Tuesday, Sep. 27. 6:00 PM UTC "Integral Relationships and NARM"

Join Martin and other Integral Relationship explorers for a special practice event about integrating exercises from his new book Integral Relationship Practice and the final upcoming IR training with the five shame and pride based survival styles from the new NeuroAffective [sic] Relational Model (NARM) book The Practical Guide For Healing Developmental Trauma, by Laurence Heller and Brad J. Kammer:

Tuesday, Sep. 27. 6:00 PM UTC (11:00 AM PDT, 2:00 PM EDT, 8:00 PM CEDT -- click here for your local time converter)

NARM is the perfect complement for Martin's work, as it supports us in healing past developmental trauma that often prevents us from co-creating healthy Integral Love Relationships in the present and future.
In fact, he is so excited about NARM that he is training as a NARM Informed Consultant to integrate the model into his final 26 Week Integral Relationship Practitioner Training that starts on Thursday, Sep. 29, 9:00 AM UTC and Sunday, Oct. 2, 6:00 PM UTC with Module 1.
NARM has five organizing developmental themes that Martin already integrated into his new book Integral Relationship Practice:
1. Connection: We feel that we belong in the world. We are in touch with our body and our emotions and capable of consistent connection with others.
2. Attunement: Our ability to know what we need and to recognize, reach out for, and take in the abundance that life offers.
3. Trust: We have an inherent trust in ourselves and others. We feel safe enough to allow a healthy interdependence with others.
4. Autonomy: We are able to say no and set limits with others. We speak our mind without guilt or fear.
5. Love-Sexuality: Our heart is open and we are able to integrate a loving relationship with a vital sexuality.
To the degree that these five basic needs are met, we experience harmony in our love relationships.
To the degree that these basic needs are not met, we develop shame and pride based survival styles to try to manage the disconnection and dysregulation.
We will explore how these five pride and shame based survival styles fit into the 14 Essential Dimensions of the Integral Relationship Model in our practice events on Sunday and Tuesday.

Register here for Zoom Link

Sunday, Sep. 18, 6:00 PM UTC – Online Practice Group “Living Tantra in Integral Relationships - with Special Guest Jan Day” 

Learn and practice how to identify five state-stages of sexual development, ranging from repressed to sacred/tantric/transcendent.

Understand why it is vital for thriving love relationships that couples move towards the fourth “making love” stage—in which sexuality becomes an expression of their vitality, deep care, and heart connection—and on to stage five of sacred sexuality.

Agree with your partner to reserve regular and ample time for your lovemaking in order to create a warm and intimate environment and to practice how to get each other “in the mood.”

Engage in ongoing learning about your own and your partner’s sexual preferences and desires; expand your sexual boundaries in healthy ways; heal emotional wounds and trauma; transcend fears and shame around your sexuality; and keep advancing your love life to keep it vital and exciting.

Advance to stage five, in which sexuality becomes a part of your spiritual practice and deep soul connection with your partner.

Practice how to become fully embodied and present with each other through ecstatic dancing to different rhythms (soul motion or 5Rhythms); shared meditation; prolonged eye gazing; breathing together into your seven chakras; chanting and praying together; giving and receiving tantric massages; making love with eyes open in the lotus position; and moving kundalini energy up your spine.

Identify the state-stage of your own and your partner’s sexual development and realize your sexual learning, healing, growing, and awakening potentials.

Register here for Zoom Link

“9/28 Wholeness and Partialness Video” 

How can I reconcile closeness and dependence with individuality and independence?
We humans, like all beings and objects, are simultaneously whole in ourselves and part of our social environment (as shown below), as nobody can completely survive on their own.

This simultaneous wholeness and partialness on all levels (chakras) of our human being can only be co-created in intimate love relationships

This co-creation is accomplished through balancing and harmonizing feminine and masculine polarities of ascending, descending, agency, and communion that can be embodied by every human being in healthy and unhealthy forms.
When we look at the stages of consciousness development, we find that they oscillate between an inner need to control the outside world (masculine) and to surrender to it (feminine). The further one develops, the more healthy and less extreme the expressions of the fem./masc. polarities become.
In addition to this dynamic or wholeness and partialness is the animus complex in women and the anima complex in men that is projected onto intimate partners. This complex is related to the secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious/avoidant attachment styles. The more this complex and the attachment fears are healed, the easier it is for us to balance being simultaneously whole and part in our love relationships, and thereby realizing our full human potentials.
The awareness of these connections and the continuous learning, healing, growing, and awakening in intimate relationships is the key to how both (or more) partners can achieve simultaneous connectedness and independence or being part and whole.
To use a metaphor; to reach a destination (healthy relationship) it is most effective to go in a straight line. If we veer too much to the left, we need to correct towards the right and vice versa. The same is true for being whole and part; when we move too much towards wholeness, we need to become more partial and vice versa.

Click here for YouTube Recording

Sunday, Sep. 4, 6:00 PM UTC – Online Practice Group “Forgiveness in Integral Relationships - with Special Guest Barbara J. Hunt” Video

Forgiveness is an essential aspect of Integral Relationships. Join Barbara J. Hunt, author of Forgiveness Made Easy and me for an Integral perspective on Forgiveness and her 7-Step process that is VERY briefly outlined below:

Step One: Eye to Eye

Close your eyes and allow yourself to imagine you are sitting beside a fire and invite the person you wish to forgive to join you at the fireside.

Step Two: Heart to Heart

Maintaining eye contact with the person, allow yourself to say everything that needs to be said to that person.

Step Three: Shoe to Shoe

In your imagination, switch positions with that person. If you can, put on their shoes and stand or sit as they would, then speak back as them.

Step Four: The Balcony

Let the conversation continue between you, but from a very high, wise, compassionate, authentic, “integral” or higher perspective.

Step Five: The Haggling

In your imagination, tell the other person all of your payoffs and the costs of holding onto your resentment and what you’ve got out of resenting them.

Step Six: The Forgiveness

When you’re ready, say some significant words that express your forgiveness.

Step Seven: Completion

Set a new intention for your relationship with this person, especially if you are still in relationship with them; for example, tell them, “From now on how I choose to treat you is…..”

Register here for Zoom Link

Thursday Sep. 8, 4:30 PM UTC – Online Discussion "Cultural Differences in Consciousness Development" with Special Guest Dr. Khaled ElSerbini” Video

During a travel retreat last December in Egypt with 30 national and international students of Dr. Khaled ElSherbini and his wife Natasha to which they invited me, a discussion about integration and embodiment of post-modern Green and higher developmental stages emerged that deeply impacted me.

Until then, I had never grasped the cultural differences in the understanding and embodiment of the Integral Model.
On my final morning in Egypt, I briefly discussed this topic with Dr. Khaled and we became so immersed that I almost missed leaving for the Airport.

Dr. Khaled is visiting me this week in Istanbul to continue our exploration and we invite you to join us on Zoom and welcome your insights, experiences, and questions.

Image Above: Cultural Differences in Consciousness Development

We will explore:
• What effect did the importing of Western technology and values have on emerging societies?
• Is an authentic, organic, and unique emergence of modern and higher stages in emerging societies possible and how does it look?
• To what extent is understanding and experience necessary (and possible) for knowledge and embodiment of an emerging developmental stage?
• Is there a difference in transcending and including/excluding of basic healthy capacities and limited views of previous stages in different cultures?
• How does all of this affect the formation (or disintegration) of love relationships and thus families, communities, and societies?

*Dr. Khaled ElSherbini is the founder and chairman of “Enneagram Egypt,” the first and largest IEA accredited Enneagram school in North Africa and the Middle East.
He is also the founder of The Consciousness Academy, which focuses on human development and spiritual transformation.
Dr. ElSherbini has over 25 years of experience in the fields of human development, coaching, consciousness and awareness, executive management, corporate restructuring, sustainability, renewable energy, research and development, technology management, strategic management, and teaching in the USA, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland, China, and in Egypt.
Dr. ElSherbini created models of human consciousness evolution and development by synthesizing and integrating numerous models, mainly: the Enneagram, Spiral Dynamics, Integral consciousness, modern psychological studies, and Sufi spiritual philosophies and psychology.
Dr. ElSherbini is an IEA Accredited Enneagram Professional and the founder of the 3 IEA Accredited Training programs provided by Enneagram Egypt.
He is also a Spiral Dynamics Integral accredited professional by the SDi founder Don Beck through ValueMatch.

Register here for Zoom Link

Sunday, Sep. 11, 6:00 PM UTC – Online Practice Group “Enneagram in Integral Relationships - with Special Guest Dr. Khaled ElSerbini” Video 

Learn and practice how to identify which of the nine Enneagram types you and your partner resonate with most.

Feel into your “wings”—the type(s) next to the primary type that you identify with—and the types you move towards under stress and when you relax.

Understand how your type combinations positively and negatively impact your love relationship by comparing them online.

Put your type in the context of the unhealthy, average, and healthy levels of expression.

Explore how to communicate your own values and needs and how to meet those of your partner.

Identify whether you and your partner resonate most with the self-preservation, social, or attraction/intensity/sexual instinctual variant, and why compatibility, or at least acceptance, are crucial for you to meet each other’s needs.

Co-create a rewarding and thriving love relationship by creating synergy between your Enneagram types.

Register here for Zoom Link