Acro yoga date night

The other night I learned a little bit more about communication in relationships when my partner and I went to an acro yoga date night at our local yoga studio.

Acro yoga is short for acrobatic yoga and is also sometimes called partner yoga because it is designed for two people. Typically one person acts as a “base” and provides support to let their partner “fly.” At the event we attended, there was also stretching and some fun partner games.

It was two hours long, and everyone there was able to learn enough of the basics to have a good time. Our acro yoga experience was fun, playful, and physically engaging; all great qualities for a date night.

Acro yoga as relationship metaphor

It occurred to me as I looked around the room that I was seeing relationship dynamics in action all around me. Acro yoga was providing a metaphorical insight into the essence of each couple’s lives together.

It’s been said that how we do something is how we do everything, and an activity like acro yoga will often reveal the something we do that affects the everything we do, especially in relationship with our partner.

“We need better communication tools” is the refrain I hear daily from the struggling couples who call me for help. Partner yoga is all about communication, and it provides a format for practicing communication in an unfamiliar and neutral environment.

Acro-yoga requires qualities like trust, connection, surrender, leadership, collaboration, negotiation and personal responsibility. There’s a give/take sense of leading and following, of giving and receiving. A partner yoga class like the one we attended could very likely help someone see firsthand where they struggle with trust or other important areas of relationship, including –

• Asking for what they want or making requests
• Offering (or receiving) support
• Working co-operatively
• Dealing with frustration or failure
• Tendencies to blame, shame, withdraw, or give up
• Boundaries

If we’re able to use an experience like acro yoga (certainly there are many other experiences as well) to look at ourselves and our relationship, we might also be able to use it to work on ourselves and our relationship dynamic. The context of an acro yoga date night offers a possibility to first see things differently, and then to do things differently.

If the communication isn’t working there on the yoga mat, you’ll know quickly. Then you can use the space as a playground or laboratory to experiment with new approaches. It’s a relatively low-stakes situation, but it’s also visceral, immediate, embodied. You’re literally holding each other up. It demands your attention.

I’m not the only one who recognizes the partner communication benefits of acro yoga. I noticed that our teacher Katie Thacker was quoted in the news –

“Just being able to say ‘hey that doesn’t feel good or that feels really great, or can you please bring me down?’ Being able to express things in those ways helps build communication.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Our teachers Katie Thacker and Brandon Sherbrook were great, and they offer their acro yoga date nights around Victoria and Vancouver Island (see their website here). If acro yoga holds any interest for you, look for classes in your area!

 

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Toxic relationship, toxic partner?

Toxic relationships. It’s a hot topic, and a difficult one. Three related articles passed across my feed recently –

“5 Questions to Ask Yourself If You Think Your Partner Is Toxic”

“13 Subtle Signs Your Partner Is Emotionally Abusive.”

“It’s not your relationship that’s toxic, it’s your partner.”

It occurs to me that as the definition of abuse in relationship continues to broaden, and as terms like “toxic relationship” and “toxic partner” are popularized, fewer and fewer marriages and relationships are going to be deemed healthy or legitimate.

I have no doubt that the light cast by articles like the ones named is valuable and illuminating for some people, but every light also casts a shadow. A possible shadow cast here is the self-righteousness, avoidance, and psychological projection that can slip in when we are quick to define a relationship or a person as abusive, toxic, or otherwise irredeemable.

The exclusive focus on identifying victim and villain / oppressor and oppressed suggests fundamentalist ideology at work and leaves no room for examination of deeper psychological structures, especially your own. If your partner matches the profile of emotionally abusive or toxic, you are apparently off the hook. No self-examination required. Your innocence is just as assured as their guilt.

Toxic partner? Or normal marital sadism?

One of the signs of a “toxic partner” according to this article is –

“…Are they engaging in the actions that they are with the intention of changing your behavior?”

I work with couples daily and I can tell you that this applies to virtually everyone in relationship. We manipulate each other, often subtly and often unconsciously, with the hope of changing each others opinions or behaviours. It is what people do. The question isn’t IF it is happening, it’s HOW… and what will we do about it.

One option is to read articles on the internet and then label your partner toxic and your relationship unhealthy. Probably an appropriate option in some cases.

On the other hand, marriage and family therapists David and Ruth Schnarch use the term “normal marital sadism” to illustrate the point that marriage and relationships inevitably bring out the worst in people as well as the best.

Relationships also provide opportunities to confront our own part in the explicit, implicit, or complicit dynamics of sadism, masochism, cruelty, manipulation, meanness, pettiness, power plays, abdication, and so on that will arise.

Uncovering our own hidden strategies

Another quote from the linked article above –

“Because when your partner manages to change your behavior – when you find yourself increasingly changing your usual way of being in order to avoid conflict with your partner – then they gain power and control over you.

And that’s more than toxic.

That’s abusive.”

When your partner gains power and control over you, it may indeed be defined as abusive. But there might also be other forces at work. If you find yourself “increasingly changing your usual way of being in order to avoid conflict with your partner” you might decide that you’re in a toxic relationship, or you might ask yourself… Why. Why are you avoiding conflict? What is your role in this dynamic? What happened to your power? How did it get away from you?

It may be true that your partner is playing out a domination/control strategy in your relationship. We all unconsciously employ various strategies for navigating life and relationships. Have you adopted a submission strategy for yours? Is “The Martyr” archetype activated in your life? Or maybe “The People Pleaser?”

Sometimes a person will knowingly attempt to overtly control or even gaslight their partner, but far more often what we encounter are two people’s unconscious strategies calling the shots from below conscious awareness.

In a move that can change everything, you might be called on to stand up for yourself in the relationship. Or it might be time for a closer look at how you understand and navigate the many different kinds of power that run through our lives. The author of the article quoted suggests that power is the same as control, but control is just one of many kinds of power (please see James Hillman’s extraordinary book “Kinds of Power”).

Power struggles in relationship, complicity, self-confrontation

People regularly give up their power and also try to wrestle it from their partner through complicated dynamics that are not easily reducible to “toxic relationships” or even abuse.

While labeling a person toxic or unhealthy does give you an easy out (and sometimes that out is necessary), it can also become a crutch, an excuse for avoiding the difficult work of examining the ways we might abdicate our own power and blame others for our feelings of powerlessness.

For example, I’ve worked with plenty of mothers of young children who feel powerless and controlled in their relationship, but when we dig deeper we find that it is actually guilty feelings about taking time for themselves that keeps them feeling stuck in their lives. Where these guilty feelings come from is a good question and another topic, but suffice to say that the “toxic partner” story no longer holds water; in fact their partner may actually be their biggest advocate for change and self-empowerment.

I’ve also worked with plenty of men who panic in the face of a woman’s anger or disappointment. These men betray themselves at the drop of a hat if they feel strong emotions rising in their partner. Paradoxically, the partners of these men, upon deeper inquiry, are often desperate for the experience of being able to express anger or disappointment in their relationship without their partner automatically conceding or shutting down. Neither party are particularly happy with their habitual strategies.

In both these examples, and in many others, it is confronting our own complicity in the power dynamics of a relationship that becomes the true act of empowerment.

Let me be clear, certainly there are times when it is appropriate to label a relationship abusive and get out. But if we use popular definitions to label our partner or relationship without ever examining our own habits we can rob ourselves of potential understanding and even reconciliation.

Not long ago it was generally accepted that relationships had a “power struggle” phase. The new relationship idealism seems not to allow even for this.

Power struggles, “normal marital sadism,” and a myriad other expressions of the darker side of togetherness can be used as evidence that a relationship or a person is fundamentally “toxic” (bad, wrong, narcissistic, gaslighting, hysterical, crazy etc), AND these same expressions can be used as opportunities for expanding our ideas of relationships and of our experiences in them. Of course this is risky territory; the blade of discernment is called for.

I’ve worked with many couples (some of whom have previously had their relationship or partner labelled toxic or abusive by other counsellors) who choose to explore these darker sides of relationship together and have found the experience, though difficult, also  illuminating and occasionally even bonding. Of course there are no guarantees.

Portraying relationships as two-dimensional utilitarian transactions to be defined as either “healthy” or “toxic” seems to be the flavour of the day, but this misses a vast swathe of what relationships actually are, which is usually some of both and a whole lot more.

If you’re interested in these ideas, internet articles might be a good start (some of my own are included below), but are no substitute for the depth of thought that good old fashioned books provide. Some of my favourite books on these themes include –

The Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner
Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel
Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

Further reading on this website –

Counsellor confession… “I hate my partner.”

Gaslighting, shadow, and abuse – How protecting our unconscious can sabotage our relationships

Contradiction and paradox in relationships – The difficult work of holding opposites

The surprising role of conflict in relationships – How the arguments that tear us apart also hold us together (Part 1)

Understanding relationships – Depth, darkness, and feeling your way from below

“Contradictions, Manipulations & The Tyranny of Orgasm” – Relationship podcast

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Michael Stone was a renowned international yoga teacher and author whose death by drug overdose was met with shock and confusion – and of course grief – by those whose lives he touched. Stone’s wife Carina, in an intelligent and compelling statement says “Culturally we don’t have enough language to talk about this,” and adds “…can we find questions?”

Carina wisely calls on us to resist finding comfort or conclusion in answers, and instead to do the difficult work of questioning. But questioning what?

Some of her suggestions include –

What was he feeling?
How was he coping?
What am I uncomfortable hearing?
What can we do for ourselves and others who have impulses or behaviors we cannot understand – Impulses that scare us and silence us?
How can we take care of each other?

(Read the full statement here.)

Michael, it has been revealed, suffered from something we currently call bipolar disorder, a condition or set of symptoms that has been called many things throughout the ages.

Deaths like Michael’s spark regret, outrage, blame, confusion, and increasingly a heartfelt outcry for mental health reform and de-stigmatization. Carina Stone asks “What can we do for ourselves and others who have impulses or behaviors we cannot understand?” Indeed, what can we do? But perhaps before we set about to the business of doing, we might begin at the tail end of her question: understanding.

How do we understand these happenings? What do they mean? We might ask – What does Michael Stone, his life and his death, symbolize?

As with all celebrity figures, Michael symbolized something profound and specific, if not for everyone, for a particular type of someone. Symbolism is the very nature of the celebrity phenomenon; celebrities are celebrated, and they are celebrated precisely for what they symbolize.

Michael’s own words give us a clue – “You’d think that given all this inner work, an incredible network of support, strong friendships, a loving partner and kids, and lastly, a life dedicated to embodying the dharma (literally every single day includes practice and study), that I’d be immune to extreme mental states.”

Apparently the yoga practice and teaching that made Stone such a celebrated figure grew out of an attempt to find immunity from that which plagued him. A picture emerges. It was Michael’s very real and visceral suffering that propelled him to work so hard, and to become a symbol of wisdom, healing, and inspiration to so many others.

We might recognize in Michael the archetype of Wounded Healer (a specific archetype named by Carl Jung, but we might also identify and name archetypes according to our own lives).

The Wounded Healer is motivated through their own suffering to help others, and the kind of help they provide is fundamentally connected to the suffering they experience personally; The Wounded Healer accesses their own pain as insight into the experience of others, and also gleans from the pain of others insights about their own. This biofeedback loop becomes a source of energy moving them through the world.

Most of us do not embody a single archetype in our lives. While The Wounded Healer seems present and active in Michael’s life, it would seem that another archetype was also in the forefront.

The Hero is probably the most obviously celebrated archetype in our contemporary culture. Ours is predominantly a cult of The Hero. We worship The Hero above all.

The Hero overcomes obstacles and achieves goals. They are “unshakeable” (a descriptor ascribed to Michael). They seek immunity.

When confronted with failure, The Hero has only one recourse: try harder. We can see The Hero archetype reflected in Stone’s words, “It can be hard to admit even to ourselves that there are times when the stability of awareness that we discover in [meditation] just isn’t there. When this started happening I’d say my practice needs to get deeper.”

Then he adds “But the truth is, there was a chemical change in my brain.”

We see in this statement first the quintessential Heroic approach to challenge – “…my practice needs to get deeper” – and then an acknowledgement of a hard-won truth: “…there was a chemical change in my brain.” This chemical change is, metaphorically, a bestowal from the Gods, for better or for worse, a confusing and troubling blessing/curse, resistant to The Hero’s (any Hero’s) best efforts.

This is a potential turning point; The Hero fails, and so matures. A force beyond The Hero’s efforts and control is acknowledged, giving room now for The Wounded Healer to emerge more fully.

To admit vulnerability, even powerlessness, is required in order to move beyond Heroism, and in a culture that worships The Hero so completely, power is the ultimate virtue, the ultimate currency; power to shape one’s own life, one’s own reality, power to slay the dragon and win the treasure; power of force and control. For a yogi or Buddhist teacher, it might be the power of finally achieving a “stability of awareness,” or becoming “immune to extreme mental states” that fuels their Heroism.

When we find ourselves wearing the mantle of Hero, and then we get public attention, we end up carrying not only our own self-burden, but also the heavy unconscious projections of others. Many others. Not only are we a Hero, we are THEIR Hero. This is a tremendous responsibility, and one that someone in the role of Hero does not necessarily ask for, and often does not fully recognize.

I didn’t know Michael, and I won’t pretend to know what would have been best for him. I do feel for his struggles, and of course for the family and community left behind.

I’m writing partly at Michael’s wife’s implied invitation when she states “Culturally we don’t have enough language to talk about this.” I couldn’t agree more. I write this now in the spirit of making some small contribution to the language we might use to talk about this.

Carina asks us not to “Feel the shame and tragedy of it.”

I’ll trade shame for humility. Humility means on the ground, of the earth; humus. Simple. Here and now. This sense of groundedness seems especially appropriate when remembering a man grounded in buddhist practice and philosophy, and also subject to such strong upward forces, forces that threaten to take one upward and away.

And I humbly suggest that this is by definition a tragedy. Not the empty sort of tragedy you shake your head at in bewilderment (“this shouldn’t have happened”), but rather the kind of familiar tragedy you nod at in recognition (“this is what happens”).

Tragedy in the ancient and mythological context connects us to the bittersweetness of Heroism and the glorious futility of living a life. The Hero in all of us is linked to the tragic in this way.

In Michael we might glimpse the tension between Hero and Wounded Healer; upon reflection we might recognize these archetypes active in ourselves and around us in the world.

Further reading –
The Hero Within by Carol Pearson
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman

 

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This summer I was hired to assist at the Sharing the Path couples retreat designed and facilitated by Robert Gass and Judith Ansara at Hollyhock centre on Cortes Island. I hadn’t met Judith and Robert before the retreat, though I knew of them by their solid reputation. I showed up ready to be of service, and was happy to discover that my skills and expertise fit like a glove. It was great to be part of such a talented and attuned teaching team, and to support and witness all the courageous participants as they navigated their particular relationship terrains.

Over the five-day intensive there were many reminders and much learning. I thought I would share 7 key takeaways here with you –

1. Simple is good

It’s easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of complicated relationship theories. Models and maps like attachment theory, Imago therapy, family systems, personality typing etc can all be interesting, illuminating, and valuable, but I was reminded it’s possible to go plenty deep with basic ideas and simple practices.

Speaking from the heart, telling the truth, taking responsibility, listening deeply… these are understandable ideas and doable practices for most people; simple, yet infinitely challenging and infinitely rewarding.

2. Sex matters

Almost every participant at the retreat included sex in their list of troubles. I’ve found this to be true for the couples in my couples counselling practice as well. And yet the presenters at the retreat confessed that it was not until they had been doing couples workshops for some years that they began including sexual dynamics in the curriculum. I appreciated their willingness to address sexuality head-on. Too often sex slips through the cracks in this sort of relationship work.

I think there are two main reasons that sex routinely gets excluded or marginalized in much conventional marriage counselling and couples therapy:

First, there’s a cultural prejudice against addressing and valuing sex on its own merits. The assumption – partly a moralistic holdover from puritanism ideals I believe – is that if “the relationship” is good, then the sex should automatically follow. It should be obvious by now that this is often not the case.

Second, sex is a difficult topic fraught with unconsciousness and shadow, complicated meanings, tender feelings, trauma, taboo, frustration. It’s a dangerous and awkward box to open. Even skilled professional facilitators and therapists can feel uncomfortable speaking explicitly about sex.

3. Relationship trouble is universal

Many people are not in the habit of sharing their relationship troubles and pain with anyone outside their own relationship, at least not in any constructive way. The result is that we tend to internalize an erroneous idea that our relationship problems are completely unique to us. This creates feelings of isolation and even defectiveness. The false fronts presented through social media exacerbates feelings of incongruence; shiny happy personas on the outside, tenderness, hurt, and desperation on the inside.

At this retreat carefully designed exercises allowed participants to switch off and provide coaching support for one another, always in ways that honoured safety and privacy. After these exercises, individuals and couples sometimes chose to share their insights and gleanings with the group; of course this was always optional.

4. The work is never finished

Relationship work comes with built-in traps, especially the assumption that we will somehow master this thing called relationship and one day be free from the difficulties it causes. What actually happens is that as we become more skillful we can’t help but raise the bar, and so we are continually called to navigate new and more sophisticated challenges.

Robert and Judith modelled this wonderfully by weaving in stories of their own significant trials and tribulations over their fifty years of relationship together, including sharing one challenge that arose between them in “real-time” during the course of the retreat.

5. A sense of humour helps

Relationships by nature have a bittersweet element. This bittersweetness is beautifully expressed through humour (etymologically related to humility) and laughing at and with ourselves. Judith and Robert exemplified this throughout. (Note – Humour can also be unconsciously used to escape uncomfortable but necessary tension. This is a self-defeating strategy to watch for.)

6. Move your body

It’s easy for many of us to get stuck in our head trying to figure things out. The presenters wisely had us getting up and moving, often through dance, at regular intervals. The change in energy and perspective this created was palpable.

7. It’s called practice for a reason

Finally, if we want to get better at relationship, including sex, we need to practice. There’s always that moment when it dawns on a person that their life is completely full and that they have no time to add “relationship practice” to the mix. Something will have to give.

If you want to play the violin or become a good skier it’s not nearly enough to gather information; you must practice. Relationships are no different in this regard. Learn tools (there are many – see my book The Re-connection Handbook for Couples), then practice them, preferably daily. Learning tools without practicing them is maybe worse than useless because it amplifies disappointment. One way or another, you will have to make room in your life for doing relationship practices.

Relationship practice tips: Practice implies imperfection – give yourself and your partner permission to fail. Be curious and non-attached to practice outcomes. Practice in low-stakes situations; don’t wait until your biggest triggers are activated before you pull out your relationship toolbox! Get help if you need it, even if just to get started.

To learn more about Judith and Robert’s work visit www.sacredunion.com.

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Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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