FROM RELATIONSHIP BLUEPRINT TO DIVINE PLEASURE MAP with LiYana Silver
Sex – Tantra and Kama Sutra
Francesca Gentille
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Episode 88 - FROM RELATIONSHIP BLUEPRINT TO DIVINE PLEASURE MAP with LiYana Silver

FROM RELATIONSHIP BLUEPRINT TO DIVINE PLEASURE MAP with LiYana Silver, Relationship Expert, who works with women & couples to step out of relationship ruts and into extraordinary, satisfying partnerships!

In this episode, LiYana gives us the easy steps to move beyond who we think we are (our Relationship Blueprint) in relationship to the soul of deep intimacy. Discover how to use Viva La Difference between men and women for greater understanding, connection, peace and ease. Learn the key questions that unlock the heart & fill your love pump. Uncover the two most common problems in relationship. Learn the number one simple step to come back from depletion, and reclaim the power of choice.

Transcript

Transcript

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome to Sex, Tantra and

Kama

Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex. I’m your host

Francesca Gentille

, and with me today is LiYana Silver. LiYana is a relationship expert who works with women and couples to step out of painful relationship patterns and ruts and to step into those really extraordinary relationships of choice and happiness. Welcome LiYana.

 

LiYana Silver: Francesca, so wonderful to be here. Thank you.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Well it’s wonderful to have you here because I don’t, I think all of us are interested in having more extraordinary relationship, and thank you our listening audience for being on this podcast to find out more about that. And what would, what would you say is one of the cores of those ruts or painful relationship patterns and, you know, how do we start working over towards extraordinary?

LiYana Silver: Well I would say there’s only two things that get us into the relationship ruts, and fortunately they’re actually quite repairable or shiftable, and the two things are generally misunderstanding, and the second thing is not knowing what actions to take or what to do, right. And so when you have an understanding and when you have a clear direction to go in and the motivation to do so, that seems like a great direction – “I want to go in it” – that is how painful patterns lighten up and shift and that is how relationship ruts become a nice smooth road.

 

Francesca Gentille

: So what do we commonly misunderstand in our relationship? Are there some common pitfalls and misunderstandings when we’re trying to love one another and connect with one another?

 

LiYana Silver: There are… Oh boy. Well the couple of the main ones I would say is to… there’s two or three, and the main one is – I’ll go back a little bit and explain why. So when we, we’re little growing beings and we get all this information from our mother, father or care takers and we soak it up like a sponge and we create what I call a relationship blueprint and it’s all good and the bad qualities, all the positive and negative qualities, and we create this kind of image of the perfect savior, all the ways our caretakers did it and all the ways they didn’t, and we turned that around and when we start to create relationships we kind of project like a, like a movie on a projection screen we project that on to that person, and then when they don’t quite measure up, which they can’t and they don’t, we feel abandoned, we feel unsafe, we feel unmet and unloved and we feel like they’re a unsuccessful savior. And so when we can go back and understand that blueprint, take a look at it and see, “They’re not broken, I’m not broken, it’s just a misunderstanding”, then it opens up all this space for new relating to our partner. So not relating to them like a failed savior, but as a, very much as a partner, very much as an equal.

 

Francesca Gentille

: So what I think I hear you saying is that instead of, you know, “First I fall in love and later my partner becomes the enemy, the kind of person who’s paling me”, is to shift out of that into “Oops, you  know, we’re just human, we’re just trying to figure this out”, and really have a more kind sense of reaching out and saying, “You know, would you collaborate with me in trying to figure out in a new way who we are today and how we could create a relationship that we love, maybe with a new vision.” Is that what you’re saying?

 

LiYana Silver: It’s exactly what I’m saying, and you said it so beautifully. And I think there’s this other factor too, which is if you’re in a heterosexual relationship - some of these will apply even if you’re not - but there is a lot of misunderstanding around the way we interact based on our genders. Now whether that’s biological or culturated, there’s a lot of different ways that men do things and process things and act and react, and there’s very different ways that women do that. And it’s a generality, but it points us in the right direction to getting us, like you said, on the same, I say on the same team or being like, “Hey, we’re in this together. How can we move from being adversaries to allies?” And, you know, I say sometimes, for example women, when we have a lack of understanding of how men, the differences of how men do process information or act or decide, it can look really odd and really scary and we can think, “You know, what’s wrong with that hairy misbehaving woman over there?” Which he’s not, right; he’s a man and he does it in his way which is beautiful. And when we have that information and understanding, we can go, “Wow, it isn’t the way I would do it, but it is the way you do it and not only can I respect that, but there’s so much more possible. Now we can actually have fun. Now we can actually give to each other and enjoy each other.”

 

Francesca Gentille

: I love that. I love that you brought that up, that sense of, as the French would say, Viva La Diferance, celebrating the differences and acknowledging that we’re not the same. Even if it was two women or two men, we’re not the same. And they’ve done studies on synaptic brain patterning, and the way that hormones are released from our mom to us in utero literally maps our brain. And so most men and some women end up with a brain patterning where emotions are in one part of the brain, and there’s a greater mathematical linear capability. And most women and some men end up with a synaptic brain patterning that has emotions available all across the brain. And some, a more kind of spatial, a spatial ability, and that when someone has that brain patterning, male or female – you said that so great – it’s not against us. It’s a unique way that their brain works, and there’s this level of acceptance and then there could even be a celebration of “How can we work together with our differences”, rather than, “You need to be a carbon copy of me. I’m looking for the person…”, and we even sometimes hear that, “I’m looking for the person who can be like me.”

 

LiYana Silver: And wouldn’t it be so much easier, you know, if you could just be like me, think like me, behave like me; we’d have something really good going on here.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Yeah.

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah. And I think that, you know, one of the examples you’ve got me thinking about there is, I’ve worked with a lot of women, and when I go into this area of the differences between men and women you can see these huge light bulbs going on when I tell them, “Listen, you want to know what number one thing men want for you and from you is?” And you know, they get a little look, and I’m like, “No, it’s not really that. It’s not really that they want to get in your pants. I mean they do, but that’s not the number one thing.” And the number one thing is they want you to be happy and to be lit up like a candle, you know, a flame and joyful and radiant. That’s what they want, right. They want that because all good things come from that, all fun things, all life giving things. And they do, everything that they’re doing is in a way a service of that. And when I tell men a little bit about what’s going on for women, right, with this different brain patterning and the ways that that more spatial overlating relational way of seeing the world affects how they are, they go, “Oh my gosh. Wow! Oh, and I can do these three simple things to presence her back to her joy and her lit upness. Wow! Great!”

 

Francesca Gentille

: And lets talk a little bit more about what those three simple things might be…

 

LiYana Silver: Yes.

 

Francesca Gentille

: for me, for, with women, for women with men, and/or for any of us with people who have a strong yin, or feminine aspect, or any of us who have a strong yang, or a masculine aspect. And also how we use discernment; you know, when is it, “Hmm, this isn’t going to work. We can’t become true collaborators”, after we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors. And I encourage us to support our sponsors because that allows fabulous shows like this to continue to come to you. And we’ll be right back.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex. We’re talking with LiYana Silver, relationship expert, who’s helping guide us from those painful relationship patterns and ruts into really extraordinary relationship. And you were just talking about maybe three key tips or practices that when we’re, when we’re reaching that, the edge of what’s holding us together and we’re starting to disconnect from one another. And the men, “How do we draw our women back”, as women, “How do we draw the men back”.

 

LiYana Silver: This is getting into my favorite area here, so I’m happy to share these and they’re super simple, kind of revelatory simple. And this first one really works with men and women. It just goes straight to the heart of us as human beings. So I call it filling up the appreciation banks. And as you think of their amount of space inside where we actually feel appreciated, we feel like people see us, we’re seen, we’re heard, we’re valued, we’re cherished, we’re loved, if we think of that like a bank most of us are walking around overdrawn. It’s pretty, if you open up the safe there’s like a little mouse running around; there’s not even a coin or two, right. So this is filling up the appreciation bank. And the reason is is that when we actually feel appreciated and loved and cherished and cared for in the ways that really are meaningful for us, we’re our best selves, we’re our highest selves. We will naturally want to give our partners in the world our best selves, our most love. It’s just like a law of physics; it’s a really beautiful presencing thing. So the way you go about filling up the appreciation bank of a man or a woman is take a second and like check in inside with what, “What can I really, what do I notice about this person that I really could appreciate? What’s going well? Is there a way they just touched me or something that they did that was moving or impressed me or soothed me or something that they said so well or just a way that they are or a way that they look?” You check inside for the authentic real truth for you, ‘cause if it’s not genuine they’re going to smell it and it just doesn’t work. Just check in; “What is good here already?” And then you just have it come out of your mouth… Right, just an acknowledgment of that.

 

Francesca Gentille

: And, you know, one of the thigs that I also love is when in doubt ask the person what they would like to be appreciated for, and it’s wonderful to come from that authentic place. You know, I may authentically appreciate LiYana, how eloquent you are and that you are so dedicated to helping men and women. But perhaps you’re longing for something else to be appreciated. So right now, if there was something you were longing to be appreciated for, what could it be?

 

LiYana Silver: Yes. And, you know, I’ll answer the question for me and then just say one more thing. So you actually hit it on the head. Just your words, what, your words of noticing what I just did and how it affected the space, that’s exactly what lands for me. So wow, your speaking is really eloquent. I am, I’m smiling and kind of glowing over here. But you bring up a really good point; we often experience love and appreciation in way different ways that our partner. So asking them, you know, “Would it land better if I told you what I thought or if I wrote it down in a note or if I just, you know, fixed your computer, will that really land for you? In what ways would you feel appreciated?” You bring up a really, really good point. Now this may sound too simple, but I’ll tell you I was working with a couple just recently. We worked together for four sessions for only a month and we started out with this. And they were together three years, they went from, they came into my office being pretty clear they were going to break up. And after that first session and they just started throwing this stuff around like crazy, just appreciating, appreciating, appreciating, and the tenor entirely changed. Now we still had issues to work out, you know; there’s some stuff from the past and ways they’re relating, it’s not like this takes care of everything. But everything changed. And then we were able to kind of deal with the rough patches and what was going on. They are in the middle of kind of recreating what they want for their relationship, they’re both these pretty glowing beings, and you can feel this third entity of their relationship, and that happened in a month. That happened, it started with this really simple exercise. It just, I love this; it’s so simple and just has huge ripple effects.

 

Francesca Gentille

: I absolutely agree and I’m still waiting to hear what you long to be appreciated for.

 

LiYana Silver: Even more specificity, okay. Well if you want to continue Francesca, you can appreciate me for how well, good of a job I’ve done, say even in this interview. You could also notice - it’s a little bit of a harder question, we’re not in the same room – but you could always appreciate me for how I look. And then one of the biggest ones is anything that I’ve done that’s made a difference for you; done or said, and so those kinds of words drawing attention to any way I’ve contributed will pretty much just lands there in my appreciation center.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Thank you. Thank you…

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah.

 

Francesca Gentille

: for telling me that. And I love that you gave me a map on how to appreciate you, and I want to say that I’m absolutely appreciating the, that you have the two, you know, the two keys, the three steps, the…. It’s how I love to learn information, and I’m imagining that our listening audience feels that way as well, that when something’s clear and based on steps we can grab onto it. So I love that you’re doing that and it really gets in deep. And I have met you in person, and our listening audience, she’s delicious. You know, a petite and alive and this beautiful dark hair and this vibrancy and this juiciness, and yet a deep intelligence, and I don’t know about you but my favorite combination is a sense of attractiveness partnered with a deep intelligent soul; I think that’s irresistible and I think you’re irresistible. And then in terms of making a difference for me, I would say that I had to cancel with you once before and I think I was sick or there was something in my family coming up, and you’ve been so gracious and stayed connected and really held the torch that we would be back here together making a difference for our listening audience. And I’m going go invite us both to breathe that in.

 

LiYana Silver: Well I have to say for those of you listening, now Francesca’s an expert extraordinaire in her own right, that she nailed it. So if you want to rewind and listen to that, she really heard the ways that I wanted to be appreciated and I’m just feeling centered and glowing and so appreciated and kind of rejuvenated, ready to go on and give you even more. So, just to let you know, she nailed it.

 

Francesca Gentille

: And for our listening audience, I almost needed to take some notes, and so it’s okay to have a cheat sheet if you ask your partner, “What would you like to be appreciated for sweetheart?”, and they have, you know, a little bit of a list. I really do have a very good memory, but almost when we got to the third one I almost felt like I needed to take some notes, so it’s totally okay to say to your partner, “Honey, could you repeat that again?” or “I really want to get this right, so I’m just going to grab a little sheet of paper over here and write this down because I want to appreciate you sweetheart the way that you want to be appreciated. I want to make sure that it’s getting inside you and that you know how precious you are to me.” And we’re going to come back after a break and a word from our sponsors with more of those steps on how do we reconnect, how do we fill each other back up, so that we can stay together and grow that extraordinary relationship. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex with the delicious LiYana Silver, giving us the gems for our relationship. And we were, you have some more for us on those what brings us back into connection with one another when we’re, when we’re kind of disconnecting or disintegrating in some way. We’ve got appreciation; that works for men or women. What else?

 

LiYana Silver: (unintelligible) on that last one. So when we’re disconnected this is, I call it an appreciation sandwich. And so appreciation kind of just (unintelligible) the path with rose pedals, right, like it just makes the whole business a lot more pleasant to go about. And here’s some ways to actually make things better, improve them, right, there’s something that’s not working and improve them. So the appreciation sandwich is that you start with something that you appreciate, and then you say one clear simple doable request, and they you end with an appreciation. Now I’m going to give kind of a banal example, but sometimes those little things are what gets in the way daily, right. So say for example I really need my partner to do the dishes. And I could just say, “You never do the dishes; it makes my life hell. Why don’t you do them?” And that doesn’t get us very far. And so it actually just gives us more disconnection. So in a way when we’re feeling like there’s, we’re disconnected, there’s something we’re needing, there’s something we’re not getting, you can start with something like, “I really appreciate the way that you have your eye on providing for me and for our house. And I’ve noticed one thing that would make a huge difference, which is if you could do the dishes once a day. I’ll do them every other day, but just once a day every other day it would make me feel really cared for and like I could take a lot of load off, then I have a little bit more attention for you and love, space of love for you. Thank you so much.”

 

Francesca Gentille

: You know, I’m going to breathe that in because that’s so beautiful when we give an appreciation and then we ask for something and then appreciate again, and I also want to make a little note for us that sometimes we’ve gotten too depleted to do that. So resentment is built, we’ve waited too long, and we just can’t muster that sincerity and that centeredness to give an authentic appreciation. What do you suggest for those times? Could be we’ve been working too much, could be we’ve been sick, could be – as in my case – my mom died, you know…

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah.

 

Francesca Gentille

: when we get, you know, depleted, too depleted and what would you say prior to, you know, is there something that can pump our own love pump, so to speak, so we can come back to that center and make that gracious request?

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah. Yeah and thank you for bringing that up. There are so many times… You know, I had one the other day where I was, we got into a stupid fight, me and my partner, and a little tiff right, and I just could not find the place in me to reach out and do my own tools. I just couldn’t, like I just couldn’t do it. And so what you can do at this point is this is a look inside you rather than a way to relate. So we’re so depleted, we’re, you know, life is handing us some really challenging things, like a death, like you said, or it’s just intense. And the reason we can’t access our sort of love banks or, you know, our love pump is because we are depleted in some way, and so the question then is, “Okay, what do I need?” And so you just want to take a second, maybe get quiet or if you need to leave the room, just say, like, “This isn’t about you. I just want to get a little introspective here.” And just take a second, kind of drop into your body and check in, like, sort of asking yourself, “What do I need?” And I use the word ‘need’ specifically. It’s a lot of us walk around pretending we don’t need anything or, you know, having a hard time if we express any needs, but what we need in terms of good food or rest or affection or getting into nature or listening to music or, whatever our needs are the things that represents us to who we are. And so we can just check and say, like, “Okay honey”, you know, “Hey, what do you need”, checking in with yourself, “What would I most want right now?” And if it’s something like, you know, “I’d like to eat an entire pan of brownies”, and you know the answer that comes has some side effects that you don’t really want, then you just ask again, “What would that pan of brownies really give me? Would it actually, what’s a layer below that? What am I really looking for? And then how can I either ask for that or give that to myself?” So in a way we have to take responsibility in those times of depletion to check in with what it is that would make a difference, get it or give it to ourselves or request it, and that’ll give us enough resources to kind of get back on the train.

 

Francesca Gentille

: Ahhh, I’m going to take that it; that feels really nice, and I’m going to allow for myself and for our listeners, we get to take care of our self, we get to nourish ourselves, and that sometimes I forget that and that’s okay too. And…

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah.

 

Francesca Gentille

: there are times I’m too depleted to even nourish myself and that’s okay too. And then we come back to center again. So that’s, I love that. And what else?

 

LiYana Silver: Well this is, this is going back to a little bit of relating. This is just sort of a really fun tip for everyone, but specifically for men. Men - you listening, you tell me if I’m write – you really listen for when there’s depletion, when there’s an issue coming up, right, you’re talking with your partner – and we’ll assume she’s a woman just for, just for now – and you’re listening, and you’re like, “Okay, what’s the point of what she’s saying? How can I solve the problem? How can I make this better? How can I, how can I provide something really useful here?” And on the other side if we’re going to cross over, it’s so frustrating sometimes for a woman to just not be able to get out what she’s trying to get out; “Why are you trying to solve my problem? Do you think that I can’t take care of it? Do you think I’m stupid? I don’t know what the point is yet; I haven’t worked out through my thoughts. Could you just listen?”, and we say none of that. So the tip for men – and I’ll come back to women in a second – is to, especially when you’re listening to a woman who biologically does have emotions more mapped over the brain is to kind of sit on your hands metaphorically and listen, and just listen and breathe because she doesn’t necessarily need you to fix anything yet. And in fact you could even ask, “Do you just want me to listen or do you want me to help you solve a problem? I want to know how you want to be listened to.” And for women, if you have the wherewithal at all you can say, “Alright, I just need to get something out, you know. I just, can you just listen? I might need your help in solving the problem later.” And I notice that this heads off at the path a lot of the depletion cycle, because we try and share something, try to fix it and it just blows up in our face…

 

Francesca Gentille

: You know, that’s such a good point is that, it’s so hard. We love each other and we want to take the pain away, and yet there’s something really gorgeous and deeply intimate if I’m big enough, centered enough to just be there and be safe, to be spoken to, there’s this phrase called hold space for, someone to have their emotional experience, something so deeply, deeply intimate about that. And it is a new paradigm. Male or female, we can go into that kind of fixing mode where it’s like, “Oh let me tell you how to do this. You know, let me try to, you know, take the pain away immediately that you’re going through, that confusion that you’re going through”, and something more intimate, more connective happens when we can listen and just take it in and not take it on, but take it in what this person is wanting to share. And I know we only have a few minutes left LiYana, and I wanted to make sure that we talk a little bit about choice and authenticity, and even if maybe give us some resources on how do we, how do we discern what our authentic blueprint – we started with that blueprint – what our, what the authentic blueprint is for me, how do I figure that out and, you know, when is there a point where I need to say, “You know what, you are adorable and I love you, but it looks like we can’t create a blueprint, a shared blueprint?” So can you give us maybe some resources or, you know, maybe an exercise or something for that?

 

LiYana Silver: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll just say a few words on that. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t matter the shape or the look or the feel or the structure of the relationship. It matters that the people in the relationship have chosen it. It could look very traditional, conventional, it could way wild out there, and I’ve seen them all. And they’re, and the only thing that is the glue that makes them extraordinary is that the people inside have chosen then, rather than just saying, “Oh, well this is good enough” or “I’ll settle.” And I think that that process of understanding what it is, what is our authentic choice is a process to be gentle around and it is a progression and it is a process of self-awareness, of noticing more and more, like, “What is it that I really like? When is it that I light up and that my life energy is flowing? Ah, there and there and there.” And the process of being more and more aware and holding our hand, so to speak will get us clear and clear on what our traces are, what our authentic leanings are. And I know that we only have a few minutes and I want to just leave you with some really potent questions that you can ask when you’re kind of at that cusp of “I don’t know whether we want to get married or whether we want to break up.” And these are actually questions you could ask yourself or you could ask your partner, which is “What have I, is there anything or what have I been doing that’s been having you lose respect for me or not get the love that you want? What are those things.” It’s a tough, edgy, edgy question to ask, but then it invites who know what’s been unspoken and what’s unsaid. And when we know, “Oh my gosh, you’ve been needing that from me. I can totally provide that”, it makes possible whole other, a whole other phase of relationship. So, you know, “Is there anything that you’ve been wanting or needing from me or, that you haven’t been getting? What are those things?” And…

 

Francesca Gentille

: That’s really walking of an edge that can, has the potential, like the (unintelligible) for crisis, for change, which is crisis and opportunity, where you’re walking into the edge of that crisis, but there’s an opportunity to create something deeper and richer and more connected on the other side.

 

LiYana Silver: Exactly. Exactly. So…

 

Francesca Gentille

: I wish we could go even longer but I think we’re reaching the end of our time, and I’m going to enjoy having you back, I just know it. And how, in the meantime how can people get a hold of you and get more of your wisdom and more of your teachings?

 

LiYana Silver: Oh wonderful. I look forward to coming back and to just, you know, delving even further, and in the meantime the best place to go is my website and it’s redefiningmonogamy.com, redefiningmonogamy.com, and there are all kinds of resources there. There’s books and websites I recommend. I have free teleclasses, I have some informational products that are like home study courses. And if you want you can start off by signing up for my mailing list and you’ll get two free, I call them reports, and one is on how to diffuse reactivity in your relationship and the other is how to start on an appreciation cleanse for yourself – I don’t like to say diet, you know – but it really is a strict appreciation cleanse. So those are really fun to start off. And you can always contact me there if you have a question. So again, my website is www.redefiningmonogamy, and monogamy is m-o-n-o-g-a-m-y, dot com (www.redefiningmonogamy.com).

 

Francesca Gentille

: Thank you dear heart. And thank you, our listening audience, for being on this journey of the soul of sexuality and relationships, the heart of communication and relating. And if you want to find out more about LiYana, see her gorgeous picture, get connected to her website, read the transcripts from this show, also get connected to me and my services and email me and stay in contact with me, you can do that at www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia.com, Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex.