on NPR regarding his new book The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards. Broad is a somewhat controversial figure in the yoga community, as discussed in my earlier entry “Can Yoga Wreck Your Body?” in response to his January 2012 article in The New York Times Magazine. He has upset a lot of people by saying that yoga can, in fact, be dangerous – like any tool when used improperly.

Broad uses the term “yoga industrial complex” to describe a mindset within the yoga community that includes a reluctance to acknowledge the risks of practicing yoga. He has received a great deal of negative feedback from teachers and practitioners. Now, there’s something ironic about hate mail coming from yogis, but spiritual growth is a process. Some of us are still in our adolescence, and most of us aren’t yet enlightened (or we wouldn’t still be here).

Yoga is a practice which has slowly found more social acceptance over the past few decades, but isn’t necessarily mainstream. One of the reasons it’s finding acceptance is because people are learning it can do great things for the body. If the culture at large starts to perceive yoga as potentially dangerous, what does that do to yoga’s popularity? The popularity of yoga of course means that there is more money to be made in this field. To that end, there are more and more yoga classes, and more and more teachers. While this can be a good thing, it’s also problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, yoga teaching is an unregulated profession. While training program are available (basic certifications start at 200 hours), completion of such a program is not required to teach yoga. This means that it’s important to ask questions when you sign up to take a yoga class, to find out what type of training and experience the instructor has, and what style of yoga will be practiced in the class (as well as what level of physical activity to expect). The Yoga Alliance works to maintain standards within the profession by requiring that Registered Yoga Teachers complete a minimum of 200 hours of training from a certified program. But it’s unwise to assume that every yoga class is taught by a yoga teacher who has completed this training – it’s simply not the case.

Second, the popularity of yoga means increased class sizes. Even a highly qualified instructor has difficulty maintaining a safe practice environment when there are more than 20-30 students in the room. The other thing that happens, as yoga becomes more popular and classes get larger, is that yoga becomes competitive. Now competition is the antithesis of everything the practice truly stands for, but believe me when I tell you I have observed this phenomenon in a number of venues. People are looking around, seeing what everyone else is doing, who can more “fully” go into certain postures, or stay in them longer, etc. Any competitive aspect in the practice carries with it an increased risk because an outward focus, rather than an inward focus, in yoga, means that you are less likely to pay attention to signals within the body that may indicate a threshold. In other words, if you’re focused on trying to keep up with everyone else, you are more likely to injure yourself.

One of the areas of focus in the interview was the claims that practitioners and teachers make about yoga, and that included discussion of research conducted on the matter of the science of yoga. It’s funny to me the focus on science. Maybe it shouldn’t be. We are a culture of reason. People don’t want to just hear that something works, they want the evidence trotted out, compiled, and annotated. They want to know that science can demonstrate – can quantify – what practitioners of yoga already know: Yoga makes you feel good. It also improves your sex life.

Yes, you read that right. One of the lesser known benefits of yoga (and one that will probably have people signing up for classes in droves) is that it improves your sex life. In our hyper-sexual culture, there’s a lot of talk about the mechanics of sex, about the physical aspects of sexual function, but not a lot of discussion of sexual satisfaction. Yoga practice can not only boost your sex drive, but can give you “increased arousal, better orgasm, [and] more overall satisfaction.” In other words, not only more sex, but better sex. How’s that for incentive?

Meditation and the Monkey Mind, Part II: What the *@!# is wrong with me?!

In the beginning stages of meditation, it often seems like the mind is completely out of control. This is commonly referred to as “monkey mind.” In fact, it may seem like mental chatter gets worse during meditation. While there may be some truth in that, due to the nature of mind, mainly what’s happening is that we are turning up the volume, so to speak, on all the garbage that our minds are churning out at us on a regular basis. We are focusing in on it, noticing stories and recurring themes.

Sometimes those who are new to meditation feel very discouraged because they have difficulty maintaining focus for for than a few minutes. In fact, it’s perfectly acceptable to sit for short, manageable periods of time. In the Kundalini Yoga tradition in which I teach and practice, meditations are done for as little as three minutes. Even three minutes is long enough to begin to experience the benefits! You can build to longer times as you develop an increased ability to focus. The important thing is consistency and building a daily practice: meditation is a process.

It’s important to realize that you don’t need to stop your mind in order to meditate. The process of surrendering to whatever arises, moment by moment, in meditation, is what creates a set of circumstances in which the mind can be at rest. Yogi Bhajan, the Master of Kundalini Yoga, said, “It is not meditation that stops the mind. It is the surrender of the mind to the soul, and the soul to Truth. It is when you prefer the word of Truth to the word of your own intellect.”

It’s common to notice a lot of so-called negative thoughts and emotions: anger, selfishness, jealousy, fear, self-righteousness, and the like. Meditation prompts us to ask the question, “Who am I?” Am I my thoughts? Am I my beliefs? My experiences? Am I my emotions? Swami Bodhananda, of the Vedic tradition, says, we are “sat chit ananda,” pure bliss, and that meditation can help us connect with an awareness of that which we truly are. In other words, the rest is just a distraction.

One of the most important benefits of meditation is that it clears garbage from the subconscious mind. By garbage I mean the chatter or “commotion” that goes on at a level we are not consciously aware of, the stories and false beliefs that have an impact on the way we behave in the world. Meditation is like a shower for the subconscious.

Meditation also gives the practitioner an opportunity to develop mental clarity and inner peace which facilitates the dissolution of habitual ways of being which may no longer serve the highest good. As we develop a greater ability to observe ourselves in our practice and our daily lives, we may notice these small changes. For example, one way in which the change may enter our awareness is by creating a gap between a situation that we find challenging and our urge to react to it out of our habitual programming. Meditation can, over time, give us the tools to respond differently to the challenges we face.

Meditation and the Monkey Mind

I can’t tell you how often people say to me, “I’ve tried to meditate but I just can’t.” When I ask why not, the answer is usually something like, “Well, I just can’t stop thinking.” It seems like the real issue here is not that all these people can’t meditate, but that there is some inaccuracy in the popular definition of meditation, some fundamental misconception about what people actually “do” in meditation. In this post, I’d like to dispel some myths about meditation as well as provide a more accurate explanation not only of what meditation is, but of what the practical benefits are.

First, it’s important to understand that saying “I practice meditation” is about as specific as saying “I practice yoga.” There are about as many different types of meditation as there are styles of yoga; thus, there are a number of vastly different practices which people commonly refer to as “meditation.” One of my first pop culture images of meditation (still my favorite) was Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl.

Chanting “Om” , as in the video clip, is one type of meditation using a mantra. Mantras are sacred sounds or prayers which help focus the mind; there are a wide variety of mantras, some short and some long, in different languages and traditions. A similar practice, which uses vowel sounds as opposed to words, is often called toning. The practice of chanting mantras or toning does several things: first, it creates a sound wave, a powerful vibration which can affect the physical being; second, it creates a focal point, which is useful for letting go of stray thoughts; third, chanting activates energy channels (or nadis) through the placement of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. Many practitioners use a mala (string of beads) as a way of counting repetitions of the mantra. In that sense, meditating with a mantra has some similarity to the Catholic practice of praying the rosary. (By the way, incense is not required.)

Some meditation practices are silent. Either they do not include a mantra, or the mantra may be repeated internally as a way of focusing the mind. Meditation practices which do not use a mantra often have some other focal point, such as a candle flame. Other practices use the breath, or a particular breathing pattern, as the focal point. Still other practices use a concept or intention as a focal point. There are also some traditions that use movement as meditation (such as walking meditation, for example).

The point of meditation, so to speak, is to develop observational awareness, to cultivate the inner observer. Sometimes this is called “mindfulness.” You might be happy to learn it is not necessary to stop thinking in order to meditate. It is only necessary to be patient with yourself, to cultivate your ability to focus, and to engage in the process of training your mind. To that end, a couple of techniques may prove useful to the novice:

Regard thoughts during meditation as clouds in the sky, passing with the breeze. Or as cars on the highway, passing by your field of vision. Notice them, but do not become attached to them. Do not try to follow them, or be angry with them for being there.
Develop an attitude of loving-kindness toward yourself. It is almost like training a puppy. Certainly, you will lose focus and you may wander off after stray thoughts. It is only important to bring your focus back each and every time you are aware that you have wandered off, without judging or berating yourself. Consistent correction and patience are key.

The practice of meditation also seeks to develop a present moment orientation, discussed in popular books such as Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now which was featured on Oprah. This can be tremendously empowering, as so many of us sacrifice our energy and sometimes our very well-being to ruminating on the past or giving free rein to our anxieties about the many uncertainties of the future.

More about this topic in part II of this post.

Telling the Truth

Last weekend I attended “Michiana Monologues 2012: A World of Difference” at IU South Bend. Inspired by Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, these are true stories by local women submitted anonymously and read on stage by members of the community. Michiana Monologues is a benefit for local organizations such as SOS, the YWCA, and Planned Parenthood.

If you’ve never been to an event like this before, hearing women tell their stories – sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking – is an incredible experience. Many of the topics addressed in this year’s performance (violence, rape, homosexuality, poverty, choice, work, discrimination, marriage, divorce, motherhood) evoked a strong response from audience members. It’s empowering to speak the truth.

When we discover that we share some common experiences with others (especially when it comes to topics most people are reluctant to talk about), it’s remarkably liberating. It frees us from the weight of that silence. Things we don’t talk about fester. We often feel ashamed of the things we feel we can’t talk about; sharing – being heard and acknowledged – decreases that shame, frees up energy, and allows healing to occur.

In his series Conversations with God (Book 2),Neale Donald Walsch identifies five levels of truth-telling: “First, you tell the truth to yourself about yourself. Then you tell the truth to yourself about another. At the third level, you tell the truth about yourself to another. Then you tell your truth about another to that other. And finally, you tell the truth to everyone about everything.” By that definition, a show like the Monologues encompasses truth-telling on several levels.

The Monologues generally attract a primarily female audience, because they address topics that truly hit home for women. But this show is more than a catalog of the kind of violence we all know exists. It’s truly a celebration of all aspects of the female experience; it’s an opportunity to be a witness, and in doing so, to participate in community and in the healing process.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that “Things like that don’t happen here.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you missed Michiana Monologues at IU South Bend, you still have one more chance to see the show on February 25, 2012, at 7pm in Elkhart at the Historic Roosevelt Center (215 East Indiana Avenue).

Tell your story: Submit a monologue for next year’s show.

Hopes and Dreams

“Hope is so important, but this post [The Power of One] begs the question: how do people distinguish between hope and false hope? How do you balance the desire to follow dreams and aspirations with pragmatic realism? How can we come to know, respect, and even appreciate our own limits?” – Posted by cjdeldotto

Any endeavor must be grounded if it’s to succeed. This means that consistency of action is required. It’s not enough to meditate and visual success. It’s not enough to wish and hope and dream. Those early stages are important to focus and clarify the dream. But if it’s to be realized, the consistent action – the follow through – is essential.

Sometimes we are our own biggest barrier to realizing our dreams. By that I mean that many of us have habits that hold us back, like procrastination for example. Or limiting beliefs, about ourselves or others, that stop us from taking action in the direction of achieving our goals and realizing our dreams. It’s interesting that despite the proliferation of a number of different technologies designed to save time and make our lives easier in the last decade, many of us seem to be more busy than ever. But it’s worth asking the question, what are we busy doing? Are we busy doing the things that reflect our real values, our true priorities? If our gadgets save us time (and whether or not they do is dependent upon how we use them), what are we doing with that time?

It’s often a question of motivation. We are a culture that loves the quick fix. Take a pill to feel better. Get rich quick. Buy now pay later. Lose weight fast. We are a culture that wants results. Now. But real change is gradual – it’s a process. What didn’t develop overnight generally won’t disappear overnight either. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and the like, where an overwhelming amount information is at our fingertips, what is sometimes lost is depth of thought and real staying power. When we don’t see immediate results, many of us lose interest in the process.

Of course, there are other times when what appears to be a lack of motivation or commitment may be simply be a reflection of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Self-actualization is at the top of the pyramid for a reason. If basic needs aren’t being met, it’s not going to be possible for an individual to focus on achieving goals in the big picture, however much he or she might wish to do so.

In order to know our own limits, we have to truly know ourselves. This is svadhyaya. Being able to see ourselves clearly, to understand and accept who we are and where we are in our personal development takes time. One of the tools that can help with that is meditation (to be discussed in more detail in a future post). Meditation is an umbrella term that covers a variety of techniques for raising consciousness and developing awareness. It’s a practice, and a process that requires patience and dedication over a period of time in order to experience the benefits and see results.

The Power of Love

Earlier this week I attended the workshop “What is Love?” offered by Diane Winn and Tom Searcy of Through Eagles Eyes at the Center for Spiritual Growth in South Bend. Tom Searcy opened by identifying love as one of the most practical, powerful, and useful energies that there is. He noted that having a loving relationship with self and others makes one happier, healthier, and more abundant. And that love is more than an energy, it’s a verb. In other words, we demonstrate the energy of our love through our actions.

It’s an interesting perspective because I think most people, if asked to define love, would identify it first as a feeling. But if love is just a feeling, what happens when we don’t feel it? What do we do when the baby’s crying, and we’ve been up all night? When our significant other doesn’t seem so love-able? Where does action arise? From the feelings of the moment? From our commitment to our values? In the moments when we are most challenged by our circumstances, it becomes more important than ever to act from (and indeed, to act on) our internal commitment to the ideals (and to the people) that we hold most dear.

Pose the question “What is Love?” to someone of my generation and you’re likely to be met with a rendition of the Haddaway song featured on the popular Saturday Night Live skit starring Will Ferrell and Kris Kattan. “Baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. No more.” All kidding aside, those words are a strong indicator of popular fears about love. It’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? Aren’t fear and love antithetical?

Emotional states have vibratory energy. According to Dr. David Hawkins, different emotional states vibrate along a scale of consciousness. On Hawkins’ scale which is (1-1000), love has a vibration of 500, while fear vibrates at 100. A few key points on the Hawkins scale of consciousness look something like this:

600 peace
540 unconditional love
500 love
400 reason
200 courage
100 fear
50 apathy

In the Hawkins paradigm, one must move beyond science, beyond reason, to achieve a love vibration. He draws a distinction between Love and Unconditional Love: mainly that love encompasses a set of demonstrable qualities (goodness, purity, humble-ness), while unconditional love signals more of an overall paradigm shift. Hawkins specifically associates unconditional love with compassion and devotion as a way of life that facilitates healing on many levels.

Now, whether you subscribe to the Hawkins paradigm or not, it’s worth considering the ways emotions affect our personal energy levels, as well as how they impact those around us. In terms of personal development, it’s well-understood that we must love ourselves before we can begin to love others. But how do we truly love ourselves? I think it goes back to svadhyaya, or self-study, which I discussed in an earlier post. In that sense, love is a process.

Hawkins asserts that movement along the scale of consciousness can be facilitated by exposure to different energy vibrations. If you want to move up the scale, say for example from reason to love, exposure to a higher vibratory energy can precipitate a shift. Thus, it would seem that we each have, to some degree, an opportunity: Have you ever noticed that some people can make you feel good, really good, just by their mere presence? And that spending just a few short minutes with certain other individuals can leave you feeling really lousy?

I think it comes down to this question: “What kind of world do you want to live in?” There’s a reason people so often quote Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s easier said than done, but well worth the effort.

The Power of One

Last weekend I attended The Team’s February Seminar at the Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan, which featured Chris Brady as the keynote speaker. Team is the group that launched The Life Business in November 2011 which includes prominent leadership gurus such as Orrin Woodward. The business of Life revolves primarily around self-improvement, networking, life coaching, and community building: becoming job-optional and manifesting the life of your dreams.

Chris Brady’s keynote challenged audience members to ask themselves: “What difference have you been called to make?” As well as, “How do you define the business you are in?” He encouraged his listeners to not play small, but rather to “get busy about things that matter in the big picture.” He also made a point similar to one I’ve discussed in an earlier post, to focus not on WHAT you do, but on WHY you do it. In other words, it’s the motivation and intention behind actions that’s as important, or even more important, than the actions themselves.

Furthermore, Brady argues that one’s “true self” is what emerges under pressure, and that we must engage in the process of developing character and substance. This is a concept that resonates strongly with me, and one that was also discussed in one of my earlier posts. One of the key concepts in The Life Business is the idea of developing leadership ability. This relates to the concept of building community: a strong community requires real leaders, people of substance and character. People who have risen to the challenges of their life situations and transcended them by moving beyond their own limiting beliefs and habits.

One of the things that struck me about the seminar was the number of people in attendance (I estimate as many as 2000) who really seemed excited and inspired by the ideas that Brady and the other founders of Life are talking about. Concepts like:

One person can make a difference.
Freedom produces prosperity.
Your focus determines your reality.

Now, Life is a network marketing business (also commonly known as a “pyramid scheme”). That said, an important aspect of what Team is doing involves bringing true and empowering concepts into people’s lives in a concrete way. Inspiring them to make positive changes not only to their own lives but to their communities. So many people, everywhere I turn right now, are without hope and without help. They’re depressed and discouraged about their lives. They are, in a word, dis-empowered. So the ideas which are the foundation of Team and the Life business offer a new direction and constitute a significant contribution.

It’s interesting to me that so many people I’ve talked to seem to have a negative view of network marketing businesses, especially when these businesses seem to revolve around the concept of real profit sharing. It strikes me as odd that people might get uncomfortable when an acquaintance shares an idea or product that has had a positive impact on his/her life. Probably because, on the other hand, many of these same people have no strong objection to the massive amounts of advertising, corporate marketing, and the like that we are all exposed to on a daily basis.

What are big businesses and big corporations selling? If we stick with the concept that most businesses are selling an idea more than a product (even if it seems like they are selling a product), then what is Wal-Mart selling? What is McDonald’s selling? What is _______ selling? (Fill in the blank with any big business or corporation…this is not directed at any one in particular.)

Pretty much every business is selling an idea (sometimes disguised as a product) in exchange for money. So, in that sense, when we spend our money on something we are voting for what we want to see more of in the world. Are we making the CEOs and the people at the top rich? When we buy from almost any big business or big corporation (network marketing or otherwise), of course we are. But then the question becomes, what ideas are we buying? What types of thinking are we supporting? And it also begs the question, are we supporting leaders who truly have something to share and something to give back? Are we supporting people of real substance and character?

The Life business is new, but judging from what I’ve seen, this movement is growing and people are excited about it. From where I’m sitting, it looks like the founders have already given something valuable to their members: hope. And hope is something rare and precious and valuable in today’s world. So what Life is really selling is the possibility of positive change – and that’s something people can get excited about.

Secret Single Behaviors: A Party for One?

One of my favorite television shows, Sex and the City, featured an episode where the characters discussed their secret single behaviors, such as eating saltines with jelly while reading fashion magazines, for example. While I’m not much for fashion magazines in general (or saltines, for that matter), in light of the last couple of posts discussing relationships, I do want to take some time to focus on the benefits of being single and on the value of solitude. This relates to a question posed in one of my earlier posts, “What legitimizes your life?”

Is a Friday evening spent perusing fashion magazines inherently less valuable than a Friday evening spent at a club with friends? Or in the arms of a lover or a spouse? For a lot of people, the presence of others is legitimizing. “How do I know I had fun on Friday night? Well, I have the stories of my friends to prove it. We were all there (wherever there is) and we all shared an experience.” Now, I’m not denying the value of shared experience, but there seems to be an overall misconception about the value of solitude. Solitude has gotten a bad rap: we’ve all heard the stories in the news where some unsavory character or another is described as a “loner.”

Being alone is scary for a lot of people. Some of this has to do with social attitudes toward being alone, which feed the fear that alone-ness means being unwanted or unloved, or indicates some fatal character flaw or, worse still, some level of mental illness. Achieving a basic level of comfort with alone-ness may well require examining or deactivating these fears. Just as there’s a strong mythology around the process of coupling, there’s an equally strong mythology around being alone.

When we’re alone, we only have ourselves for company. And when we are alone, we have a greater opportunity to see ourselves more clearly, particularly if we don’t engage in distractions like television or the internet. There’s always the chance we might not like what we see. Regardless, it’s an important opportunity to get comfortable with the different aspects of ourselves, to actually make friends with ourselves.

Self-study or self-knowledge, called svadhyaya, is an important aspect of any yoga practice. Svadhyaya is really about having a relationship with yourself. Understanding your likes and dislikes, also known as attachments or aversions (depending on the degree of emotional response involved). Asking important and sometimes difficult questions: “What do I not want to give up, and why? What do I avoid at all costs, and why? And, do my attachments and aversions serve me?” Part of svadhyaya is being curious and non-judgmental toward yourself, even going so far as to make peace with parts of yourself that you may not like.

Having a solid relationship with yourself is a foundation for building satisfying relationships with others (romantic or otherwise). Knowing what your own preferences are helps make it easier to communicate with others about what your needs are in a relationship, which is vital to establishing successful relationships. Being without a significant other is an opportunity: to discover who you are, what you prefer, and to be, in a word, selfish. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Relationships involve compromise; with a foundation of self-knowledge, it’s possible to know which compromises can be made generously and gracefully, and which others come at the cost of fulfillment, peace, or well-being.

So, rather than looking at those times without a relationship as periods of limbo, where we wait for our “real” life to start, we can begin a process of legitimizing them and valuing them. We may even choose to be alone for certain periods of our lives, recognizing the benefits that solitude can provide, especially for scholarly pursuits, creative endeavors, or periods of healing and emotional growth. If we approach alone-ness as a state that has value, we truly have the potential to make it an opportunity for growth and development. And, to make it an opportunity to do whatever it is we love to do: to create our own “party for one.”

Scare-City and the Single Life: The Future is Now, Part II

Jessica Bennett’s article about polyamory, entitled “Only You. And You. And You” which appeared in Newsweek in 2009, is clear evidence that a growing number of people are dissatisfied with traditional coupling and seeking alternatives which allow them to write their own relationship stories. Polyamory is the practice of responsible non-monogamy involving multiple partners, literally “many loves.” Unlike swinging, which is a multi-partner lifestyle with an emphasis on recreational sex, polyamory is focused on the creation of long-term relationships grounded in emotional intimacy; it’s based on the idea that “there’s more than one way to live and love” and that there are “choices beyond the options society presents.”

As discussed in the previous post, motivations for creating structures outside of couple-dom may be practical in nature (fewer available and marriageable men) and personal in nature (acknowledging a need for both intimacy and autonomy that traditional marriage may not meet). Long-term relationships are, more often than not, about people wanting to get their needs met (which may include needs for companionship, community, stability, financial support, emotional support, and sexual satisfaction). As one polyamorist interviewed in Bennett’s article describes her lifestyle, “It’s about making sure that everybody’s needs are met, including your own…And that’s not always easy, but it’s part of the fun.”

Although we’re undoubtedly all familiar with the benefits, both anecdotal and research-oriented, of coupling, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here some of the drawbacks and limitations of conventional coupling. As Bolick points out, one of the potential dangers is that “a married couple becomes too consumed with its tiny nation of two to pay much heed to anyone else.” She goes on to discuss the phenomenon of “greedy marriages” and how research has shown that often married couples do less to participate in the lives of their extended families and friends than their non-married counterparts do. Thus traditional marriage has the potential to be antithetical to community building in the larger sense. And of course, there’s the important question at the heart of Bennett’s article: “Can one person really satisfy every need?”

One of the biggest challenges to establishing a relationship structure outside of couple-dom is the scarcity of healthy, grounded, successful examples of people living alternative relationship structures. In other words, a lack of role models. While this can be extremely daunting, at the same time, it’s an opportunity. If we are willing to discard traditional rules that we have determined, through experience and reflection, don’t work well for us, we are free to begin to create our own models, our own templates. It’s both exciting and scary. It may involve trial and error, refinement, rethinking, and restructuring. All that said, I maintain that it’s worth the effort to engage in a process of discovering who we are and what structures allow us to grow more fully into ourselves. In short, what do we feel good about?

This is where process orientation becomes very important. This is a different mindset than traditional marriage-oriented dating, which operates something like this: “Until I get a ring, all dating is a waste of my time.” In this paradigm, marriage is the holy grail, and dating or relationship experiences that don’t end in marriage are failures or, at best, time-wasters. In process orientation, these experiences become opportunities for learning, for refining and redefining our needs, boundaries, intentions, and goals. And in essence, this is what spiritual practice is all about: an ongoing process of learning about ourselves and growing, in all areas of our lives.

More food for thought…

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, a utopian novel about a community of women written in 1915 (full text online).

The Oneida Community, discussed in this article from the New York Times travel section, practiced group marriage in New York in the mid-1800s.