Lisa Kramer
Coaching Mastery
Living With Intention
This month’s issue of Coaching
Mastery News takes on a slightly different focus. While it still
applies to Coaching Mastery, it is a personal account of a recent
experience that resulted in a transformational shift in my 22-year
relationship with my husband, Eric.
In May, Eric and I participated in
a weekend-long couples’ workshop called “The Art of
Cherishment,” led by an extraordinary duo, Hedy and Yumi
Schleifer. Hedy is a gifted couples therapist, and she and her
husband, Yumi, lead workshops for singles and couples around the
world based on the work of Dr. Harville Hendrix, the creator of
Imago Relationship Therapy.
According to the Schleifers, Cherishment
is defined as “the warm, tender, affectionate, indulgent,
adoring love that babies expect before they can speak of it, and
that we all desire our whole life long. Cherishment is fundamentally
about safety. It is telepathic, paralinguistic and does not need
the medium of language. It is communicated directly heart to heart.”
As the name Cherishment suggests, the
focus of the weekend was on appreciation --- for each other and
for the relationship that each couple had co-created. Eric and
I had decided to participate in the workshop to shift our attention
from what wasn’t working in our relationship to what was.
We could not have picked a better environment to achieve that
goal! To set the stage for the weekend, Hedy asked the group to
brainstorm what needed to be placed on the shelf so that each
person could fully present for the workshop. The list included
anger, fear, disappointment, the past, the future. We then did
a similar exercise, brainstorming everything that would be included
in the workshop such as risk taking, compassion, appreciation,
and vulnerability. We were now ready for the first experiential
exercise.
Hedy began by explaining that cherishment
is linked to the limbic brain, the seat of loving emotion. The
limbic connection established between parent and child sets the
pattern for loving connections throughout one’s life. Because
the limbic connection is paralinguistic, for each exercise we
were instructed to sit face-to-face with our partners, gazing
into each other’s eyes. The purpose of maintaining eye contact
throughout the exercise was to allow each couple to experience
a limbic connection with their partners, one that would create
new patterns to replace the imprinted ones from our past that
no longer served us. While it sounded great in theory, the intimacy
of gazing into my partner's eyes for an extended period of time
felt very uncomfortable for me. With Hedy’s loving coaching,
Eric and I agreed to set our ‘stuff’ aside and to
be open to what the workshop had to offer. By focusing our attention
from what wasn’t working to what we appreciate about each
other, an amazing shift occurred. We opened our hearts to the
other with the loving kindness of a Buddha. As we engaged in each
exercise, peering deeply into each other's eyes from a place
of loving kindness, new images began to form in our limbic brains
to replace the old, less than optimal ones. By the workshop’s
end, we had renewed optimism and commitment to our marriage.
While it has only been a month since
the Cherishment workshop, its impact continues to guide us. It
is truly a testament to what is possible when attention shifts
from what’s wrong to what’s right!
