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Conscious Relationship - The 6 Commitments: Having Fun

Having fun in a relationship is as essential as air to breathing, water is to swimming, or movement is to walking. As humans, if we’re not having fun, we will inevitably think - why am I here? For some a sense of duty or cultural norms will keep them in a relationship  Yet is this what we want to settle for?
What if we could have fun and intimacy and purpose? 
What if we could have a conscious co-committed relationships that are integral to how we walk our way through this world?
Please finish the following.
The only way to have a good relationship is to _______
How many of you filled in the blank with ‘ work at it'?
The thought that a relationship could be fun was a brand new concept for myself as a forty plus year old man who had in all that time seen few examples of ‘fun' in relationships. Those that seemed fun also had huge amounts of conflict. I  believed that it was in relationship with a significant other that you ‘worked at on yourself and the relationship. Is this not what everyone did? 
It is true that it is in the context of a co-committed relationship that you can see tremendous growth in your capacity to live a conscious life.
Remember one of the first post in the series what’s about making a foundational commitment to learn from everything that comes up in a relationship. What I was missing as a forty year old was that it is possible, perhaps mandatory, to also have fun at the same time.I did not know that this is a choice. 
To me, romance seen in movies or read about in books was not real. No matter the secret or not so secret part of myself that desired this very romance in my life. The other thing in the books and movies that was supposed to add an element of fun was sex. However, I was surrounded by constraints of a religion that made sure the sea anchor was deployed so as to not get to wild.  Passion was definitely something to be wary of. 
“I am committed to having a good time in my close relationships.”
Conscious Loving Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. 
Imagine standing face to face with your partner, lean in to touch foreheads, close your eyes, breathe in louder than normal.  
That may already be ‘different’ enough for a grin to twitch your lips, at the very least it will be a change that allows the new ideas a chance to root and develop. Now synchronize your breaths so you are inhaling and exhaling at the same time.  Soon the awareness on your breath brings mindfulness, the awareness of your partner increases exponentially. After a while one partner switches to breathing in the breath of the other. Inhaling their breath into your lungs as they exhale, take a few breaths this way and then switch back to synchronized inhales and noisy exhales. Notice the difference. 
To commit to having fun with your partner will always bring you back to what you are experiencing in your body. 
One of the most powerful lessons that I learned from Gay and Kathleen Hendricks was that all emotions can turn to love with enough breath. This isn’t just a shallow breath, unconsciously on auto pilot, rather it is the mindful, deep breaths that allow the body to do what it needs. At times of intense emotion in my life, where I had to breathe deep to get to love, it was also about allowing my body to shake. 
If you watch any animal that has experienced a moment of trauma it will Shake It Off.
Deliberately allowing or actively causing your body to shake is one way to release emotions and go another level deeper. 
This is a great way to break the hold of a fight/flight/freeze pattern. 
In moments where you need to find your courage to speak or act planting your feet (with a stomp) and grounding down in a sumo pose will allow the inmate courage that is in all of us to arise. 
Just practicing these techniques is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Doing them with a partner is even definitely fun.
Another of my favorite ‘fun’ communion techniques is  Laughter Yoga. 
Google this!
Sexual intimacy and reproduction is a biological need and a compelling reason for many people enter a relationship. I now know without a doubt that sex is fun and pleasurable. 
For those that have doubts about this due to your experience I want you to know you are not alone and there is a path to safely opening to this part of yourself. Come talk to us, we have been there or walked as partners to those that have had trauma in this area.
In the sexual dance between the masculine and feminine (regardless of the maleness or femaleness of the bodies involved) there is a generalization that needs discussion. The masculine tends to finds it’s way to emotional closeness through physical sexuality and the feminine tends to find their way to physical intimacy and sensuality through savoring the emotional intimacy that is already expressed. This has some obvious pitfalls and yet when it works, it is pure Magic and part of what sustains a conscious relationship.
Body alive and focused on the senses and sensations aroused. Cell deep yearning to join and experience the fullness of orgasmic pleasure. Sacred Pleasure that with mindfulness is a beautiful path of meditation.   Body in that delicious tension of satiation pursued and postponed, savored and sustained. Primal and at that moment primary. Sacred and mindful, goddess and god, worship and worshiped, devotee and devoted to pleasure. 
The power of sexual intimacy in our primary conscious relationship is profound and profoundly satisfying and is integral to our commitment to have fun. Without dividing up the ‘fun’ into separate sexual and non-sexual duality let’s explore more of the whole of having fun.
Companionship, physical security, social standing are also some of the complex reasons we enter relationships. All of these are way better with laughter and smiles.
A great way to bring in the more intimacy are dates and experiences.  Mindfulness or special moments when time is irrelevant are a huge part of building the joy bank account. Movies and or TV shows can be fun and are actually only a part of a balanced diet of laughter and fun. Lunch dates, double dates, bowling, swimming, goat yoga, walks along a beach or in a forest, silly faces... 
What ever is fun for you - just do it with an open heart 
For a life filled with joy and happiness (positive psychology) surround yourself with those who are also on the path to a more conscious way of living. The more relationships of all types you have, the more your ‘fun' takes on a lightness that comes from no strings attached. The more your fun has deep peaceful expressions the more satisfaction in an integral life where the fun you have is congruent with who you are. You Are Amazing!


Are you ready to make a commitment to yourself to have fun in all your relationships? 
If so get ready to laugh. 

To learn more about these fun communication techniques or to understand for yourself what you want in a relationship, come visit us at transformativecounsellingandcoaching.com and set up an appointment. 
All six commitments from Conscious Loving that I am writing about in these posts are below. 

Thank you Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. 
I am grateful for your work and inspiration. 
Please check out their website 
 heartsintrueharmony.com 
- I am committed to being close, and I am committed to clearing up anything in the way of my ability to do so. 
- I am committed to my own complete development as an individual. 
- In my relationships, I am committed to revealing myself, not to concealing myself. 
- I am committed to the full empowerment of people around me. 
- I am committed to acting out of the awareness that I am 100 percent the source of my reality. 
- I am committed to having a good time in my close relationships.
Hendricks, Gay and Kathlyn. Conscious Loving. Toronto: Bantam, February 1992. Paperback, page 226