By connecting us to our bodies, helping us develop greater levels of awareness, and
promoting connection as fundamental, OM can essentially upgrade our sex and relationships.
Through the practice, we discover at a visceral level that being connected isn’t always pleasurable but that there is always something to uncover and feel.
In the lived experience of no two OMs being the same, we also learn that connection is unpredictable - that in fact, far from being a source of comfort or security, they remain a constant challenge to our willingness to stay open and ask for what we want and need.
A new approach to intimacy and connection
When we bring our experiential understanding of our OM practice to how we approach our sex and relationships, there is often a fundamental shift in the way we are in them.
We may become willing to see our partners as they really are, instead of either projecting our fantasies onto them, or attempting to fix them.
We might consciously begin to relinquish our outdated formulas for relating, recognising the dynamic nature of relationship to arise new in every moment.
In our emerging awareness of ourselves and others, we may become cognisant of our inheritance of gender roles, stereotypes and a range of unquestioned prescriptions for intimacy that have actually never worked for us!
One of the most likely outcomes of consciously bringing the lessons from our OM practice to our sex and relationships, is that both become part of an expanded practice, subject to the same slowing down, curiosity, need for likeminded partners and community as OM itself!
Relationship as a Conscious Practice
Many of us have a desire for a fleshed out kind of intimacy that includes relatedness on multiple levels, including the mental, emotional, sexual and spiritual.
Often however we don’t realise that as people alive in the 21st century, we are among the first to even think that this is possible! Apart from not recognising our status as potential pioneers of a new kind of relating, we are also prone to believing that we should already know the answers.
When sexual and relational intimacy merge with our path of personal and spiritual development though, it becomes clear that not only do we NOT have all the answers, but that having deep and satisfying relationships means engaging with a wide range of questions, including:
* How have I been shaped by my family history?
* What aspects of my personality enhance relating and which do not?
* What does it mean to communicate in a way that leaves me feeling seen and heard?
* How can I handle my feelings?
* How can I be all of myself with another person?
Leaning into the questions that relating throws up, offers us an honest opportunity to really decide how we want to live. To have relationships in which we feel alive, it becomes imperative to explore and cultivate the unconscious parts of ourselves in connection with others. We must become willing to allow intimacy to shred us of our illusions, help us tap into our powerful capacity for expansion, and plug us deeply into who we really are.
Intimate connection designed by desire
Researching what it means to really be in relationship is all about consciously creating containers to bring awareness to the fears, insecurities and resistances that arise in intimacy.
As pioneers, it’s about bringing a sense of play and an attitude of curiosity to how we relate, instead of the blame, self recrimination and seriousness we often bring to relationship difficulties.
The more we discover who we want to be, the more aware we become of our desires and how expansive our relationships need to be to accommodate all the parts of ourselves. It then becomes possible to forge healthy relationships by consciously designing a roomy enough container to allow for the expressions of each partner’s desires.
How can I learn more about how to do this?
Want to know more about how to engage your relationships as practice and consciously design them based on desire? Why not sign up for ‘Researching Relating’ with Angela Richardson
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