Author

Arjuna Ardagh

•-Feature Family & Relationships Health & Well-being Spirituality

Coaching Is All a Front for Love

My children both went to a Waldorf school. Rudolf Steiner founded the original school for the employees of the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart. He used to ask the teachers, “Have you loved your children today?” He told teachers that part of their job, before they went to sleep, was to visualize each child in the class, and to see not just the current stage of development of the child, but to also visualize their highest potential.

This was, and still is, an incredibly visionary way to go about education. My kids both went to such a school. One of the teachers, to one of my children, clearly followed Steiner’s directions: she would visualize the highest potential of each child before bed. She was on fire with vision. All of the kids from that class are doing extraordinary things today. I would say that is so, because she loved them. She didn’t love them theoretically, she actually practiced love every day: loving her children in such a way that they blossomed. The other teacher, who was teaching my other son, came out of mainstream education and didn’t have as strong of a visionary background. And those kids didn’t benefit quite so much.

Loving somebody is not just a concept or a fleeting feeling. Loving somebody is a commitment.

We spoke about this in a recent Awakening Coaching Training Online session. I asked one of the coaches in training, who is also a mother, if she loves her son.

“Of course I do,” she answered.

Then I asked her what it means to love someone. What are the signs or symptoms?

“It’s hard to describe in words,” she said.

Love is actually hard to talk about. When something is real, but hard to talk about in words, then what do we know is probably true? It means that it is coming from your intuition, from your being, from what is natural to you. It means that it is probably not something that you have learned from a book, not something that you can understand, not something that you imitate from somebody else. It means that it is actually something that is rising from the innermost of your being, from who you are.

“I adore him, and I’m very proud of him, especially if he does things I have never expected him to do,” she went on.

Another quality about loving is allowing yourself to be amazed, to appreciate qualities of brilliance that did not come from anything you taught or gave. It is a feeling of awe. You are inspired and amazed.

“If I am very angry with him, I suffer in my heart,” she told me.

When you love, if you react in a way that you feel is influenced by your own emotional state, your love for the other causes you to feel pain.

But also, there are times where you get angry and it feels that it’s the right thing to do, it feels necessary. That is also an expression of love.

Loving sometimes include supporting the other to be more than he or she thinks is possible. It can include holding him or her accountable, and pointing out weaknesses or mistakes. It includes seeing a bigger vision than he or she thinks is possible. Sometimes it can mean popping a bubble and saying, ‘Wake up.’

Loving a child can sometimes include taking away things that he or she thinks are pleasurable. It can also sometimes include rewarding, and giving him or her things that give pleasure.

Loving somebody is a multi-dimensional experience. It has many different flavors and frequencies. You can’t love somebody from a set of rules: you know how to love somebody because it is natural to you. You know how to love somebody because it is deeply engrained in who you are. You are love. You simply have to shake off everything you think you should do or shouldn’t do, and that gives you the power, the natural freedom to love, to be tough when you need to be tough, to be supportive when you need to be supportive, and empathetic when you need to be empathetic.

Love is natural to you, it just needs a freedom to express itself.

Just as Rudolf Steiner encouraged his teachers to love the children in their classes, as a more important principle than educating or disciplining, so love is also the governing principle in Awakening Coaching.

As a coach, you are entering into a relationship with somebody you don’t know at the beginning. You enter the relationship to love them deeply, in a way that they actually feel loved. The governing principle is not that you do this and that technique in a specific order. The governing principle is that you let love determine what will serve that person most.

Everything we practice in Awakening Coaching (Radical Awakening, Radical Releasing, and Empowerment Practices) are all just channels through which your Love for the client can flow. Your Love is yours, your Love is not something we teach you, it is not something we have any copyright for, it is not something we have created. Your Love comes from within you, from your innermost being.

Because you love the client so deeply, you want the best for them. You have heard their dreams. When you read somebody’s list of what they most want to accomplish in their life, on that list is probably going to be the way they want to serve, be a good mother, or a good wife, a great father, or a good husband. That is tangible and touching. You hear their innermost dreams that they hardly dare to dream.

You also hear what gets in the way, the things that they suffer, habits that you can probably recognize from your own experience. You feel compassion for that.

You hear the strengths they have developed: they may been doing yoga for 25 years, they may have quit alcohol. You hear about all the disciplines they have put in place.

And then you hear why they have hired a coach: what they want to get out of coaching.

When I hear all of these things, I am overflowing with love. I am overflowing with the kind of love my student just described when talking about her son. Out of that feeling of love, not a love that is only cushy and supportive, but a love that can be firm, and direct, and hold the client accountable, out of that love I can always feel what is the best thing to do next.

A great coach does not ask “How can I do this coaching correctly?” but “How can I most love this person?” When you are really feeling that love, it is a fierce force, stronger and more authoritative than anybody else telling you what to do.

Out of that love you feel How can I most support you now? Out of that love, you have heard what the client wants from coaching, and you feel I really want those things for you, too.

If you were to say this explicitly, it might sound like this: “You have shown me what you want. I feel touched by what you want. Out of my deep Love for you, and my care for you, I would love for you to do these specific practices this week, to move you forward in what you dream of living into.”

You don’t actually have to say those words. A corporate client, for example, may feel a little weird if you speak in this way. To talk in terms of love might be a little difficult for some people. But essentially this is what is happening, spoken or not. Love is always the governing principle.

When I train coaches, I am giving them total permission and encouragement to be great lovers, more than anything else. I don’t think we can put this so overtly on our Awakening Coaching website, that we train people to be a great lovers, because that would sound more like a tantra school. But that is essentially what we are doing. We are giving you a space to deeply love people, so that love becomes a more authoritative force than anything else.

You learn to trust love to decide each and every step of the coaching process.

August 13, 2016 0 comment

•-Feature Health & Well-being

Your Friends Will Make You Brilliant

written by Arjuna Ardagh

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Almost all of the people I work with as coaching clients are in some way or another working on a project that will benefit many, many people. I am helping a brilliant young man in Germany complete a novel about terrorism—I think it will shake the world. I have also been helping a woman in Austria complete a film. Almost everybody I have worked with in the last couple years has either been finishing a book, or a screenplay, or an online course, or creating a new company.

That is what I do: I love to light the candle which causes another person to shine brilliantly.

Of course, just about anybody who has tried to give an original, authentic gift to the world has faced some permutation of what we call “writer’s block.” It is most commonly associated with writing a book, but really just about any creative endeavor is going to entail a time when you sharpen your pencil for the fifteenth time, stare blankly at the screen, get distracted by Facebook, make another cup of tea, and feel besieged by thoughts like “Who’s going to listen to me… I’ve got nothing to say… I’m not good enough.” Because of the way that I coach, of course, I have got a million and one tricks to get around these back-eddies of the creative process. The one I find most useful, however, and the one that I like the best, involves the use of your friends.

Here is the principle of the thing, and it is very simple. Imagine you have to write five thousand words about something you are knowledgeable about, or equally if you have to write a chapter of a book. If you sit alone in a room, staring at a blank computer screen, it is extremely likely, and almost inevitable, that a good proportion of the time you are going to go blank.

Now let us rethink the whole scenario: imagine you invite half a dozen friends over for dinner who also know something about your field. You make your favorite dish and uncork a couple of bottles of a nice Cabernet. After the appetizers, and at least one glass of wine into the meal, someone asks you, “So tell me, what’ve you been working on? I’m excited to hear about your new idea.” Now you reach out and take another good gulp of your good friend Mr. Cabernet, just enough to provide lubrication to your vocal cords, and you launch in. When you are called upon to speak about something you are passionate about, with a group of good friends, and possibly a little lubricant, the chances of you drawing a blank are reduced down to next to nothing. Hopefully your friends will have some retorts to offer, or even questions, which will get you going even deeper into your topic.

If you are concerned that the sounds of cutlery on plates and chewing will be too disturbing, you can get together with a group of other creative people and give presentations to each other. You could even have one night each where one person presents their topic, and the others ask questions. Of course you can prepare this in advance with some bullet points, but here is the great, great, great news: when you speak out loud in this way, the first benefit is that writer’s block goes out the window. But the second thing that may surprise you is that material delivered verbally in this way, once transcribed, is usually very fluent, heart-felt, and even funny, and requires very little editing.

You need a useful little piece of equipment here called a voice recorder, which you can buy in just about any electronic store. My favorite is the Sony ICD-UX533BLK

I encourage all my coaching clients to keep this little handy device with them AT ALL TIMES: never leave home without it, take it to the bathroom with you, keep it on the bedside table when you go to sleep. This gets around Murphy’s law: that you always have the best ideas when there is no way to write them down. These days when I go out to coffee with anybody remotely interesting, I always put the voice recorder on the table: and if the conversation starts to take a turn where it looks like anybody is going to say something new and original, I press the little red button (of course, with the other person’s consent).

Using social interactions as your primary initiator of new and creative content is the the most powerful way I know to kiss creative blocks goodbye forever. This is just one of the tools that I teach and that we practice in the Radical Brilliance weekend. You can find a schedule of when these weekends are coming up here.

April 7, 2016 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships

Love is a Practice

written by Arjuna Ardagh

This is an excerpt from the new book I have co-authored with John Gray: “Conscious Men.” It will be out soon.

John says: I remember a moment seven years into my marriage. After making love with Bonnie, I said to her, “That was fantastic. It was as good as it was in the beginning.” “Oh, I thought it was much better,” she replied. “Really? How so?” I asked her. “In the beginning we had great sex,” she said, “but we didn’t really know each other then. Now you’ve seen the best of me, and you’ve seen the worst of me, and you still adore me.” When she said that, I had to stop and think. I had never thought of it that way. It was a moment of becoming more conscious as a man. The love we had built in seven years made the sex much more fulfilling.

To love deeply is to experience all of who a person is. Not to fantasize that she is perfect, but to grow and love someone who is not perfect, simply because you have made a decision to love more each day. You create friendships in life by giving, they don’t just happen automatically. Equally, you can create a great marriage. Its starts with a fantasy, and you create it through give and take. In those times when it’s difficult to give, and your partner needs you, you rise to the occasion. You made a promise to your partner. There are temptations and distractions, and you rise above them because you made a commitment. You grow in love.

Ultimately, your relationship becomes sacred. The words “sacred” and “sacrifice” both come from the same Latin root: sacer, which means holy. When you make sacrifices for someone, you make that person special. You make it a sacred relationship.

We have all had the experience of falling in love, which usually happens when we first meet someone who we do not yet know very well. It is a glimpse of seeing just how beautiful everything can be when you truly open your eyes and your heart. But it is not yet grounded. You need practice to ground it, to stabilize it, to integrate it, to live it.

One of the greatest obstacles that men face is the expectation that love should be automatic, just as it was in the beginning, when there was nothing you had to do. That glimpse was the result of chemistry, and bumping into the right person at the right time. That particular configuration of forces will quickly disappear, and then you have to commit yourself to the practice to open up that portal: again, and again, and again. It is tempting to assume that it is your right to experience those feelings, and when they go away it must be your partner’s fault. Then we get frustrated, because we have the unrealistic expectation that romance, affection, attraction, and passion should be automatic if you are with the right person.

Remember with Netflix, or one hundred thousand other things available on the Internet, that you can get the first month free? They are hoping you get hooked. Then you have to pay. It is just like that with the practice of love. You get a free glimpse when you fall in love, and then you need to be prepared to make regular payments, through daily practice.

Learning to love is best measured not by how you feel inside yourself, but by how other people feel in your presence. It is relatively easy to be impressed with your own state of maturity. When you get to the point that your partner, or your teenage children, are impressed by your love, then, and only then, you know that you are onto something. It requires that you make your life into an art form instead of an accident.

You discover that love is not just a feeling that comes over you sometimes. It’s something you can choose, it’s something you can practice, it’s something you can develop and it’s something that you can become.

July 17, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships

I See You. I take a stand. I love you.

written by Arjuna Ardagh

I was working with a woman as a coaching client recently, who is a professor in a very prestigious institution. She guides dozens of PHD students every year to select the perfect subject for their dissertation, that will be truly unique and innovative. She hired me as a coach because she wanted to serve her students even more deeply.

Coaching is always multi-dimentional. No matter what the surface issue is (in this case, helping her students), I always coach the whole person: in every aspect of their life. As we got to know each other better over the weeks, she told me about something else that crops up for her, almost all the time. She has been married for several decades to another brilliant academic who is always (I mean always) chronically late, and who almost never remembers to do what he said he would do. So, for example, he might agree to meet her in a nice little Italian restaurant after work at 6:30pm. She is there a few minutes early, to make sure they get their favorite table, and to settle in with a glass of wine. She sips her wine. 6:30 passes. 6:45 passes. 7:00 passes. No phone call. No text. No answer to her calls. 7:15 passes. Finally at 7:30 he arrives, with a big smile, and a dramatic story about traffic, and car troubles, and his phone being out of batteries, and losing the charger. This kind of event is her everyday experience. She brought it up to me because she wanted my support, through the various tools we use in Awakening Coaching, to become “more tolerant.” She and her husband had agreed together that the primary problem they face in their marriage is her “obsession” about exactness, and her “intolerance” for any deviation from what was agreed. Her husband describes her as “anal retentive.”

I was curious. I asked her to consider what might be the different possible responses that anyone could have to such a situation: never mind about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I asked for a full spectrum of possibilities. I gave her a week to ask some friends what they would do in such a situation, and then to compile as complete of a list as possible of how someone might respond to his behavior.

When she got back to me, some of the answers she had were:

1. Stand up and leave the restaurant at 6:40, and go home.
2. Order the food and enjoy dinner by herself.
3. When he arrives, talk loudly about his lateness, and throw a glass of water in his face, with the rest of the restaurant looking on.
4. Firmly look in his eyes and tell him how she feels.
5. Find ways to do the same to him to “teach him a lesson” (the revenge method).
6. Blame herself for her reaction and agree that she is “anal retentive.”

It did not take her long to realize that acquiescing to her husband’s weaknesses, and then blaming herself for any reaction about it, was only one of many ways to deal with the situation. It wasn’t ‘better’ or ‘worse’ or ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I simply encouraged her to see that she had alternatives. And then, in the coaching call, we went ahead and examined the pros and cons of each of these alternatives. I asked her to look at it from a bird’s eye view, not from within the situation, but looking at it from the outside. It didn’t take her long to realize that communicating clearly to her husband about how she feels, making sure he understood her discomfort, and setting boundaries clearly enough that he would cooperate, was the best way.

“But,” she said, “I love him. He is brilliant. We share everything together,” and (the most significant statement of all) “He was only half an hour late last time, so he is obviously getting better and there is really no problem. The issue is already solved.”

This leads me to the title of this week’s article: I See You. I take a Stand. I love You.

Her kids were grown, but I asked her to remember back to when one of her children was maybe six years old. I asked her to remember moments when she asked her child to do some simple task, like cleaning the bedroom, washing hands before dinner, or doing homework from school. I asked her if there was ever a time when she asked one of her children, ‘Have you cleaned your room yet?’ and got the answer ‘Yeeeeeeeees mom,’ and then she looked, and discovered it was still dirty. She did not have trouble finding a memory like that. So I asked her, “Can you see that, in that moment, your child was completely unreliable?” She agreed. “Can you see that in a way your child was lying?” She agreed. “Can you see that if your child partially cleaned the room one time, that it does not mean that the child has suddenly matured into a full adult overnight? The child is still a child and needs supervision.” She agreed also. Then I asked her what she used to do in a situation like that, if she saw the room was untidy. Did she get down on herself for being “anal retentive?” If her child threw a tantrum and started crying, did she quickly apologize, and admit that it was all her obsession? She laughed, of course. “I would make sure that he came back to the room, and cleaned it before he did anything else. I might even stand over him,” she said. Finally, I asked her “Do you love your son?” She didn’t hesitate. “Have there been periods when you love him, and periods when you don’t?”

“There have been periods when I like his behavior, and periods when I don’t, but I never stop loving him.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And have there been times when you have taken practical steps to consider sending him to an orphanage?”

She laughed. “Of course not.”

“So your love for your son is unwavering, and unconditional upon his behavior?” She agreed.

And there you have it. Her husband is not a child. He is a fully grown adult. In some ways.

For sure he is a fully grown man, a university professor renowned in his field, written books, but when it comes to keeping his word and being on time, he is like a child. Like almost every other human being on the planet, he has areas where his development is not complete. In those areas, he behaves like a child.

This is the way to celebrate love, and to break free of being co-dependent:

I see you. ‘I see you’ means I see all of you. I see the deepest dimension of you, which is infinite, loving, eternal and free. I see your gifts. I see where you shine, what you do well, where you are celebrated. And I see the areas where you cannot be trusted; where you behave sometimes like a fool, where you run on fear and weakness. I see all of you calmly, and with open eyes.

I take a stand. Just as I see you completely, so I see myself. I have deep respect, not just for you and for me, but for the force that gives us life. I am here with you, but my deepest commitment is to that force, is to love itself. I take a stand for doing what’s right and I don’t deviate from that.

I love you. When you are in your zone of genius, giving your gifts and being celebrated, I love you. When you’re noble and strong and an example to everyone around you, I love you. When you are taken over by weakness and fear, I also love you. When you lie and break your word and hurt me, I love you just the same. I love you so much that I will hold you to the standards of who I know you can truly be.

The best example of I See You – I Take a Stand – I Love You was maybe 15 years ago. I had a friend back then (lost touch with him since) who was young and dashing and charismatic. He traveled internationally for his work, and was proud to be the kind of guy who had “a girl in every port.” He was a ladies’ man. During the time that we were friends, he met a very mature, deep, and wise woman. She was a keeper, and he knew it. From the first night they met, they became a couple, and they were great together. Finally his wandering days were over. Then, after some months, came the time for him to get back on a plane and take another trip. And that’s when they had ‘the talk.’

“Listen”, he said, “It’s been amazing getting to know you. I totally love you, and I’m totally in love with you, and I absolutely don’t want to do anything to lose you. And I want you to know that I really need my freedom. I’ve got girlfriends all around the world, and I really can’t restrict my love to one woman. So I want to ask, is it okay with you, when I’m gone, if I share myself with other people too?”

“Oh”, she replied, “It’s totally fine. No problem at all.”

“Really?” he asked. “You’re okay with that?”

“Of course I’m okay with that. You do whatever you need to do. That’s your freedom.”

“And you’d still want to be with me?” he asked.

“I’d still want to be with you?” she replied. “Oh no. Definitely not. I don’t want to be with a man who’s playing around. That’s kind of boring to me. But if it’s what you want to do, I’m totally fine with it.”
He had to make a choice.

They got married and had a child.

In your own relationship, perhaps you can discover how you can practice I see you – I take a stand – I love you. What are the ways that you have been compromising, blaming yourself for your reactions to your partners’ behavior? Do you see your partner completely, in their triumphs as well as their defeats, in weakness as well as in strength? Can you open your eyes and quit fooling yourself that things are anything other than the way they are? Can you take a stand for love, for integrity, for freedom, lifting all of us more than taking a stand for holding on to some particular situation?

And can you love so deeply that, if necessary, it may include letting go of what you are attached to?

June 19, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Health & Well-being

Why Do We Avoid our Greatness?

written by Arjuna Ardagh

I’ve written eight books so far, and I just came out with the latest one. The books that I’ve written previously were a little more erudite, many had footnotes, a long bibliography, and careful references. About a year ago I realized “Hey, I’m in my 50’s, sooner or later I’ve just got to say it straight up, as it is, as far as I’m concerned.” The naked Arjuna Ardagh, if that is not too unappetizing an image. I wrote this latest book in a very simple way: pretty much just the same as if I spoke to a friend about what is absolutely most important to me. You know those games we’ve all played at parties sometimes? “If you had just 5 minutes left, what you would do, what would you say, who would you call…?”

The book I’ve just written is the condensation of what I would most like to leave behind in the world. Now here is the interesting thing that I’ve noticed, since this book got published: I’m way more edgy about it. If people like it, it has way more significance for me than anything I’ve written before. I want to kiss them, invite them home, be lifelong friends. If someone doesn’t like it, or even doesn’t like bits of it, it also feels a little personal… just as if I’d taken all my clothes off, and then somebody pointed and laughed out loud at the size of my … pectoral muscles.

I’ve realized that giving the gift you were really born to to give is a huge risk. Whether it’s writing a book (like it was for me), or a piece of music, or a song, or even your signature recipe, or putting on your finest clothing, and making yourself look really beautiful, you are putting yourself on the line. It’s more dangerous, more alive, more rewarding, but also more terrifying, than staying in the safety of business as usual.

As a coach, I’ve often worked with people to help them bring forth this deepest gift, the unique gift that I am convinced everybody has waiting inside of them. Over the years I’ve come to accept the fact that we have just as much resistance, if not more, to stepping into our greatness as we have enthusiasm. Sometimes it is confusing isn’t it?

Why do people get jobs they don’t really like, and stay in them for decades collecting a regular pay check, all the time knowing full well that they have left their true passion to grow moldy, in the very back of the refrigerator. What is your deepest passion? What is the gift that you intuit you were born to bring to the world? The one that will not only light up your own heart like a Christmas tree, but also drive everyone around you to fits of exuberance as well?

When you start to feel a twinge of terror, as well as excitement, you have probably hit the nerve. You may not be ready for a public performance, or an official launch today, but coming out of the closet right now and writing in the comments box below your intuition of your deepest gift may be a great step, perhaps an irreversible one. I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say.

June 26, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Health & Well-being

How to Overcome Burnout – Part Two

written by Arjuna Ardagh

This is the second part of my article about How to Overcome Burnout. You can read part one here where we discuss five important interventions that anybody can use to recover from burnout while remaining engaged in day to day life.

In this second part we are going to focus on the hugely important, and often overlooked, distinction between stress for men and women. From a very simple biochemical perspective, stress and burnout has to do with the secretion of stress hormones into the bloodstream from the adrenal gland. For both men and women, we experience symptoms of stress when the secretion of adrenalin and cortisol into the bloodstream is not neutralized by the secretion of other hormones.

For both men and women we secrete adrenalin cortisol when we have the experience “fight or flight.” That means when you have a deadline that seems difficult to meet, or too many people needing a piece of you all at the same time, or the experience of conflict or being dominated in any kind of relationship, the body secretes stress hormones. This is actually a good thing: It motivates you either to run away and protect yourself, or to face the danger with an increased feeling of courage and power.

Back in the day, when we lived closer to the land in caves or teepees, adrenalin and cortisol would literally cause you to either run very fast away from a physical danger or to turn towards it and fight. Our bodies have not changed very much in the last few hundred years, but our circumstances certainly have. We still secrete the same hormones into the bloodstream, but it’s no longer appropriate to literally run very fast or to get into a physical altercation when you are faced with a deadline at work. So these stress hormones remain in the bloodstream: causing us to feel frequently or continuously stressed instead of a temporary experience. Hanging out in that way for long enough creates the experience of burnout.

Here is the vitally important distinction which is not always adequately understood. Men and women balance stress hormones in different ways. Men balance stress through the secretion of testosterone, and we will talk in a moment about how to manage testosterone production, storage, and release. Women, on the other hand, also have testosterone but only about 1/30th as much as the men do. They primarily balance stress through secretion of oxytocin, which is not only created by different glands in the body, but it requires completely different kinds of activities to release oxytocin.

As a result, we can start to understand that skillful ways to reduce stress and avoid burnout for men and women are actually very different.

Stress Reduction for Him

For men, testosterone can be released into the bloodstream to neutralize stress through taking care of three distinct necessary stages. One is replenishing testosterone reserve. The second is allowing for adequate testosterone storage. And the third is to do with releasing testosterone into the bloodstream.

The best way for a man to learn to create testosterone is through sitting still, preferably with a straight spine, in a way that is alert and at the same time restful. Hence, taking a nap, for a man, is not as effective in the long term as a daily habit as affording himself the same rest with alertness. (Commonly known as “meditation.”)

Again, back in the day, after being “at work” hunting boar and other wild animals, men would return to squat by the campfire in the darkness; clubs by their side; and stare for hours, without speaking, into the flames. Whenever a man is still and alert in this way, he gives his body the opportunity to replenish testosterone reserves. The celebrated expert on the topic, my good friend John Gray, calls this “cave time.” Every man needs to structure into his day time when he’s alone and still. This could involve meditation or Chi Kung but it could just as easily involve sitting in his favorite chair and watching a sports game.

The second phase for any man to be attentive to, in avoiding burnout, has to do with testosterone storage. Testosterone is stored in the muscles: The more you build up muscle mass, the more your body has a capacity to store testosterone, and the more you have a buffer against burnout. You can do all the testosterone production you like, through meditation and other means, but if your body does not have a way to store it, it’s not going to do you so much good. Going to the gym and lifting weights is an obvious way to increase muscle mass, but actually there are many other sporting activities; including yoga and Chi Kung; which will build muscle as well.

The third important habit for a man to integrate, to have adequate testosterone in his bloodstream to balance stress hormones, is through setting and meeting realistic goals. If a man can set goals for the day or the week, and actually achieve them, he not only releases testosterone into the bloodstream to get those tasks done, but he also releases dopamine in the brain when the task is completed; which gives him the pleasurable feeling of a job well done and rewarded. So men actually reduce stress through carefully managing and structuring their time and crossing things off on the To Do list.

Stress Reduction for Her

As we mentioned above, women also have testosterone, but only about 1/30th as much as men. Women primarily reduce stress through the release of oxytocin. Commonly known as the “feel good” hormone, oxytocin is both created and released through pleasurable relational activity, and through the possibility to feel feelings without a reason.

A study done at UCLA in the late 1990’s showed that when a group of women simply get together for lunch, enjoy some good food and maybe a glass of wine, and talk about their relationships, their feelings, movies they have recently seen; in fact, just about anything other than work-related topics; their oxytocin levels are shown to dramatically increase within an hour.

Any time that a woman gets together with other women to chat and talk she will release oxytocin and release stress. Women also increase oxytocin levels through the experience of color and texture and shape. Many of my female clients are a little shocked, sometimes relieved as well, when I tell them that shopping can be a spiritual practice. When women go to a department store like Macy’s or Nordstrom it does not have to be to accomplish any predetermined task. Just looking at the colors, smelling smells, seeing how things go together, feeling the texture of a fabric, releases oxytocin and neutralizes stress hormones.

Another great practice for women to reduce stress is free form dance. A good example would be the five rhythms work developed by Gabrielle Roth. When a woman is able to express feelings through her body, without the need for any story, she also quickly neutralizes stress.

Obviously everything I’ve said here in this article runs the risk of being offensive to some people. We have lived so long with sexual stereotypes: unnecessary pigeonholes of how a man and a woman should behave, that many people resent having those distinctions exaggerated. That is not my intention here. I like to encourage every coaching client to experiment freely with a range of practices to see what works best for them. Of course, women can also benefit from sitting still and meditation or going to the gym, and men can also benefit from going shopping or free form dance. I think it is simply a great idea to have an understanding of the biochemistry involved so that you can make more informed choices.

What do you think?

I have worked with so many people, both men and women, who are having difficulty getting out of burnout simply because they were using practices that were having little to no effect for them although they were working great for other people. The most obvious example has been women who meditate regularly and religiously for decades, but don’t get the benefits they were hoping for. One of the best examples is Sheri Anderson, whose story I referred to in my book The Translucent Revolution. In just the same way I’ve worked with men who have tried to reduce stress by releasing all commitments, free flowing through life and dancing a lot. They often became more feminine and soft, but even the small provocation could easily cause them to feel stressed and overwhelmed again, because they would use inappropriate practices.

True freedom for all of us means to have deep understanding of your true nature, of your body, and of your particular character type, and to be able to choose the right practice for you without any restraint or precondition.

June 5, 2015 0 comment

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How to Overcome Burnout: Part 1

written by Arjuna Ardagh

I have been coaching people in positions of great responsibility: highly creative people with deadlines to meet, for more than 20 years. People often think that their worst nightmare would be failure: that nobody buys their gizmo, nobody watches their movie, nobody reads their book or the investors back out. But actually, strangely enough, I have noticed that people recover quite well from all of those things. The greatest challenge for anyone who really wants to make a big difference to the world is not failure, but too much success all at the same time, with the possibility of burnout.

Burnout creeps up on you all at once. A little bit like indigestion, it starts with the inability to say no to too many delicious things, all at the same time. A writer is likely to hit burnout when all the reviews are good, and they are invited on every talk show at the same time. The leader of a company is more likely to hit burnout when the stock price is up and all of the products are selling well, all at once.

For the people I work with, stopping everything for a month or two and sitting by the ocean is simply not an option. I have had to discover ways to support people to get over burnout while they continue to maintain their responsibilities. I have learned quite a lot about this in the last decades, and here are the key points.

1. Go to bed early. Everybody has at some time heard the old saying “an hour of sleep before midnight is worth double the sleep after midnight.” But it is not just something your grandmother told you as a child to pacify you at bedtime. It has a lot of validity. Electricity is a relatively recent invention in our history. Even a few hundred years ago, our ancestors would eat their main meal during the day when there was light to cook it by, and to see what they were eating. When darkness fell (much earlier in the wintertime) there were only a certain number of things you could do by candlelight, before getting drowsy and falling asleep. Our lifestyles have changed, but our neurology has not altered very much at all. Going to bed early and getting up as close to the dawn as possible will return your body to natural circadian rhythms, and reduce stress.

2. Eat your main meals in the early part of the day. Your body has maximum “chi” when you wake up in the morning. That is a great time to exercise, stretch and … eat. The best food for you to eat for breakfast is, not surprisingly, three eggs. Says John Gray, in his latest book How to Stay Focussed in a Hyperactive World: “Egg yokes are rich in the amino acid tryptophan, that creates the feel-good brain chemical serotonin and abundant with the amino acid tyrosine, which is the precursor for making dopamine, the most important brain chemical for focus. Egg yolks are one of the few foods that contain vitamin D which is also needed for focus.” Starting the day with coffee and a muffin, on the other hand, is a sure way to increase burnout symptoms.

Eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day. If you are a meat eater, that is really the only sensible time to tuck into a steak. This is, of course, contrary to many people’s lifestyles. They grab a sandwich in the middle of the day because they are working but, again, it contributes to burnout. As early as possible in the evening (hopefully before sunset) eat a light meal: ideally just soup. And then do not eat anything more after dark. These kinds of changes to lifestyle may be inconvenient and unfamiliar to you, but they have proven themselves time after time to be significant in reducing burnout.

3. Do not use electronics after dark. Again, I can hear geeks all over the world reading those words and screaming ‘whaaaaaatttt?’ I have tested this ever since we started to use personal computers back in the 1980s. All electronic devices, including laptops, cell phones, televisions (and yes, I am sorry, the iPad with your kindle books on it) are all emitting electromagnetic frequencies, which interfere with your body’s ability to return to equilibrium and to rest deeply. Maybe you do not want to follow this guideline all the time, but if you know that your body has gone into a depleted state, try going back to reading physical books, talking with friends, or just sitting staring into the fire after dark and before you go to sleep. If you do not think you can go that far, at least switch off electronics at, say 9:00pm, and keep to physical books after that.

4. Burn Moxa at CV4. People in China have often lived well into their 90’s in perfect health. One of China’s most successful train robbers, for example, was finally apprehended at 93 after a tiring chase from his captors.
While in prison, he was asked “What is the secret to your limitless energy and good health?”
“I digest fire into the body through the gates in the lower Dan Tien” he said. He was talking about Moxibustion. It is really easy to acquire and to use. You can buy Moxa sticks at Amazon.com. The point to burn Moxa is on CV4, which is two-thirds of the way down from the navel towards the pubic bone. Simply light the Moxa stick, and hold it over the point for five to ten minutes. You can regulate the intensity of the heat by bringing the burning Moxa closer or further away from the point. “Ingesting fire” in this way takes energy directly to the kidneys which are like the battery of the body. The energy is stored there for future use. You will notice more energy and reduced burnout in a week to 10 days.

5. Use supplements, particularly adaptogens. A lot of the symptoms of burnout are simply to do with the depletion of hormones and nutrients in the body. You can support the body to overcome burnout through the right supplementation. Here are some things you can consider:
• Find a tincture has ginseng, licorice, shizandra and astragalus. Such a formula may have other ingredients as well. It will support and rebuild your adrenal glands.

Here is a good one I have used.
• Find a good vitamin B supplement. Here is the one I use.
• Take extra vitamin B12 in dropper form. Here is the one I use.
• Take a good multivitamin. This one has been proven to reduce stress and improve brain performance. Although it was formulated for high school kids, I use it and I am 57, and so do many of my friends.
• Use a good mineral supplement. I particularly like the Mars Venus Minerals, one for men and one for women from John Gray because they are in oretate form, which is more assimilable to the body.
In part 2 of this article next week I will give you the remaining five tips on recovering from burnout while remaining available to your responsibilities, with a particular emphasis on the different methods suitable for men and for women.

May 29, 2015 0 comment

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Why Do We Have a Thing About Nudity?

written by Arjuna Ardagh

This weekend I went with my older son Abhi to Wilbur Hot Springs, for a delicious weekend of soaking in mineral water, hiking, eating good food, and thoroughly enjoy being father and son together. Wilbur Hot Springs is clothing optional. More or less everybody there takes the option of being naked. For the first 15 minutes or so there is a tendency to notice a lot of breasts and genitalia. But as you may know from being in a mixed-gender sauna or on a nude beach, that passes pretty quickly. Then it feels completely natural. By the second day at Wilbur, you hardly notice at all that people are not wearing any clothes.

Which leads us to a very interesting conversation. Why do human beings have this huge obsession with nudity? “Nudity”, by the way, does not mean covering your elbows or your ankles or your knees or your ears (unless you happen to live in Iran). Nudity means covering up “the bits.” It means that we are not allowed to see the mammillary glands (breasts) and we are also not allowed to see any areas associated with urination, excretion or reproduction.

Now why, we might ask, is this so? Who made these decisions, and for what reasons? Genesis would have us believe that all this was decided way back at the very beginning of creation, but I am going to question that story a little bit. Remember that the Bible has been translated many times from one language to another and approved and sanctioned by the Catholic Church, entirely run by men.

Let us remember for a moment before we examine the reasons for this prohibition on nudity, that we are the only mammal on the planet that views things in this way. Not sure about that? Kindly remember that dolphins, pigs, horses, cows and even very domesticated animals like dogs, cats and goldfish do not cover their genitalia or breasts. It is only human beings.

Why?

I am fascinated to hear your thoughts on this topic. Here are a few of my own:

Less excitement makes us less alive.

You may have noticed, particularly if you are a man, that when you go to a nudist beach, or a clothing optional spa, looking at women’s breasts, hips and vaginas can cause a flutter of excitement and well-being; both in your heart, and potentially down south as well. If you are not used to experiencing this kind of aliveness, it may sometimes even cause you to take action inappropriately and to make advances which are not welcome or reciprocated.

So who makes the rules about nudity? In a nutshell, priests and politicians, who have almost entirely been men. And what agenda do priests and politicians have, on the whole? To control their populations into conformity, obeying rules, and above all not being rebellious. A horny or angry population is more difficult to control.

Whenever anyone feels sufficiently horny or pissed off, they are likely to say “To hell with this, lets just go for it anyway.”

So that’s one good reason I can see why nudity has got a bad rap; because it makes us more herdable and allows for greater conformity.

Premature Ejaculation

You said what?

Yep! You heard me right. Premature ejaculation. I would humbly suggest to you that the prohibition on seeing breasts and vaginas, or indeed letting women see a beautiful penis now and then, was created by men who suffer from premature ejaculation.

How on earth did you come to that conclusion Arjuna? Have you been sniffy that glue again?

Relax a minute, and I’ll tell you.

First of all, I hope you will agree that it is a given that these rules were made by men. So what would cause a man to not want another man to see a woman’s “private” parts, and what might cause that motivation? Men making such rules probably do not care too much at all if you see your neighbor’s great-aunt Mildred in the buff. A man is going to care primarily if you see his wife naked.

Why, we might ask? An obvious conclusion might be that if his wife is beautiful, and another man sees her breasts and vagina, he might feel a quiver of desire. And even worse… much, much, much worse… dangerously not okay, she might reciprocate and even welcome his advances.

Now, what could possibly cause a woman to welcome the advances of a man other than the one with whom she has had children? The most obvious conclusion I know, from years of counseling couples, would be if she is not sexually satisfied. If a woman has had deep, rich, fulfilling orgasms; wave after wave after wave going through her body; she is very unlikely to go down to the sauna or the watering hole the next morning and find another man irresistibly appealing. That’s been my observation working with couples. Because a woman takes the man into her body and receives his energy and his DNA within herself, she’s naturally quite protective of receiving too many different energetic imprints like that. In my opinion, women only welcome another man’s advances when they feel sexually frustrated. And a woman is generally going to be sexually frustrated when her husband is unable to sustain sexual arousal long enough for her to be fully satisfied: AKA: premature ejaculation or sometimes the inability to get an erection.

Think about it for a minute. Which culture historically has had the greatest habit of repressing sexual energy? The British, obviously, (I should know because I am one) particularly in the Victorian era. And coincidentally, Britain (the home of Puritanism) has had the biggest problem with the visual display of nudity.

So now we have got the ball rolling (no pun intended), I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic too. We are used to such sweeping words as “immoral” or “obscene” but you would never use these words with any other mammal than with humans. A naked pig, or a naked cat, or a naked dog, or a naked cow, would never be thought of as immoral. Nor, for that matter, would a naked baby.

So why do you think that we have entered together into this unquestioned agreement about having a problem with nudity?

May 16, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Health & Well-being Spirituality

Why People Stay in Boring Jobs

written by Arjuna Ardagh

Way back when, probably just two or three generations ago, you had relatively little choice of what kind of work you would do in your life. Before the Second World War, in most parts of the world, if your father was a carpenter, it was clear what you would do. Yep, that is it. Carpentry. If your father was a doctor, or a lawyer, or a shepherd, or the King, the likelihood that you would follow in your father’s footsteps, or at least in a profession of a very similar social standing, was so high as to be more or less inevitable. And back before the Second World War, if you were a woman, you could forget about most careers completely. Most women, just a couple of generations ago, could hope of getting married to a nice man, bearing him three or four children, and looking after the home.

Today we live in an environment of hugely more choices than our ancestors ever had. If your father is a plumber, or a carpenter, or a lawyer today, and you complete your homework assignments properly at school, what are the limits on what you can do as a profession? Virtually none. We have evolved to the point that anybody – man or woman – can do just about anything they damn well please. That means everybody has the freedom to pursue their dreams; to make movies, or write a book, or explore the Antarctic, or found a revolutionary company. Which leads us to the interesting question: Given the amount of freedom we all have, why do the majority of people end up in boring jobs they do not like?

As a creativity coach. I have been able to investigate this question very thoroughly. My job is to support and help people who would like to make new choices, and do something more interesting and courageous with their life. I have come to find out, very accurately, from down in the trenches, what actually causes people to stay stuck in doing things they do not enjoy.

And now, for a one time offer of only $49.99, I will tell you what that is.

Just kidding. I will tell you anyway.

The kind of choices people make about their destiny are mostly made in teenage years. That is when we decide, consciously or unconsciously, about what kind of person we choose to become. During our teenage years we have the opportunity to experiment with many things and, based on the results, to expand or to limit our choices. For example, if you experiment sexually, by asking someone you are attracted to go out with you, and that person says no, there is a possibility that you may shut down and not ask anybody again. Therefore, there is more possibility of ending up in a marriage you do not like, or even being single for a long time. During your teenage years, if you have an aspiration towards creative writing, and your English teacher mocks you publicly in class, there is a good possibility that you may give up, and never write creatively again. I am sure you can think of countless examples of things you tentatively experimented with in your teens: maybe you experienced failure or ridicule, and then perhaps never tried those things again, or at least not for many years.

Doing what you really love, taking a risk as an artist, or an entrepreneur, or a musician, or countless other things, means putting much more on the line than “getting a job” that provides security and predictability. Simply put, if you put your heart on the line as an artist, musician or filmmaker and people criticize your work, it’s not just the result that is being criticized. It’s you. A piece of music, or a painting, or a novel, is actually an expression of who you are. To have it ridiculed or criticized is a form of death: that we sometimes fear even more than physical death.

On the other hand, getting a job pushing paper in a cubicle for a big company is much less risky, and more secure. You can pretty much eliminate the possibility of this kind of experience of identity death, by doing something you do not care about. Then, if the financial report is not up to snuff, or they do not like the prototype, you can shrug your shoulders and mutter to yourself, “Who gives a f*ck anyway?”

These are the issues that I deal with primarily as a coach. Most people I work with know, more or less what they really love, and what they would really love to do. In most cases, that is no huge mystery, and if it is, we have ways of working with it. Of course, we all have the stories about “Can I make a living doing this, and who would listen to me, and who would respect me?” but those are stories, and usually people give up long before they find out the answer to those questions. The big reason why people stay doing things they do not enjoy is because they choose security over risk. They try to avoid the terrible experience of putting themselves on the line, and getting shot out of the sky as they aim for the stars.

Avoiding that kind of death-like experience actually leads to a much worse death. It is the death of hope, the death of optimism and the death of creativity.

We only get to really find out if the choices that we made early in our life were wise, or were a cop out, when it is far too late.

So take the time right now to stop. Ask yourself if the security of avoiding risk, is really worth the risk of compromising your life.

March 25, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships Health & Well-being Spirituality

How to Overcome Comparison

written by Arjuna Ardagh

I was working with a coaching client the other day, who needed to make a presentation about a very, very important project. The project would obliquely benefit him, in that it would radically increase his prestige. It could potentially bring him millions of dollars. But that was nothing close to the impact it would have on other people. This project has the possibility to alleviate poverty for millions of people, to change the face of how we think about social problems on the planet. In order to get funding and approval, he had to pitch this, with my support as a coach, to the powers that be who operate on a massive scale: who are dealing with billions of dollars every day.

We went in to a meeting together, where he felt that his future and his career were on the line. Mine was not, I was just the coach. We had a meeting with an extremely brilliant young man. He did not control the dollars, but he was a really brilliant creative young man, in his late 20’s. He was, by all counts, awesome: so brilliantly intelligent that you had to lean forward in your chair to follow everything he was saying. He was so brilliant that it was breathtaking, but also very obviously relaxed and egoless. He was not tooting his own horn. He was clearly dedicated to making the world a better place.

During the meeting, we had quite different experiences. My coaching client was feeling that his entire future and career, as well as his livelihood, rested on how this meeting went. For me it did not. I would have done a good job coaching him whether or not he got his funding. He had much more at stake in this meeting than I did.
When we left the meeting he said he wanted to reflect a little bit, so we went to a private place to be able to speak. He said, “I noticed during this meeting that I was looking at this man, and noticing how brilliant he was, and then I found myself shrinking in comparison. I was comparing myself with him, thinking he was so much more intelligent than me, so much more assured than me, so much more egoless than me. When I compared myself with him, I felt like such a phony, and a fake, and a failure. The whole meeting was a downer for me. I ended up just clamming up and not saying anything. But I noticed your expression was quite different. You seemed to be actually flourishing, and getting more and more animated in your exchange with him.”

When I reflected a moment on what he said, I realized that it was basically true. The meeting, to me, had been inspiring, and juicy, whereas the meeting for him had been a downer. Just as he had shrunk in the presence of this young man, I had somehow flourished from the meeting. So we had to discuss this, and think what had happened.

Of course, there was a lot more at stake for him in this meeting; his career, his status in the company, and his livelihood would depend on the meeting. It made him tense. But there was another piece to it too. I had to look into my experience of why was this meeting such an inspiration for me and not for him. I had to look at what was happening for each of us internally.
As I tried to model my own inner experience for his benefit, I realized that in the presence of this brilliant young man, I was subjectively experiencing something like love. I was looking at him and feeling, ‘You are amazing. You are inspiring. Keep talking. Tell me more about you.’ The more I focused on him, and how brilliant he was, the more I truly loved him. This is an unusual word to use, of course, in a corporate context. Somewhat verboten. The more I loved him, the more the conversation became inspiring to both of us. My coaching client, on the other hand, instead of loving the young man’s brilliance, was comparing, and shrinking as a result.

As I loved him, I could also feel where I could give to him, contribute to his greater unfolding. Because I was loving him, just as a father might love a child, or as anybody might love anybody, I was feeling where I could find a way to give him more than he already had. In loving him, and feeling what how I could contribute to him, the meeting became one of giving instead of comparing.

The more you give, the more you become what you seek to give.

So I turned this into a practice for my client, right there on the spot. I turned it into a practice that I taught my client; which has been helpful to him; and it is a practice I am going to share with you now. I have made a little video. When you are in the presence of somebody brilliant, and you can feel yourself shrinking, here is how you can turn the experience into something that can be nourishing and empowering to both of you.

February 23, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Health & Well-being Spirituality

Recreate Yourself

written by Arjuna Ardagh

Many centuries ago, the poet Bunan wrote:

Die while alive,  And be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want; It’s all good.

Bunan is not talking about a physical death, or causing any harm to the body. He is talking about a willingness to let go constantly of the definitions you have placed upon yourself, so that you can become more of a mystery than a person, both to yourself and to everybody else.

The most mature answer I know to the question “Who are you?” is “I don’t know.” In our particular school, when coaches train to be certified, we ask them to give and receive Radical Releasing every day for ninety consecutive days.

During their training the coaches keep digging deeper into more and more layers of resisted and forgotten points of view. This willingness to let go constantly of who you thought you were, and to relax into being an undefined mystery, allows you to show up, not as a wave called Joe Blow with his stories and limitations, but as the whole ocean, as all of humanity.

It is this rigorous discipline of letting go of false layers of identity that allows you to have genuine, rather than fabricated, compassion for your coaching clients.

This is an excerpt from Arjuna’s new book, Better than Sex: The Ecstatic Art of Awakening Coaching

January 2, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships Spirituality

How to Enjoy a Good Fight

written by Arjuna Ardagh

A few years ago, when my children were still young, we had two of everything in my house, just like Noah. My eldest son had two white mice in his room, who lived in a cage. My younger son has two adorable rats: perhaps the most caring and innocent sentient beings I have had the privilege of knowing. We had two rabbits in an enclosure in the garden, two hamsters on several occasions, two cats, and then of course there were the two boys themselves.

Every now and then, the mice would have a fight. It might have been over food, or whose turn it was to run on the wheel, then they would be snarling at each other, like it was a fight to the death. I used to get nervous, and think we should take one of the mice out of the cage before there was a fatality. But we let them be, and low and behold, when we came back five minutes later they were snuggled together inside the tiny cardboard box we had made for them, where there was strictly only room for one.

It was the same with the boys. “Get out of my room!”, we would hear one of them shout, “I hate you, you’re not my brother anymore. Get out!” The door would slam. But in just the same way, a few minutes later we would discover them laughing again, playing Legos or just goofing around together.

It was during that phase of my life, that my wife Chameli and I came to recognize that we were the only ones in our Noah’s ark who did not know how to enjoy a good fight. We had the idea that there is something wrong with fighting: that it is bad, that it indicates that our relationship is in trouble. Because we did not know how to fight, cleanly and enthusiastically, we would get tense instead: shut down, avoid each other, move into monosyllabic communication for a few days, or maybe even longer. But from all those great rodent teachers living with us (well, maybe my sons don’t want to be referred to in that way) we realized that maybe a good clean fight is good for you now and then. Natural. Healthy. What the doctor ordered.

Over the years, we have learned how to enjoy fighting.

The key is to separate the story from the energy. When we focus on the story, it is all about who is right and who is wrong. It becomes mental: defensive, logical, like two attorneys trying to win at a trial. When you drop into the energy, fighting is just another way of playing.

Here’s what we do, when we can feel it is time for a good fight. One of us has to remember to call it, simply by saying “Hey, looks like there is a fight brewing. Great! Lets enjoy it!” It is best to drop out of language altogether at this point, and resort to growling, making ugly faces, or beating your chest.

*** Very, very, very important note here: keep at least three feet of distance between you.*** If either partner has a background of abuse or trauma, it might need to be a lot more than that. When you fight consciously, it needs to be really obvious to both partners that there is no physical threat involved.

We have found, over the years, that celebrating the fighting energy, when it comes, allows it to pass again very quickly as well. Sometimes, a good fight for a few minutes leads into laughter, or even to the delights of the bedroom.

I love my wife deeply, and she loves me. We are lucky in that way. I love to laugh with her. I love to make good food with her. I love going to the movies with her. I love to walk through our small town in the evening with her, hand in hand, looking in shop windows. I love to make love with her. I love to fall asleep with her.

And I love it when we can share a good fight.

April 21, 2014 0 comment

•-Feature Spirituality

Masculine and Feminine Energies

written by Arjuna Ardagh

When a man is run by masculine energy without any conscious presence brought to it, without any element of awakening, he is going to be run by the more unconscious aspects of the masculine. These are the qualities that are generally least attractive to the feminine.

Some examples would be destructive competitiveness, being over-analytical and controlling, using force to get what he wants, setting goals in a way that is rigid and unyielding to reality, and being aggressive or violent.

A man can also run masculine energy through his body with some choice and creative gifting. The qualities of the conscious masculine are, generally, what women most love about men. Conscious masculine energy is present, centered, focused on a goal, but in a way that is aware of reality and able to respond and flow. Conscious masculine energy is able to fully feel, but the sense of being present and grounded is always a little stronger than the feeling.

Conscious masculine energy shows up fully in each situation, but always with a tinge of humor, because the man has a sense of life being something like a game, in which he participates fully, but without ever getting completely lost. Conscious masculine energy is able to take action, to be decisive, but all the time with the sense of a bigger context in which the game is appearing.

Equally, we could talk about the unconscious and conscious feminine. The unconscious feminine is emotionally dramatic, can be blaming and catty, or addicted to and getting lost in sensory experience. She can be complaining, nagging, and critical.

The conscious feminine, on the other hand, has a body that is open, a heart full of love; and that love is unconditionally forgiving and embracing. She knows how to create harmony and to bring out the best in people and in situations, because of her natural tendency to love and accept.

The conscious feminine knows how to feel deeply in any situation, but without getting lost in a story of “why” and “because” and “who did what to whom.” She can feel for no reason.

I am fully aware that making these kinds of distinctions between masculine and feminine energy, and their unconscious and conscious expressions, can be deeply offensive to some people, particularly to women who have fought so hard to avoid gender stereotyping. This can seem like a step backwards.

The reason we are doing this here is not to enforce gender stereotypes, but to recognize that people become happy when they relax into their natural character. An Awakening Coach needs to be sensitive that they are not imposing gender stereotypes on a client, but simply skillfully feeling into the natural balance of masculine and feminine energy, and allowing that to express itself.

When we use Embodiment Practices in this way, we are really achieving two ends. One is to restore the balance of masculine and feminine energy that is natural for that person. The other is to move from the unconscious to the conscious expression of each energetic type. Obviously, this is a huge topic, and one that can be easily misunderstood. This is the briefest skimming across the top of it.

This is an excerpt from Arjuna’s new book, Better than Sex: The Ecstatic Art of Awakening Coaching

March 14, 2014 0 comment

•-Feature Spirituality

Breaking News… The New Age Retires!

written by Arjuna Ardagh

People all over the world are reacting with shock, disbelief and also relief at last week’s announcement that the New Age has decided to go into retirement.

“Was it something we did?” sobbed Rainbowchild Dewdrop Flower into her organic coconut milk chai, outside her tipi here in Nevada County, California. “Did we not chant fervently enough? Were our prayer flags not plentiful enough? Were our affirmations too predictable and clichéd?”

In fact, the New Age came of age in the late ’60s, and, just like many other baby boomers, is ready to collect Social Security and to retire to Key West, Florida. The New Age has just gotten old, that’s all. Ol’ New Age plans to live out the rest of its years hanging out in all-you-can-eat steak and shrimp bars, and drinking margaritas during Happy Hour. “I’ve been in this gig way too long, bro,” said New Age recently to a close confidante. “Heck, even my inner child is married with kids and a dog and shit now. I tell ya, I’ve eaten enough tofu and sprouts, and worn enough tie-dye for one life time. I deserve to live out the rest of my days in peace. Nah, forget peace. I’m ready to be loud and gross.”

So how does the announcement of New Age’s retirement affect the average recovering hippie, like you or me?

Here is a handy quick-tip guide to how last week’s announcement might affect your daily routine.

1. Moving forwards, “Howerya Doin,” “Aloha,” “ Wazzurp Dawg,” “How Do You Do?” and “Namaste” are all considered to be equally reverential means of greeting anybody.

2. If you’ve been living on a diet of brown rice, seaweed, Bragg’s Amino Acid and coconut water, the word’s out, you can relax now. New scientific studies reveal that even eating recycled cardboard can be good for your health, if you stop worrying, and eat what is in front of you with gratitude.

3. If you spent the last years trying to manifest “prosperity,” “abundance,” or “financial freedom,” the game plan has officially changed. More than 2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day. So if you are a lucky dog, with a warm place to sleep, food to eat and friends around you, your next step is to think about how to help other people.

4. If you’ve been channeling Archangel Michael, the Pleiades, or Elvis, its time to cut it out. From here forward your responsibility is simply to connect the words that come out of your mouth with the thoughts and feelings that are passing inside of you. Codeword: honesty. Known to lead to: intimacy.

5. If you spent the last several decades immersed in the traditions and religion of a culture other than the one into which you were born, its time to get back to our roots. For example, for many of us the Lord’s prayer, Psalm 23, or Shakespeare may be worth a revisit. If you are Jewish, call you mother.

6. If you’ve been collecting eagle feathers, owl feathers or rabbits feet, please return them immediately. Word on the street is that the eagles are getting chilly and pissed off.

7. If you are entertaining hopes of getting chummy with visitors on a UFO, fuggedaboutit. A recent survey of 1037 randomly selected aliens, conducted by Pew Research, asked who they would be most likely to visit, if wanting more contact with human beings. From the four multiple-choice options, 63% selected Nobel prize-winning scientists. 19% selected elected leaders of nations. 17% chose leaders of indigenous peoples. And 0.8% selected people holding hands and humming.

8. If you’ve developed a fondness for spending time with people of a “high vibration,” or have been avoiding people with “negative energy,” this will no longer be necessary. Your mission on earth will be accomplished here by paying close attention to whoever happens to be right in front of you.

9. If you’ve been collecting crystals or other sacred objects, you can expand your horizons. With the retirement of the New Age, any object whatsoever will become immediately sacred when you look at it with fresh eyes.

10. Most important. Listen up, people. If you’ve been participating in drumming circles after 10 PM within a mile of anyone trying to sleep, please stop. Please, please, I beg you please, stop. It’s 2 o’clock in the f**king morning, dude.

Of course everyone had a lot of unanswered questions about what comes next. We’ve got space just for a few of them here.

Question: Does this mean I can get a refund on my aura-balancing organic Chi enhancer, attuned to dolphin mating sounds?

Answer: No.

Question: So who is in fact the true Avataar come to save planet Earth?

Answer: You are. Splash some cold water on your face, and get busy.

Question: Now that the New Age is officially over, what is the next evolutionary step for humanity?

Answer: Sanity.

December 12, 2013 7 comments