Honoring Your Own Needs as a Gift of Love
In this video from the 2020 Embodied Men's Leadership Training, John guides a practice to meet your own needs in your heart. He asserts that when your partner feels and backs away from your unmet needs, their response is actually a gift. By connecting with and honoring your own needs first, while also acknowledging your partner's needs, you can show up to your partner cleanly and in integrity with your own heart.
Here is the practice:
Close your eyes and begin to feel the muscle of your heart. Feel the weight of it. Take a few slow, relaxed breaths into your heart. Use the muscles around your heart to gently compress it from the top down.
From here, get curious. What do you need in this moment? Do you need devotion? Loving touch? Do you need depth or presence? Feel your need in the dense tissue of your heart.
Press your need down into the root of your heart.
Now imagine your partner fully meeting your need in the most beautiful way possible. How would they breathe? How would they move? What quality of touch or attention would they bring?
Next, imagine what your partner might need in this moment. Trust the first thing that comes to mind.
Staying with and feeling your own heart's need, imagine meeting your partner's need. How could you meet their need fully? Allow yourself to get creative. This is your art.
From this place of feeling your own need while imagining your partner's need, connect with your partner. By doing this as an embodied practice, you may not need to say a word. You can meet your own need and your partner's need as a gift.
When we are with our own needs, we are no longer needy. We are in integrity with our own heart.