December 1,
2010
HealingHeartPower Newsletter
Reclaiming
the Power of the Heart |
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About
Linda
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Linda
Marks, MSM, is pioneer in body psychotherapy who has developed,
taught and practiced Emotional-Kinesthetic Psychotherapy (EKP) for
more than two decades.
Author
of LIVING WITH VISION and HEALING THE WAR BETWEEN THE GENDERS, she
co-founded the Massachusetts Association of Body Psychotherapists
and Counseling Bodyworkers and is the founder of the Boston Area
Sexuality and Spirituality Network. She holds degrees from Yale and
MIT, and has a vital 14-year-old son.
To
find out more about Linda . . .
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HealingHeartPower
Calendar
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Would you like to learn how to do Emotional
Kinesthetic Psychotherapy
(EKP)?
Applications are being accepted for the 2010 EKP Apprenticeship
Program. The apprenticeship group meets once a month for a weekend
training session beginning in September 2010. For more information,
contact LSMHEART@aol.com or call Linda at
(617)965-7846.
If you would like to apprentice in EKP
and get involved before January, you may want to consider
participating in a half-day EKP workshop or a special seminar for
current apprentices.
The Thursday night EKP Therapy Group
has room for new members. If you would like to be part of a
committed long-term group using EKP, this is a very special group.
An interview and one EKP session are required to apply. Contact
Linda if you are interested at LSMHEART@aol.com
Now
Thursday Night EKP Therapy
Group
seeks new members
7 - 9 pm
Newton, MA
December 4th
Community As
Healer
1/2 day workshop
11 am - 2 pm
in Newton , MA
December 11th
"Healing and Nourishing Your
Heart" workshop at Healing Moon in Norwood, MA
January
2011
EKP
Apprenticeship Program begins
If you are interested in being part of
an on-going EKP group that meets once a month, let me know. We had
run a Sunday EKP Process group for many years, and could consider
forming another one, if there is interest. Whether your schedule is
too busy for a weekly group, or you live far enough away that a
monthly session is more sustainable, if a monthly group would best
meet your needs, we can try to put one together.
EKP opportunities in Newton
include:
* Being a guest client in the Student
Clinic
* Apprenticing in EKP
If you would like a Healing the Traumatized Heart
workshop near you, or have a group of people who you would like to
bring EKP to, please contact LSMHEART@aol.com.
To find out more . . .
Upcoming
Special workshop on Making Peace With Money
More details to
follow soon
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Greetings! ,
The holiday season is ripe with commercially coined
shopping opportunities which permeate the airwaves, namely Black
Friday and CyberMonday.
It seems that the spiritual and
relational grounding of the holidays can be lost in the chaos of
overly crowded parking lots or e-waves as people rush to get a
bargain NOW.
Perhaps, a counterbalancing force,
we might create Peaceful Oasis days, where we sleep in, cook lovely
breakfasts and hang out with friends and family instead of going
shopping in person or on-line! The gift of one another's presence
is priceless, and can be lost in our cyberage!
Last week I had the privilege of
leading a training on Emotional Safety for some of the core members
of HandReach Beat Brigade in Jamaica Plain. This wonderful project
uses drumming to help people heal from trauma. I look forward to
returning again and journeying deeper with this wonderful group of
people!
This winter, I look forward to leading two workshops in Emerson
Hospital's innovative Health
and Wellness Program. "Healing and Nourishing Your Heart: The
Physical-Emotional Connection," will take place on February 16.
The date for "Understanding Your Child's Emotional and Spiritual
Needs" is still being set.
December
4 will be a, Community As Healer half-day workshop
in Newton. This workshop provides an opportunity to explore and
experience what is involved in literally lending a helping
hand.
The
next "Healing and Nourishing the Heart" will take
place on December 11, at the Healing Moon in Norwood.In
an effort to create more ways to connect with community members,
dialogue and share ideas, I have created a new blog at
HealingHeartPower.blogspot.com. Sign up for new posts and
please add your thoughts to discussion threads.
Articles in this issue focus on relationship matters:
"The Possible Relationship," shares wisdom on what
it really takes to love and sustain an intimate relationship,
courtesy of my colleagues from the UV Family and "Desire in
the Twilight Years," looks at the too often taboo subject
of love, intimacy and sexuality in our elder years.
You
can also "like us" on our
HealingHeartPower Facebook
page. By "liking us", you will be notified whenever a new blog
post is published.
Your
comments and feedback are always welcome!
Heartfully,
Linda
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What
is EKP?
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EKP is Emotional-Kinesthetic
Psychotherapy, a heart-centered, body-centered psychotherapy method
Linda Marks developed and has taught and practiced for nearly
twenty years. Working with the heart, touch with permission, the
wisdom of the body and the intuitive guidance of the spirit, EKP
creates a special sense of intimacy that deeply touches and
transforms most all who participate.
Participants can be "client," witness or helper as an individual
group member has a "turn" to do deeper heart-centered,
body-centered psychospiritual work in the center. Since the
electromagnetic field of the heart extends out 10 - 12 feet from
our bodies, as we go deeper and open our hearts, we are all
touched.
EKP helps restore our capacity as organs of perception. The skin is
our largest organ, and a source of soul deep knowing, perception
and expression. When our hearts and hands can work as one, we move
beyond defenses safely and respectfully and find freedom,
connection and expression.
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The
Possible Relationship |
As
I was digging through my archives, I discovered a wonderful article
my colleagues, Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin, Evy MacDonald and Monica
(whose last name I cannot recall) wrote in 1985 on "The Possible
Relationship."
Their reflections on what love really is and the
personal responsibility each person needs to take
for a relationship to succeed were powerful, and worth
sharing.
Here is an excerpt from their article:
"Through our heart sharings, we encountered our next unexpected
lesson in relationship. When we listened without judgment and
shared without editing, we found that we were consistently "in love
with each other." But it wasn't love as we had known it--love as a
reaction to another person. It was love that came from simply
removing all the resistance to each other."
"Love wasn't an emotion (though wonderful emotions went along with
it) and it wasn't a response; it was more like a
choice. Love was a space. It couldn't
be given or received, only entered."
"Love is a limitless space that any of us could enter by letting go
of our protective games. Each one of us had our own door to the
room of love, one uniquely shaped in the image and likeness of our
naked selves. We had to leave our masks and armor and baggage
outside the room of love and could only retrieve them by leaving
love. Judgment, taking offense, blame and guilt are a few of the
components of that baggage. They exist only outside the room of
love."
"We found consistently that when we based our relationship on
shared residency in the room of love, every aspect of our
relationship, from the sexual to the intellectual, was easy to work
out. But every time we'd run to play with some of the baggage
outside, be it sexual attraction, or anger or desire to rescue
someone, suddenly there would loom insurmountable problems.
Solution: stay in love. Absurdly simple, and not always
easy to live."
"These discoveries clearly shifted the responsibility for
all aspects of our relationship back onto each of us as
individuals...The quicket access to love is giving
it..."
"If any of us feel unloved, the first step is...to love."
"Personal responsibility extended to every aspect of our
relationships: to perceiving, initiating, and completing jobs
to communication to sexuality (when, where and even how good), to
decisions about our future focus. In essence, each of us took a
vow to be 100% responsible for the quality of the relationship (not
50-50l, not 100% for our part only, but for all of it) and for the
positive outcome of it. We gave up the right to blame each
other."
"Miraculous breakthroughs can happen when the energy normally
focused on assigning blame is instead dedicated to create
re-perception of the 'problem,' so that the solution can become
evident.
* What am I not seeing that makes this look like a problem?
* What is the most skillful way to work with these circumstances
so that it turns out perfectly for everyone?
* From the perspective of love, what does this look like?
* What would it take from ME for this complaint to
evaporate?
* How can I provide what I think is missing rather than demanding
it?
These are the questions we trained ourselves to ask. So, there was
lots of growth."
by the UV Family
from
In Context Magazine, Summer 1985
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Desire
in the Twilight Years |
In mid-November, the Wall Street Journal published an important
article, "Desire in the Twilight of Life," addressing the often
invisible and unspoken issue of intimacy and sexuality as we
age.
Our culture equates sexuality with youth, and offers images of
twentysomething men and women as icons of sexiness and
desirability. What happens when we inevitably grow older? And
what happens as we not only get older, but become elders? The
notion of "retirement," suggests stepping out of the mainstream of
life, reserved for young and middle-aged people building careers,
raising children and supporting families. If having kids is
"unsexy," going gray and gaining wrinkles is even more
"unsexy."
However, love, intimacy, nurturing touch and sexuality, are
fundamental parts of healthy adult expression and relating. And
these human qualities don't simply evaporate or go underground as
we age. They remain important and central human needs. And giving
voice and vision to the reality of love, intimacy and sexuality in
our elder years breaks through common media imagery.
"At a time when almost every kind of physical intimacy is discussed
with increasing candor, the erotic feelings of empty nesters,
retirees and the residents of assisted living centers remain a
taboo subject, except in tiresome jokes about Viagra. But there is
nothing unusual or deviant about romance between older
people."
Human sexuality allows a depth of connection with others and a
depth of expression of self that cannot be found in other media.
This connection and expression is about more than reproduction and
propagating the species. It fulfills our emotional and spiritual
needs as much as our physical ones. It allows a sense of unity and
oneness that is a powerful force.
As baby boomers age, more and more people will join the ranks of
older Americans (aged 65 - 84). And as the article notes, this
generation has "grown up more preoccupied with sex than perhaps any
generation before it." The article cites a study in the New
England Journal of Medicine, that states that poor health is not
the main reason older people abstain from intimacy. "Loss of
desire is also not nearly as common as our popular culture would
have us believe." For many women, the main issue is the lack of a
willing or able partner.
While Viagra ads would have us believe that all men over 50
struggle to achieve arousal naturally, even in the oldest age
groups studied, the majority of men report having little difficulty
in this way. While for some, libido decreases, other problems such
as "premature ejaculation in men and painful intercourse in women,
actually become less common with advancing age."
Because of the imagery of "asexuality" as we age, as we age, we
forget the reasons for condoms beyond birth control. STD's,
including HIV, become a real risk for people 50 - 80, who think
they are "beyond the need for safe sex."
Too, we forget the emotional and spiritual aspects of sexuality and
sensuality. Emotional comfort and spiritual bonding are human
needs that are important and relevant throughout our adult lives.
If we begin to open our minds and expand our vision to a more
humanistic view of aging, our lives will be richer and more
fulfilling, including sexually and sensually, as well as
psychologically.
It is never to late to love, and it is also never too late to have
intimate connection. If we break down the walls created by
stereotypes about again, we will offer better role models to the
next generation, and have more fulfilling, connected lives,
whatever our age.
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My
first blog at www.heartspacecafe.com/blog
will still be active, but it is built in forum software, which many
people find more cumbersome to use than official "blog"
software.
In an effort to cultivate more dialogue in more contemporarily
relevant ways, my new blog at HealingHeartPower.blogspot.com
is user friendly, and even something you can subscribe to.
Please let me know what you think of this new blog.
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