Hello all. We hope this writing finds you in good health and well-resourced. It's hard to believe that the end of the year is in sight. But we know it is as we've just booked our travel for this year's Returning Home workshop in Switzerland. This year, it's a real family affair with Reuben, our son, joining his to share some of his Fundamentals of Well-Being work, and Hae In, his beautiful wife joining us to offer morning yoga and cacao for our ceremony.
We have also just booked our tickets for our Amazonian Intensive in January. At the time of writing, there are only 4 places left for this intimate and life-transforming journey.
Our 35th Wedding Anniversary
During our recent time out to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary, we shared some of the insights as they were unfolding through our holiday (holy days) time in Greece. We've brought some of them together for you here.
Susannah:
"We’ve had many lessons in intimacy in the last days, as the space between us starts really cooking with our wedding anniversary alchemy. One of the big ones is the depth of closeness brought when Ya’Acov made space for and welcomed the existential rage that lives in me.. and how that fire, feeling welcome, feeds so much.
Ya’Acov is reading about the long and painful history of Jerusalem, religious surety weaving its bloody way through the centuries, and I am reading Melvin Sheldrake’s book "Entangled Life" about mycelial networks and the ambiguous nature of any sort of “individual” - inter-dependence and symbiosis are fundamental to life even more profoundly than we’ve known.
Side by side the many currents of our humanity and our understanding and our non-understanding coexist."
Ya'acov:
"This is the woman I chose to spend my life with, my muse, my inspiration, my harbour.
After 38 years together, I can honestly say that all the hard sculpting of soul from the debris of ego we have done together, the shadow dance that is between men and women (and yes - between women and women and men and men and any other identity we discover), is the roots of a love that grows deeper. Eros is the source of life and if it’s not getting deeper , there’s something in the way, something hidden that asks for our attention. So, to all my brothers I say - once you’ve found your partner, commit. Go ahead, lock the door and throw away the key and - if you’re a he who loves she’s, spend whatever time it takes to find out what she needs, lives and desires - and give it. Wholeheartedly. Fully. And if you do, maybe, maybe, you will receive the most precious jewel this universe has to offer, your woman as she truly is. Capiche? Sending out love and strength"
susannah:
"This is Ya’Acov, the incredible man I love with all my everything. 38 years ago, when we met, I knew it was him, but I had no idea what the journey would entail.
After some wild years in my early 20s of exploration and ‘free dancing’ I had come to the recognise that I wanted to be all of me with one man, and for him to have a space, with me, to be all of him. This was a longing for full spectrum sharing with one other being, instead of reserving this part of myself for you, this part for him, this part for him… This longing became a prayer, and I am blessed that Ya’Acov arrived soon after - and we recognised each other.
And yes, I am talking about our woman-man journey as that is what I know, but I imagine much of this applies across intimate relationships of all/no genders.
In two days we will celebrate our marriage 35 years ago. Marriage changed something very particular. Suddenly we had so much more relaxed energy for our lives, as we were not constantly yet unconsciously scratching the “Are you still here?” “Do I still want to be here?” spot.
Once that 'cat-flap' was closed, we had the energy and safety to begin exploring our spectrums together. It’s been a strong, challenging and hugely rewarding ride. We’ve had our share of massive arguments and major crises.
What do I want to say to my fellow women who are engaged in loving a man? It’s about what it takes, or what has taken me, to recognise and soften the armour that was keeping my man out - even as I longed for more intimacy. This has not been a palatable journey. It’s not flattered my self image to own the depths of my female mistrust, suspicion, resentment, passive aggression, aggression, meanness, withholding, blame and nasty assumptions about men in general and my man in particular. All this rooted in the survival strategies of generations of women and centuries of pain, and is normalised, as I see it, by the laying of our human sorrows at the door of 'toxic masculinity.'
We are all in pain. The majority of us long for intimacy and are simultaneously terrified of it. It takes such strength, mutual trust and safety to let down the draw bridges of our castles and make love, not war.
The good news from our relationship frontline is that it just keeps getting better. We go through our peaks and valleys, and keep recognising how essential these relationship intensives (ie our holidays/holy days together) are for the journey we are on. As we go deeper the harvest is something I didn’t even know I could dream of, as I didn’t know this level of love and mutual desire could exist and go on growing/deepening and healing as we are discovering that it can.
The menopause was and is such a journey which has brought so much treasure as well as tests. We send love into the web as we give gratitude for our lives, and all the blessings we are able to give and receive."
ya'acov:
"35 years ago today we got married. On a morning that began in misty Devon rain and the news that our teacher at the time, Gabrielle Roth, had food poisoning and couldn’t make it - we stood up side by side, took a deep breath and said ok, ‘So it is. We will just need to marry ourselves.’
And, witnessed by a strong circle of friends and family, in a ceremony we had downloaded direct (before mobile phones and the internet) that was a blend of Jewish, Quaker Christian, dance, and a Native American pipe prayer, with four dear friends holding our chuppa, we made our vows and married each other.
The power of that ceremony has carried us through some really hard times. Our vows and the commitments we made that day have, over time, set us free. Today, we send our love and respect back to those two young ambitious, poetic, hard-working peaceniks. You guys had the chutzpah to go for it. Despite the wounds we each brought with us, we have made peace between a man and a woman. And we continue to do so.
And peace takes enormous strength - and it doesn’t mean perfect harmony 100% of the time.
It means each of us taking responsibility for our stories and actions and stepping out of the blame game. Do we fall? Sometimes. Do we still need the boxing gloves we keep in our living room? Yes.
Harvest time is the result of what we sow. And in this moment, today, we want to say that peace between a man and a woman - a passionate lusty, full-bodied, tender peace - is 100% possible.
And that kind of peace, peace between opposites - a peace born out of total commitment, deep listening, shadow work, and lots and lots of movement - is alive and well in this world now. And that is our work, our lives and our prayer."
susannah:
"With immense gratitude, we prepare to come home, to bring into our everyday life what has been revealed in these holy days.
We have been witnessing our vicious circles and deepening our medicine circles, and now comes the work of integration - to bring this beauty home and incorporate it in our home flow. As we know, this process takes attention and intention. And the honey of the harvest we have been experiencing is such a powerful motivation.
On the vicious circle side, we witness how each of our unacknowledged fear triggers the self’s protective adaptive survival mechanisms (what we call a “SPASM” in Movement Medicine) resulting inevitably in unconscious aggression which tends to lead to (and co-arise with) the mirror image within the other. This mutual co-arising of our pain stories is magnetic and seductive and it takes consciousness, will, love, patience and courage to choose something different. Which always feels like a risk to the part of ourselves identified with needing to be self protective.
And yet the nectar of the benevolent medicine circles we have been experiencing here make all those risks worthwhile.
We are very happy and fortunate to have had this opportunity to pause and honour this milestone, half of “three score years and ten” married to each other.
We send our prayers in all 8 directions for peace, knowing a little bit of the strength it takes to choose another path than the vicious circle. We bow to every soul on earth engaged in this quest, however visible or not this is from the outside."
Thank you to all of you who got in touch in one way or another to celebrate this milestone. We very much appreciate the warmth we received.
Finally, if you're a couple and would like some input from us and what we have found most important in forging the relationship we have now, come and join us on the "Space Between Us" an online weekend for couples: Fri 22 Nov - Sun 24 Nov 2024.
If you want to improve your relationships, intimate and otherwise, we highly recommend the Embodied Listening self timed home study course, which you can do solo, with a partner or with a Study Buddy.
Wishing you all a good ride on the falling leaves as the Autumn leads us into Winter.
With our love and 21 Gratitudes,
Susannah & Ya'Acov
