Febuary 12-14, 2010
New:
Conscious Relationship Training
Location: Amrit Yoga Institute, Salt Springs, FL
Contact: email info@amrityoga.org or call 352-685-3001
Tuition: $229 per person includes meals and accommodations
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For couples and individuals who are seeking to experience the healing power of real love. Be the love you want! Discover the secrets of relationship. Relationship acts as a mirror showing us everything about ourselves for the purpose of integration on the journey to real love.

• Couples, attend together
• Individuals bring a relationship you want to heal with you in your heart.
  

All committed relationships have three stages:

1. Romantic
2. Power struggle
3. Real love

This weekend training, based on Harville Hendrix, PhD’s Imago® Relationship Training (author of Getting The Love You Want), facilitates the couple or individual through the power struggle stage, the fight or flight stage of committed relationship, healing childhood wounding on the journey to real love.

Tools:

• Mirror
• Validate
• Empathize
• Support
• Balance and stretch

One requirement: commitment.

Amrit Method Conscious Relationship Training (ACRT) Curriculum is based on Devdasi’s & Mohan’s 1995 clinical studies in (IRT) Imago Relationship Therapy© as developed by Harville Hendrix PhD, author of “Getting the Love You Want”. It is also based on their direct study with Sandra Ray and Bob Mandel in (LRT) Loving Relationships Training 1988-91. Devdasi & Mohan developed and then practiced this combined methodology as a couple in a clinical setting from 1991-1995 when Devdasi opened MA-based Yogapathways, serving as an Amrit Method Center for Yoga and Reiki and served as a Conscious Relationship Counselor for couples in committed relationship. ACRT provides the tools to guide you from an unconscious relationships to a conscious loving relationship.

This training is for you, whether you are:

• Happy in a committed relationship
• Considering relationship
• Happily married
• Considering divorce
• In the midst of the power struggle stage
• Afraid of commitment
• Single and happy
• Unhappily single

Article by Devdasi Pearson: Why does Love always turn into a power struggle? Read on!

Why does Love always turn into a power struggle?

Remember when you met your partner? Remember the excitement, those tingling feelings that got you all tongue tied? Remember too the feeling like you'd known this person for ever; perhaps you'd even had past lives together? Remember when this "soul mate" seemed to be able to finish your sentences for you and read your thoughts and how then these things felt comforting to you? Well, what happened? Why are the same things that endeared them to us now driving us crazy?

For most of human history romantic relationships never lead to marriage. The only 'marriages' were arranged by families to keep the wealth secure within the clans. The idea of marrying for love didn't exist. Marrying for love would have been considered foolish, everyone knew romantic 'love' didn't last. It was generally considered acceptable to have lovers for romance, and the arranged marriage for the propagation of the wealth and the family. For romance, one enjoyed a lover and promptly ended the relationship as soon as it became a struggle.

The power struggle really came into play when the much more modern idea of marrying for romantic "love" became the accepted norm. We have come to know that the power struggle stage is a powerful and necessary stage in loving relationships, with a purpose never before realized. All love relationships have three necessary stages, the romantic love stage, the power struggle stage and ultimately real love, conscious relationship. Most couples never get past the power struggle. We either avoid the power struggle stage by leaving the relationship, or lead parallel lives within the relationship.

Some couples power struggle with each other for the rest of their lives. So why does love relationship have to look so unlike love? Because embarking on a committed love relationship is just like embarking on any spiritual path. Anything unhealed in our lives is calling to us for acknowledgement and healing. Committed relationships can be viewed as a path to freedom. (Now there's a twist for those commitment shy ones.) A conscious relationship is one where the couple realizes that there are stages on the journey to a conscious union and that the power struggle stage is an opportunity to heal energy blockages resulting from our reactions to wounding suffered in childhood. The childhood wounding resulted in self rejection and reactionary coping behaviours. We made choices to hide, abandon, loose and even fear those rejected, although innocent parts of our self in order to survive.

We are all wounded in one way or another, leaving us feeling isolated and alone. Out of our wounding we wound and re-wound each other, often without even knowing it. So we go about searching for wholeness, for real love. As we mature into adulthood, Nature supports us in finding a partner with just the right dovetailing character adaptations and reactions to childhood wounding that we need to re-visit and heal our own childhood wounds. During the romantic stage of adult love relationship the couple feels whole, safe and alive, because they each embody the missing, hidden and lost parts of each other.

The dovetailing effect of embodying each others missing parts, which is so comforting in the beginning stages, becomes a source of fear and struggle later in the relationship. Our coping behaviors for our wounding dovetail also. The resulting pain of this dovetailing is the source of much of the power struggle. Examples pack rat/clean freak; extrovert/introvert. The attraction of romance bonds the partners into relationship in order to do the real work of love relationships which is to finish living in reaction to childhood and be here now.

The 'wounded selves' sense in the partner the qualities needed to heal the wounds left over from childhood, so that together the couple can journey from an unconscious relationship to a conscious relationship. Only then can they consciously journey through the power struggle to real love. The power struggle intensifies as soon as the couple settles into commitment. The power struggle stage of relationship feels extremely threatening because what we need in order to feel whole is exactly what we were denied in childhood, and what we need most is what our partners are least able to give. Why?

Because of the dovetailing wounding. For most of us in the power struggle it looks and feels like our partner is deliberately trying to hurt us. What looks and feels like an attack is in fact our partner's coping behavior in response to their reactions to their childhood wounding, dovetailing with our own coping behavior. Daring to trust that our partner will give us the nurturing and unconditional love our care givers were unable to give, leaves us feeling vulnerable and afraid that we will be abandoned, rejected, neglected, disregarded, abused or whatever the original wounding was, all over, again and again. The power struggle will show up in every committed love relationship, so it makes sense to work through the one you are in. Of course it's possible to grow without being in relationship, but if you choose committed relationship, you will attract a partner with dovetailing wounding in order to heal the wounds that blocked your freedom of expression as children. During the power struggle stage of adult relationship the wounds left over from childhood flare up and hinder us and our partners from experiencing the relaxation of real love. We begin to see our beloved as the antagonist! The good news is, this kind of conflict is healing wanting to happen! It is important to note that the very character adaptations we put in place to protect us while growing up are now being called upon to let go! They no longer serve us.

Realizing that the purpose of the power struggle stage is to heal the reactionary behavior to wounds sustained while growing up, and understanding the need for the dovetailing effects of each person’s childhood wounding, opens a space for real communication, real empathy, real safety, real healing on the journey to real love relationship. That doesn't mean that differences disappear, no differences are always present. What changes is your reaction to the differences. You can respect the differences, feel unthreatened by them, and realize there’s no need to change anything. You'll notice it’s your reactions to the differences that changes. You'll be present and in a conscious relationship. The power struggle is a necessary stage on the journey to Real Love.

Inspired by Clinical Training in Imago Relationship Counseling, 1995.
The above article was published in the Spirit of Change Magazine circa approximately 1997.