Total World Donnamation

Essential in any conversation is rapport. Rapport can be loosely defined as connecting from the heart. It also involves several other key components.

When you are consciously trying to build rapport with another, your focus is on them. There is light eye contact. Enough that they feel seen, but not so much that your eyes are boring into them. You are paying attention to them, every sense is tuning into them. You are seeing them and hearing them, Your second senses are alert to their movements. Your body has moved into a comfortable distance for them. Focus is active: it is unconscious adjustments every second or two. It is as if they are a radio station you are tuning in, trying to clear every bit of static. While you are tuning in, you listen. You hear their words, sense the body language attached and note the tone of the message. At appropriate places, you help them reflect back on what they have said. You are genuinely trying to understand them. If you are not sure, ask them gently to say it in a different way.

Relating is another aspect. Your body movements mirror theirs, your vocal tone matches theirs. You use words they understand. You move closer or further away as you sense they are comfortable. Relating means the speaker leads while you follow, quietly tracking and matching their movements, speech, and tone. Your vocal tones and pace mirrors, but not mimics, theirs.

Acknowledgment is a fourth aspect. As you listen, you nod slowly. At appropriate breaks you can rephrase what you think you heard. If you are confused, you ask them if they can say it again differently. You gently summarize the main points. You offer empathy by picking out their feeling and letting them hear it back. If you are using rapport in a helping conversation, a visual that can be helpful is to imagine the speaker as a container. Everything she pours out goes back into her. Your job as listener is to help her sort and keep everything together. Everything you say and do is to anchor her more firmly into her body. All your movements are calming and reassuring. Your tone slightly slower and lower than hers.When you are building rapport in a social situation, you will sometimes be leading the conversation, sometimes following. You will always be focusing, relating, listening and acknowledging as the conversation proceeds.

In 2003, I reconnected with my first boyfriend. The relationship engulfed us like paper and fire. At first, it seemed as though it was all about “unfinished business” from our separation 25 years earlier.

As our communication developed, it became clear that this was no ordinary connection. We have an ability to sense when and what the other is thinking and feeling. We feel like Siamese Twins. Intuitives have told us we are soulmates. We are also soulmates with families and spouses and we live 2000 miles apart. Our intense and intimate relationship brought huge changes in ourselves. Our relationship and the love we share is a rare gift and we feel lucky to experience it.

Our connection opened us to new possibilities and eventually split us apart so we could share our learning with others. It made us aware that our lives are for serving and teaching others. Our mission is to teach others how to live with deep spiritual love and bonds.

What is Love?
Love is a heart pouring out gratitude.
Love is a connection that is tangible.
Love is a good, sweet feeling that inspires good, sweet actions.

The willingness to give your beloved your best–even when you don’t want to.

The act of spiritual loving means being honest with no secrets or shame. It is when you live with an eye on your higher selves, always. It requires forgiveness of your beloved’s mortal being and of yourself. It requires courage to speak and to listen, especially when you are afraid to. It means acknowledging your past lives together and figuring out the mission that has brought you together in this life. It requires a commitment to that mission. It is not always happy or pretty. It can be literally heartbreaking. Yet, throughout the hard times, there is an understanding and connection that defies logic. There is the understanding that there are expansive loving souls connected to our petty and mortal bodies.

When the loving relationship falls apart

Sometimes, one lover doesn’t understand or refuses the spiritual mission. Sometimes lovers commit to the impossible, taking several decades or lives to work their mission. Sometimes, the mission between the lovers has been accomplished. Sometimes, the mission of the relationship is to provide growth through constant conflict or difficult events. These “Soulmates From Hell” inspire breathtaking life changes when the partners do their work.

The heart knows its path

Our conscious mind can connect with our hearts and learn deep and spiritual love. When that spiritual connection is made in the mind, it manifests on all levels: physical, emotional and mental within the framework of an interesting and compelling relationship. It is up to the lover to overcome fears of embarrassment or social convention and to follow his or her heart. Only then will the lover understand that the heart has its reasons for loving….and those reasons help us become better human beings.

While I made neon yesterday, a hornet was buzzing against the window, trying to get outside. It buzzed against the glass. It flew into the room and back towards the window. It repeated this pattern for hours. It rested occasionally. Not once did it circle the room looking for another way out.

I realized that, in some ways, we are like this hornet. We see what we want and long for: endlessly beating against the window–certain that what we see is nearly ours. Sometimes, when our lives get dark and we look around for another light to follow, we find ways out of our entrapment. Sometimes, we are mighty and break through the glass. Sometimes, our higher self takes us by the hand and leads us around the glass. Sometimes, we buzz the glass over and over again until we give up or perish.

Only in darkness, clear thinking and outside help do we find another way around the glass.

I watched the hornet and realized that I could help it out. It might be like some clients: protective and stinging. Only by creating a cocoon of safety around the hornet, would I be able to free it from its futile beating. I realized, “I might have to reach out to clients in this same way. I have to take a risk of being stung in order to help them around their problems. For surely, people want to be free in the same way this hornet does.” I thought of all the times I’m afraid to help people around the glass.

I thought of my calling to help others and my commitment to myself and God. I decided to be a little braver, to risk the sting, and reach out to the people I see struggling. I took a cup and a card and captured the hornet. I carried it to the door and freed him. It buzzed the cup and sat for a minute on the card before it flew away.

Evelyn* is successful by anyone’s terms: a great job, a beautiful house, regular vacations to interesting places, three successful and married children and numerous grandchildren whom she spends time with. Nobody could have guessed the sadness in her heart from losing her husband. If she hadn’t been diagnosed with breast cancer, she might not have even guessed. Faced with overwhelming options in treatment, the possibility of dying, and the constant pain of her illness, she started looking within herself for answers. What she found surprised and scared her.

Mourning the loss of a loved one can be put off indefinitely…..eating, shopping, working, and socializing all push grief away where it doesn’t hurt…so much. At some point, most people come face to face with the sadness. With the right support, moving through grief can be an eye-opening time of discovery and connection with those still living and the spirit of those who passed.

Evelyn came for her first session cheerful and optimistic that her illness was another thing she could plan, prioritize and overcome. She had researched doctors, treatments, hospitals, and had joined a support group at her local hospital. As she talked about her plans, tears welled up in her eyes and she admitted that underneath the face there was real fear that her plan would fail and she would die. I asked her to start breathing through her nose which would calm her.

I muscle checked that Evelyn was needing to state her Intention for a New Possibility in her life. She started talking about how her husband’s death had been so sudden that she had supported her family’s grief and had never taken time to acknowledge her own loss. She stated her intention: “I grieve Danny’s death”. She started sobbing. Again, I asked her to start breathing through her nose. It was difficult for her and took a minute until she had regained some composure. We continued breathing together and paid attention to what sensations she was experiencing in her body. There was a constriction around her heart, tightness in her neck and shoulders and an overwhelming sadness. We acknowledged all the areas that were needing attention and the sadness moved through her, leaving her feeling more relaxed and able to proceed.

The Energy Constriction Release took Evelyn back to an earlier age. The second part of the release is a communication that happened between Evelyn and me, proxying for her father. I muscle-checked that at age two, Evelyn needed to say to her Dad, ” I’m sad” and needed to have her father hold her hand and allow her to be sad without distraction.

In other words, Evelyn needed to learn that she could resolve strong feelings in her own time and way. The remainder of the session pulled in beliefs about having to do everything for others, about ignoring herself, and other statements she resonated with. The modalities we used to transform her old patterns were a breathing pattern and pink color filter lenses. She noticed how much clearer she was thinking and felt that some of the sadness had gone. She left with a Positive Action to spend 10 minutes a day for 7 days grieving for her husband–visiting his grave, talking with his spirit, and praying to God for help with her sadness.

Evelyn came back for 5 more sessions, during which her grief resolved. The sessions covered many areas of her life which she previously hadn’t linked. Her new understanding of herself has helped her to remain optimistic and hopeful during her treatments for breast cancer. She feels a new closeness with her children and more patience within herself.

*Evelyn is a composite of several clients

Quitting smoking is high up on a lot of smoker’s list of things to do–and often put off because of the pain associated with giving up this highly addictive habit.

A client wanted to quit smoking. We started with an intention statement around breathing more easily. The session then went into the Breath Repatterning which makes sense. Smoking is clearly related to breathing. In the Breath Repatterning, there are several times when resonance with the physical act of certain breathing patterns are muscle-checked. The client noticed the discomfort associated with the breaths. As the session continued, the client recalled a feeling at birth–Resentment and disbelief around being born into a human body. It was overwhelming to consider living on earth as a human being. I worked with the client through the remembrance dialogging with that younger self. We repatterned that disbelief and resentment into acceptance and understanding. The client released some of the physical constrictions associated with the earlier event through some gentle stretching. We proceeded into a Fusion, which is a session-specific guided meditation. We concluded by checking resonance with all the beliefs and breathing habits that had come up in the beginning. The client noticed that the breathing was effortless now. All the resonance had shifted towards a more coherent way of being.

We concluded the session with a discussion of the history of tobacco use as represented in the Native American culture.