Sex.Love.Power.: Sacred Sexuality, Conscious Polarity, and Waking Up In Love
Our pleasure can be the fuel for abundant, sustainable work, service, and play throughout our long lives.
Our sexuality can be a wholesome pillar of our daily experience.
Our marriages can be fueled by desire rather than duty.
Monogamy can be the hottest place on earth.
It’s a confusing time to be a heterosexual, monogamous couple. The love and passion you desire may be more an inner urge than something you really see people around you living. But there are a growing community of devoted couples creating monogamy as a conscious spiritual crucible. There are couples using their marriages to fuel their leadership and service and activism. Welcome to Sex. Love. Power. where we convene the conversations that unlock new possibilities in your life and relationship. I’m your host Michele Lisenbury Christensen. Over the past 26 years, I’ve helped thousands of couples create the love and sex they desire. Kurt and I, in 23 years of marriage and adventures together before that, have suffered, avoided, dared, and triumphed in countless ways. Now, I’m here to help you get more peace, more connection, and more passion in your days and nights, so you’ve got the energy and attention left over to be the change you wish to see in the wider world. Everything you want in love and sex and beyond starts with YOU, and it starts right now. Let’s tend your flame.
Sex.Love.Power.: Sacred Sexuality, Conscious Polarity, and Waking Up In Love
Self-Regulation Toolkit Part I: Regulating The Freeze Response
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
If you have a nervous system, you need this episode. Especially if you ever freeze mid-conversation and can't find words, or you flip into fight-or-flight with the person you love most.
I sat down with Dr. Jessica Pullins to make sense of what's actually happening in your body when love gets hard, because you can't think your way out of a state your nervous system has already dropped into. You have to learn to read it first.
In this episode:
- The upside-down stoplight: green for safe and connected, yellow for fight-or-flight, red for freeze and shutdown, a listener-friendly map of polyvagal theory
- Why real connection is only possible from the green-light state, and what that means for every hard conversation you've started at the wrong moment
- The reframe that changes marriages: when your partner goes silent, John Gottman would call it stonewalling, and adding Porges reveals a nervous system stuck in freeze, reading threat where none was intended
- "Forensic recognition": working backwards to spot which state you were in, starting with hindsight and getting faster over time
- The difference between using solitude to regulate and just succumbing to the freeze
This is Part I, on the freeze response. Part II (Episode 7) goes into fight-or-flight.
Ready to elevate your relationship with my help? Book your free Relationship Audit, together at ourlegacylove.com/leadinlove/free/audit-1 or on your own at a 1:1 consult.
Connect with me on Instagram: @tinylovehabits
New here? Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
If the conversations on this podcast are resonating for you, please leave a rating and ideally a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Ready to bring about a transformation in your relationship to yourself, your body, and your partner? CLICK HERE to apply for a consultation.