12 May How Do I Open More to Love?
The question comes up: “How do I open more to love?” If I’m working on myself to become a more loving person, and seeking increased emotional and sexual pleasure, how do I go about it?
I would offer you a beautiful, mind-blowing perspective from one of my teachers, Radha Luglio, who has a large tantra practice in Italy. When asked this question she answered: it’s not a question of how do I open more, it’s a question of where am I holding.
Wow. In this moment, if I pay attention, I can tell where I’m holding. And I’ve yet to meet a person who when asked where they are holding, isn’t able to identify it immediately. Is it a tightness in the belly, the chest? Is there a restriction around the the breath, the throat, the genitals? Is it a stuckness from a previous relationship that needs to be cleared? Perhaps a hardness around the heart, or a wish to slow down.
It’s right here in the present moment. We can go in and do some deep work in psychotherapy which definitely helps, but in this moment where am I holding against love? You can ask this while in the moment with these people right now; you can ask it on a dinner date. My emotions seem to be freezing up; does this remind me of my mother? Or I don’t like people like this, or I’m scared?
You can scan while making love: where am I holding, where am I tensing up? How am I guarding myself against love in this moment? What am I telling myself; what is my mind saying? A lot of times when we’re making love we get scared to go a little further, right? It’s frightening to get more intimate, but that’s about me; it’s not the other person’s fault. I’m not more loving because he’s not making love right – we may try to make it the other person at fault unless we can be strong and truthful and ask, how am I holding back at this moment from love and pleasure?
We’re always trying to blame someone outside ourselves as to why we’re not loving. It helps to actually go into the body and feel where the holding pattern is, and identify it. Awareness changes things. The very fact that you have taken responsibility for your own love and pleasure rather than blaming someone or something outside yourself changes the whole experience. Then you can breathe more fully into the present moment, face your fears, communicate, and expand into areas of yet-unknown bliss.
© 2017 Catherine Auman This article is an excerpt from Catherine’s book Tantric Dating: Bringing Love and Awareness to the Dating Process
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