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Tribal Truth San Francisco Launch Party

Saturday, May 21
12-5:00 pm

Join us for a feisty, fresh, woman’s empowerment symposium, dedicated to connecting women with our authentic
voices and to helping spin our dreams golden reality. Already rockin’ it in Los Angeles, San Diego and New York, Tribal Truth is gathering some of the best of the best in women experts and facilitators in the Bay Area, speaking on a new paradigm of feminine leadership, partnership and collaboration.

What am I presenting?
You know those women who radiate, glow and are irresistibly attractive? Their lives seem golden, rich and satisfying? Their inner light switch is “switched-on” rather than on “dim?” Hold on to your seat, ladiez, and get ready for the secret for how you become one yourself.
Two special gifts for everyone who pre-registers before May 16!

Space is limited and it’s expected to be waiting list only, so grab your seat HERE.
$39 online, $49 at the door

“Great things are only possible with outrageous requests.”
~ Unknown

So, I give you lots and lots of great communication tips through these Mini Relationship Tips, right?

But what about when you are communicating like a pro – your tone and intention are loving, appreciative and juicy, your words are considerate and compelling – and yet your gorgeous request is still met with a … NO?

I mean, you’re working your hump off to make your offer or request too good to pass up, attractive beyond compare and a big, luscious win-win for both of you … so what gives? Shouldn’t they be leaping off their seat to crow a resounding YES from the rooftops!?

Actually, people usually say NO for some “good” reason. It’s a reason that is not only pretty unclear for you, but likely not totally clear for them, either.  Underlying any NO, there’s usually some fear of theirs. Or there is a way they think they might lose out by saying YES.

So, this week, when you get a NO, try asking,

“Is there some way that my request has you feel like you could lose out?”

“Is there something you are concerned about or afraid might happen as a consequence if you were to say yes?”

“What would you need in order for you to be a YES?”

(Good ones, right? Useful. Comments are currently being accepted below)

Rather than giving up, with an, “Oh, no! They said no,” rub your hands together, get excited about what you’ll discover underneath, and see if you can get to the bottom of this “no” matter.

Enjoy, LiYana

I’ve just been reading the edgy new book, Se*x At Dawn: Prehistoric Origins of Modern S*exuality, by authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha and boy, are my eyebrows singed!

[Se*x At Dawn author] Ryan explains the difficulty of trying to restrain se*xuality using the metaphor of being a vegetarian. “What we are saying is that you can choose to be s*exually monogamous for your whole life if you want to, but this is a choice like choosing to be a vegetarian. It can be an excellent decision morally, ethically, health-wise and on many different levels, but simply choosing to become a vegetarian does not mean bacon will stop smelling good.”

If you are anything like me, conflict isn’t the easiest thing to deal with. Conflict often likes to makes itself known as it races through your bloodstream when a friend or colleague brings up something they are disappointed with.  Or a lover lashes out with anger or struggles to articulate something, awash in sadness.  Or a partner lets you know what you did “wrong.”  Or a heated disagreement, sparks flying left and right.

The point in relationships isn’t to avoid conflict, however – the point is to deal with conflict constructively.

Nowadays, I am able to do that pretty well. But it’s all learned behavior, practiced and honed, with much sweat and adrenaline keeping me company. And I owe much of this essential relationship skill to an understanding of how lightning and lightning rods work.

Conflict in and of itself isn’t a problem. Often, it’s simply the squeak of a wheel desperately in need of grease. Conflict is something stuck, looking to get shook loose. If we can work with it and not freak out and run from it, freeze up in the face of it, or make it mean something’s wrong, then it can reveal a big learning or blessing. About ourselves, about the other, and about the relationship.

Perhaps you’ve heard of a Lightning Rod or Grounding Rod? It’s usually a long, tall piece of metal, often attached to the roof or side of a building, and its job is to attract the electrical energy of a lightning storm. Instead of the lightning striking the building – or your head – the Grounding Rod acts as a conduit; it collects the lightning’s energy and runs it into the ground. Hence, the term, “grounding.”

Without the Grounding Rod, the electrical energy would get into the building – or your head – and fry things.

So, the next time your nervous system starts blinking red, letting you know you’re entering into conflict zone, Ground.

Pretend your body is a Grounding Rod. Feel the electrical energy of the conflict’s lightening storm, but instead of letting it stay in your body, use your breath and intention to run it into the ground.

Then, when the lightening is dispersed and you aren’t a live wire any more, you’ll be able to think straighter and communicate clearer.

You’ll be able to make some sense of where the person is coming from, what’s squeaking that needs a shot of emotional WD40, what’s all bound up beneath what their words, asking to be loosened and looked at.

Enjoy practicing constructively dealing with conflict in a way that doesn’t involve freezing, fighting, flight-ing – or frying.

“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

And don’t forget to leave a comment below.

Best, LiYana

Next week, I’m in the Super Women Summit, a powerful posse of women entrepreneurs sharing our super secrets.

If you are in business for yourself, this may be right up your super-alley.

I’m offering a class titled, “Turn Your Sensuality into Business Power”

I’ll cover the four secrets of feminine energy so you can rev your business engines and stimulate your bottom line!

Things like:

• How to stay a woman as you’re making it in a man’s world
• What creative opportunities you may be wasting when you are cut off below the waist
• How your hormones can help (rather than hurt) your efficiency
• The #1 ingredient you need in every relationship – without which they are doomed
• How your unique brand of femininity can be your secret business sauce

Click HERE get in on the Summit yourself.

For a majority of my years in business for myself, I tried to be successful by ignoring the irrefutable fact I am a woman.

Surprise, surprise: that didn’t work very well.

I had to figure out, with a lot of trial, error and tears, how to stay connected to my body, my juice and my joy, even while in business!

It will be fun to share what’s been working for me, so I hope you’ll be joining.

Oh, and some other super women I highly suggest you listen in on: Anastasia Netri, Carey Peters, Jenn August and Alexandra Jamieson – Fabulous Femmes I know personally.

That link again to get in on the Summit, use this link: http://tinyurl.com/supwom

Enjoy, super duper woman,

LiYana

Remember that game as a kid, “Telephone?”

You sit in a circle, and one person whispers a word or phrase into the ear of the person next to them.  Then each person in turn whispers it to the next. Then last person says out loud what beat-up, garbled version the word or phrase has become.

Your communication ever feel like an adult’s version of that kid’s game -  but not that funny?

Well, there’s what you heard, and then there’s what they said.

What you hear is often a far cry from than what person intended.  Since language is an approximation, we all interpret the same words in often vastly different ways. Stopping to clarify in this way can save you so much of the pain that comes from the build-up of repeated misunderstanding.

So, when that Someone says what’s on their mind, before you agree, disagree, judge, retort or respond, repeat it back, as you heard it.

Something like, “If I got that right (repeat back what you heard)” or “What I heard was (repeat back what you heard). Did I get that right?”

You may even need to check, “Let me see if I got all of that?” or “Is there any more you want to say about that?”

And (for extra bonus points!), validate their experience. Something like, “You make sense because….”  “I can see how you could see it that way.” “I can see what you are saying …” or “I imagine that you could also be feeling…”

(You’re not saying that you feel the way they do, you are simply saying you understand what they are feeling.)

This might feel counter intuitive, but try it out. It may just steer you clear of a pile of painful misunderstanding.

So, this week, Say What?

Say what you heard, and see if it’s actually what they said.

And don’t forget to leave your comment (look for the “Comments” link at the top of the page)!

Enjoy, LiYana

PS: How do I love your comments? Let me count the ways. Your comments row my boat gently down a stream. Your comments give peace a chance. Well, at the very least, your comments make my day, so go ahead!

Getting into bed at the end of my day is one of my favorite past-times.

There in the dreamy warm sheets, at the end of the day, I ask my honey, “what was your favorite frame from today?” And then he’ll usually reciprocate and ask me the same.

What’s a “favorite frame,” you ask?

As if the day were a long roll of film, my mind runs it forward and backward along its happenings and pauses to linger on the moments that were most memorable, or that stands out in stark relief from the others.

It’s a fun way to catalog what happened. It’s a sweet way to relate. It’s a respectful way to honor the day and set up for sleep.

The thing about putting your attention on your “favorite frame” is that your mind is attracted to those moments for a reason.  There was some impression, some learning, or some importance captured in that frame. Great to suck the marrow our of the what the day’s bones have to teach.

So, this week:

At the end of the day, ask your honey,  “what was your favorite frame from today?”
And have honey ask it to you, too.
This also works just as well if your honey is YOU.

And don’t forget to leave your comment (which you’ll find at the top of the page)!

“Each [of us] should frame life so that at some future hour fact and [our] dreaming meet.”

~ Victor Hugo

Enjoy, LiYana

One of the things I love most is when you send me your questions … why is it that you always “lose” yourself in relationships?  should you work on the relationship or get out of it?  he said x, how should you respond?  she DID x, how should you respond?  how can you communicate better with your beloved?  the sex is fizzling, what
can be done? …

I love your desire to have relationships that are satisfying page turners, rather than bad mysteries with fizzling middles and painful endings.

I love your desire to cook up strong, savory and sweet partnerships, rather than ones that leave a bad taste in your mouth.

I love your desire to make your Loving more like a Do-It-Yourself project that’s designed to fit you perfectly, rather than a Paint-By-Numbers kit that you’ve outgrown.

I love your desire to know how you can do it Better, show up as more of the Truth of who you are, be more Loving, have more Fun!

And I’ve got a lot to share with you on all of that. A lot.

However, there are two truths that follow how much I love your questions.

1. I am constantly shoveling myself out from under an email avalanche (can you relate?).

2. Your questions are too juicy and rich, for others not to get a piece of ‘em, too!

So, keep bringing me your questions, and I’ll keep dishing out my answers, giving you guidance, pointing you in the direction of further resources … but we’ll do so here on my blog, rather than one-by-one on email.

So, all you have to do is post your question below, and I’ll answer it!

You can use your real name, an alias you’ve always wanted to try on, or remain anonymous. (Oh, and you’ll need to fill out the security question, so I know you are a human, not a ‘bot).

Then, either, check back in a day or so after you’ve posted it. Or if you want the posts to come to you, click the RSS feedburner icon at the top of my blog page. You can always “share it” with your favorite sharing tool, like Facebook or Twitter. Those “share it” links will be right below your question and my answer!

Ready? Set? Ask!

My best to you,

I’ve found that one of the hidden blocks to our personal power and joy as women is our competition with other women, whether overt or unspoken.

A unique way to turn this around and have way more access to your own lit-up power, came from Dolores (an alias!), a reader of my Love 3.0 website:

“dear liyana,

i just read your (long) bio

AMAZING

you are AMAZING

i had to stop comparing myself,
because that’s silly. I would rather just
be lit with the inspiration of who you are.”

Is THIS woman amazing or what?

I’m not saying that she’s amazing because she’s ladling praise on me. While that’s something I appreciate, what catches my eye is that she didn’t let herself get taken down by comparison. She turned it around. She got lit up with inspiration to light up herself.

THAT is a sign of a powerful woman.

As I said earlier, I’ve found that one of the hidden blocks to our personal power and joy as women is our competition with other women, whether overt or unspoken.

It’s been a long time (more than 5,000 years or so) during which men have held the key to the resources. Big time resources. Food. Shelter. A place in the community. Care for our children… It’s only been a short amount of time, not even a couple hundred years, since women are no longer really dependent on men, at least in most of the western world. But our bodies and brains are going on over 5,000 years of “reality” rather than the last few hundred.

For 5,000 years and more our cells and brains have been bathed in life-or-death competition – and that doesn’t just melt away with a paltry few hundred years and a handful of few generations. There are parts of our brains (not the rational parts) that simply laugh at the freedom and equality available to us over the last 200, 100 or 50 years. It’s extraordinary, unprecedented, but also painfully recent to our cellular memory. We can’t blame ourselves for having DNA that instructs us to beat out the other woman so we can stay alive, fed, clothed, housed, and our children looked out for as well.

So, this week, Get Lit.

Notice that woman (or women) in your life you compare yourself to. Maybe you feel envious of her, jealous of her, that she doesn’t deserve what she has or is, or that she’s more than you’ll ever be.

Rather than having it take you down, use the thing you are comparing to get inspired. Rather than seeing her as a threat, notice how you can see her as an inspiration, pointing the way for you to step into an aspect of yourself – your own unique, radiantly lit-up expression of Woman.

Allow her to be the spark that ignites you and sets you aflame. Get Lit.

The ability to empower others, while empowering ourselves, is a sign of true power.

And don’t forget to leave me your comments - there’s a link just under the title of this Mini Relationship Tip!

Enjoy, LiYana

My husband sent this blog post by Arjuna Ardagh to me, quite a gift to receive from a man, to a woman. Enjoy!

* * *

A few days ago, after a particularly exquisite evening with my wife Chameli, I put this post up on Facebook before going to bed:

“I have had many, many great teachers in my life. A super abundance. No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom. My marriage has become the guru, the salvation, the muse, the crack through which the divine shines through.”

When I woke up the next morning, there were the usual offerings of people who liked the post as well as comments. One man had the vulnerability and courage to post this on facebook:

“Thank you Arjuna for this sharing, I feel like [I’m] in front of a choice which is between feeling envious of what you have and I don’t, or instead to decide that ‘I want that too,’ and, as you show, it is possible…”

I was touched.

Over the next days, I got several more messages like this from men: vulnerable men, honest men, rare and courageous men. They came in as private messages on Facebook or through our website, and they all said basically the same thing:

“I read your Facebook post. I want what you have. Show me how to get it.”

So, friends, here it is. The short guide on how to worship a woman, and why it’s the wisest thing that a man can do. First of all, lets pop a few very understandable doubts that you might have. I’m familiar with all of them.

1.    “I’m wounded and damaged in my relationships to the feminine.”
So am I, dear brother, so am I. My parents divorced in a messy way when I was four. I grew up alone with my mother. She did her very best to provide for me, but she was unhappy and insecure. By the time I started to have relationships with women myself in my early teens, I discovered that I had a mountain of resentments, fears, and separation in my relation to the feminine.  The conscious practice of worship can become a part of healing the wounds.

2.    “Arjuna, you’re lucky. You’ve got an incredible partner. I’m together with a woman who’s not like Chameli.”
I really don’t have the ultimate answer to that doubt or question. It certainly could seem to be the case that I’ve been lucky in finding a great woman, but here’s how it happened for me. I’ve had a lot of less lucky connections in my life. I’ve experienced my share of the manipulative side of the feminine: the victim, the rageful, the revengeful. And I have seen the ugly side of the masculine psyche in myself.  A few weeks prior to meeting Chameli, my wife, something deep and profound shifted in me, which I believe can shift for anyone in the same way.

3.    “I don’t have a partner at all, and I sometimes doubt if I’ll ever meet anybody.”
Being with a partner where worship is not flowing, or not being with a partner at all, are basically two aspects of the same situation: you’ve had an intuition or a glimpse of the possibilities of a deeper love, and you want more of it. The solutions are the same.

4.    “I feel my heart is closed down. I live in my head a lot, and I wouldn’t even know what worship was if it broke into my house at 2 o’clock in the morning and held me at gunpoint.”
That’s where the whole thing starts for all of us, when we realize that we don’t yet know how to love. And that’s that the big question that you have to consider: “Is that okay with me?” Never mind how much money you make, or how many friends you have on Facebook, no matter how nice a house you live in, or no matter how big a car you drive, no matter how impressive your partner’s bust size, or how much you meditate and become spiritual… have you loved for real, in a total and undefended way? If not, and here’s where you have to be honest with yourself, is that OK with you? Is it OK to die one day without the heart’s gift having been fully given?

Eight or nine years ago, I came to that question in myself, exactly that, and I discovered that the answer was, if I was was raw and vulnerable and uncomplicated, that it was actually not OK. If I died one day without having fully loved, it would not have truly been a life well lived.

Many many years ago, I went to Bali for a vacation, on my own. I met up with some other young travelers there and we hired a Jeep to take us on a tour of the island. We drove up right to the highest point of the island, where Tourists don’t usually go. Our guide took us to one of the most sacred temples. It was surrounded by a big brick wall with an ornate entrance. After removing our shoes and wrapping scarves around our heads, we stepped together through this entrance. Inside, there was a short courtyard and then another brick wall with another entrance. After more preparations of lighting incense and giving offerings, we stepped through the second entrance. We were allowed to go through the opening in one more wall, but that was it. All together there were ten walls around the deity in the middle. Hindus could go beyond the fourth wall. Devotees of that particular deity could go beyond the fifth wall, and so it went on. The only people allowed to approach the deity directly were those who had given their lives completely and totally to its worship. Everyone else could come a little closer, a little closer, to the innermost beauty, but not all the way to the center.

I’m not a big believer of the worship of statues, but there’s a beautiful symbolism to what I saw there, because a woman’s heart is just like that. At the essence of every woman’s heart is the divine feminine. It contains everything that has ever been beautiful, or lovely, or inspiring, in any woman, anywhere, at any time. The very essence of every woman’s heart is the peak of wisdom, the peak of inspiration, the peak of sexual desirability, the peak of soothing, healing love. The peak of everything. But it’s protected, for good reason, by a series of concentric walls. To move inwardly from one wall to the next requires that you intensify your capacity to devotion, and as you do so, you are rewarded with Grace. This is not something you can negotiate verbally with a woman. She doesn’t even know consciously how to open those gates herself. They are opened magically and invisibly by the keys of worship.

If you stand on the outside of the outermost wall, all you have available to you, like many other unfortunate men, is pornography. For $1.99 a minute, you can see her breasts, maybe her vagina, and you can stimulate yourself in a sad longing for deeper love.

Step though another gate, and she will show you her outer gift-wrapping. She’ll look at you with a certain twinkle of her eye. She’ll answer your questions coyly. She’ll give you just the faintest hint that there is more available.

Step through another gate with your commitment, with your attention, with the small seedlings of devotion, and she’ll open her heart to you more. She’ll share with you her insecurities, the way that she’s been hurt, her deepest longings. Some men will back away at this point. They realize that the price they must pay to go deeper is more than they are willing to give. They start to feel a responsibility.  But for those few who step though another gate, they come to discover her loyalty, her willingness to stick with you no matter what, her willingness to raise your children, stick up for you in conversation, and, if you are lucky, even pick up your dirty socks now and then. And so it goes on. You’ve got the gist by now.

Somewhere around the second wall from the center, she casts the veils of her personality aside, and shows you that she is both a human being and also a portal into something much greater than that. She shows you a wrath that is not hers, but all womens’.   She shows you a patience that is also universal. She shows you her wisdom. At this point you start to experience the archetypes of women, who have been portrayed as goddesses and mythological figures in every tradition.

Then, at the very center, in the innermost temple itself, all the layers of your devotion are flooded with reward all at once. You discover the very essence of the feminine, and in a strange way that is not exactly romantic, but profoundly sacred all the same, you realize that you could have got here with any woman if you had just been willing to pass through all the layers of initiation. Any woman is every woman, and every woman is any woman at the same time. When you love a woman completely, at the very essence of her being, this is the one divine feminine flame. It is what has made every woman in history beautiful. It’s the flame behind the Mona Lisa, and Dante’s Beatrice, and yes, also Penelope Cruz and Heidi Klum. You discover the magic ingredient which has lead every man to fall in love with a woman.

When you learn how to pay attention to the essence of the feminine in this way, you fall to the floor in full body prostration, tears soaking your cheeks and clothes, and you wonder how you could have ever taken Her, in all of Her forms, for granted even for a second.

http://arjunaardagh.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/why-it-is-wise-to-worship-a-woman/