Leah & Dr. Willow: Are You Chasing the Wrong Kind of Love?

Want to turn a promising connection into a conscious, lasting partnership? Understanding the difference between love's magnetic energy & its intimate emotion is key. In this episode, hosts Leah & Dr. Willow help you navigate the thrilling, complex terrain of new relationships. You’ll discover practical ways to manage expectations, communicate desires, and cultivate self-love & presence. Whether you’re longing for deeper intimacy, looking to attract a soulmate, or creating sacred trust in a budding romance, this wisdom will guide you to relationship success.

Listeners will discover:

• Practical strategies to manage emotional attachment and expectations when dating
• Exercises to identify mismatches in values early in relationships
• Ways to openly communicate intentions to protect each other's hearts
• Tips for redirecting into love's energy when feelings start to shift
• How to use intimate practices like Tantra consciously to manifest desires

Leah & Willow's King & Queen of Hearts Intimacy Toolkit is on sale. Use Coupon  Code KINGANDQUEEN10  for 10% off. https://www.sexreimagined.com/the-king-and-queen-of-hearts

Awaken Arousal Oil Lubricant  "I had a 3-minute orgasm and then a 5-minute orgasm." - Beth https://exploreforia.com/awaken-so?irclickid=wyXW6byI5xyNWouwIoQAUS1GUkAx4m1JsS6bSc0&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=Impact&utm_campaign=Sex%20Reimagined&utm_c

Transcript

Leah: 1:49

Hey there, it is Leah Piper, your Tantra expert at Sex Reimagined.

Dr. Willow: 1:54

And hey hey, I'm Dr. Willow Brown, your Taoist sexology expert at Sex Reimagined.

Leah: 2:02

And today we have for you a fun topic, one that you may have never explored before. We're going to dive deep into the energy of love versus the emotion of love.

Dr. Willow: 2:12

Oh my god, this is such a game changer for so many people that we have witnessed, including ourselves, and it just makes a world of difference in how you relate to those people, those very close intimate people in your life, as well as people just out in the community, out in the world.

Leah: 2:32

Yeah. And I think if you're dating specifically, if you're out in the dating world, this is an episode you do not want to

Dr. Willow: 2:39

That's true,

Leah: 2:40

So tune

Dr. Willow: 2:43

Turn on.

Leah: 2:44

on and fall in love with us.

Dr. Willow: 2:47

Us! Us!

SxR Announcer: 2:49

Welcome to the Sex Reimagined Podcast, where sex is shame free and pleasure forward. Let's get into the show.

Leah: 2:58

All right. This is a fun topic.

Dr. Willow: 3:01

The energy of love versus the emotion of love and how understanding the difference can save your ass. Leah's got a good story for us. Yeah, I still have them. Yeah, yeah, on both sides.

Leah: 3:11

Yeah, you know, I being working in the Tantra industry with people for so many years, one of the first fears that a lot of new teachers who are working one on one with students have is, what if my student falls in love with me? And there's just this like, oh my god, I don't want like the burden, I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings, you know, all this stuff kind of arises because in any type of therapeutic situation, or even like teacher, student, all sorts of different scenarios has us go into transference with the person who we are looking up to, the person who is mentoring us, the person who's guiding us. And so, that's something we all have to navigate. And as I was like going through the process in my own journey, I also had those fears. Did you ever have those fears? Yeah, I thought I'm going, yeah. And then it also translates in dating. You know, when someone likes you a little bit more than you like them. And you feel like you need to kind of slow the roll. Or if someone's really ready for a commitment, but you're kind of just seeing what's out there. It can create anxiety. And so it really helped me when speaking with students and with clients and even during the times that I was dating to go, okay. Let's see if we can orient between two different types of love. One is the emotion of love. And that's a resource that really comes from our emotions. It comes from our body. It comes from our heart. And to get you to relate with this emotion of love. Think of your best friends, your spouses or ex spouses, your children, your family. There are people who are in your heart and these are very important relationships to you. They're karmic. It's like, you're going to go the distance for these people. I often say, you'll go to therapy for these people. That's the emotion of love. Like, it's a, it's an important relationship and you weather storms together. And then you have the energy of love, which is not. The energy of love isn't really resourced from your body. It doesn't pull on you the way karmic emotion love does. It's connected to the everything. It's connected to the universe. It's connected to all of us. And it's the love that we feel when we see something beautiful. It's love that we feel when we smell a beautiful flower. It's the love that we feel when we see someone at the checkout line and they look so dapper.

Dr. Willow: 5:50

Or even just an acquaintance, like, Oh my God, I just love that person. I wouldn't go to therapy for them, but God, I love that person in the community. They're such a great person and I love running into them and it's always fun to see them and just, they have great energy.

Leah: 6:06

Right, like for your patients or for, you know, if you're holding a class for the audience. It's just that feeling of our human family can be connected and this energy of love can be tapped into and we can send it to each other and benefit so much from receiving it. So It started to dawn on me that it was important to have this kind of language when helping a student or a client deal with the transference or as I start to watch them kind of wanting more of me and wanting my attention and kind of wanting this, this, and this. Things that I wasn't prepared to give and that I found reason to have boundaries around. And so helping them stay in check and put boundaries around their own emotion of love turned out to be a very responsible thing to do.

Dr. Willow: 6:54

So this came from you, this emotion of love versus energy of love came from within your own experience?

Leah: 6:59

Ya know, I was thinking about this last night. As I was laying in bed thinking about this episode today, and I was like, God, did I invent this or did TJ invent this? Who started the seed that came up with the language of this? And I think it was either me or TJ, and Charles probably planted a seed but hadn't put it into total form. So I want to take credit, but I don't know historically if I can.

Dr. Willow: 7:26

Let's, let's give you credit for it. It's pretty brilliant, you know, and it's it's definitely like when you introduced it to me and our girlfriend, Whitney, it was for her, it was so incredibly helpful. You know, I have always I've always kind of had my finger on the pulse of energy, and I'm a very deeply emotional person. So the distinction for me was definitely profound. But for Whitney, who hadn't totally had her finger on the pulse of energy, it was fucking game changing, right? It was absolutely life transforming. And I think that that's one of the things that this can really bring to those who are dating, especially those who are like, God, another one bites the dust. Like, fuck, another one didn't work out. Oh my God, I'm so tired. Like, I just want to find my one and they just keep going relationship after relationship and they're getting lost in their emotion of love partially because they want it so bad. Not even because it's truly that's what's going on for them, their emotion. So that's another distinction, I think, with the emotion of love. Is it just because you want something so bad and you're tired of going through the motions of trying to find it over and over again? Or is it truly, truly love, like deep emotional love?

Leah: 8:48

Yeah, I think also some people feel like they don't know that there's other options. It's like they start to have the oooh-laa-laa's and they immediately go to the emotion of love because they don't even know that they can redirect their system to have another option, to take some time. You can be in love with the energy of love and you can be in love with the emotion of love. One is gonna have, it's gonna be a more high risk.

Dr. Willow: 9:13

Yeah, totally. I often

Leah: 9:15

when it comes to your heart.

Dr. Willow: 9:16

even when I feel like I'm in love with a person, it's still the distinction of, like, I, Willow, am in, capital I, capital N, I'm in love. I'm in love with life. I'm in love. I'm

Leah: 9:31

in love with how I

Dr. Willow: 9:32

feel. You know, I'm in it all the time. And now I'm in it and this other person is in it in their own right. So then there's two sovereign beings, right? This is like, we're both in it on our own and now we're in it with each other. So that is a very, very different way of being in love with somebody than, Oh my God, I'm so in love with you. And without you, I will be lost. And I mean, that emotion might still be there. Sometimes you can't, you know, you can't you can't control these emotions.

Leah: 10:04

When, well, when you do like cross into the world of emotion of love, and that person is no longer sharing the shared experience of the emotion of love they need to go into a different direction, there's still grief in the heart. Because once you put somebody in your heart, you don't get to take them out. And this is a thing I think a lot of people don't realize. They may hate that person. They may wish they never met that MF, but by God, all that hate is in your heart, and you're still living with it if you have a charge around it. And so one of the ways you can dissipate the charge is to go into the room of that heart and do the cleanup. So the way I always think of the heart, the big castle of the heart, is that we all have this beautiful, beautiful heart home. And it's like there's thousands of rooms. And for every person, place, or experience we've had that have touched us and that we've so loved and adored, it gets put into a room in our heart. And... We have really complex relationships with people that we share the emotion of love with. I mean, I have the emotional love with Michigan, you know? It's like, I will never live in Michigan again, but by God, I'm a Michigan girl, you know? I just have this, I want to meet every Michigan that was ever born. Michigander. And so it's like this weird thing, but michigan is in my heart. And so, I remember I was dealing with, you know, daddy issues and it was during that period of life where you start to really kind of tackle some of those issues and I had this person guide me through a meditation and go into that room where my dad lives and you walk in and it's this beautiful room and it's this gregarious self and he's full of life it's sweet but the more I went further into the room, the darker the corners got, and I kind of experienced it as being dusty, and kind of scary. And then I just sat in this chair, and I just sat with like the little Leah, who was overwhelmed by her dad. And then the teenage Leah, who was rageful, had outrage for her dad. And so I would kind of travel down these different stages of what it's like to be a daughter to my dad and all the complexity that came with. And so that was a really big healing where I just sat with the parts of me that had obstacles in relationship to father and then a couple years later I got to have another healing experience that kind of completed the space in my heart which helped me see shit, he's just, he's a man, he's an uncle, he's an ex husband, he's a boyfriend,

Dr. Willow: 12:57

And he's your dad.

Leah: 12:58

he's an employer, and he's my dad. And so now I no longer kept him in the bubble of you're my dad. He suddenly became a man in the world. And I got to take him out of this is what a dad's supposed to be. And as a result of processing all of that, I have intimacy with my dad like I never had before because I don't need him to stay in the dad role. He gets to be himself fully, all of who

Dr. Willow: 13:26

Yeah, I think that's so powerful because we have so many expectations on our partners, on our moms, our dads, our children, like you need to, you know, we have these ideas about the way that they should be. And those expectations, Set us up for disappointment time and time and time again. And so to really just like, to take those expectations off the table and to just see the person for being a person, being a human being, you know, just not even gender or an archetype or a persona, but just like an actual human being, who's just here, you know, and some are doing the best they can, not all, you know, but ideally they are doing the best they can. And everyone has different, you know, different amounts of resources inside of themselves. The more kind of work you're doing, like Leah is speaking about going into these places in your heart or into these places in your soma and your cellular body, the more resourced you become because you're bringing parts of yourself that are underneath the conscious layer, they're subconscious and you're bringing them up to the surface and then you have more wholeness inside of yourself because of that so you have a greater capacity to to really be with these people in your life.

Leah: 14:53

And it kind of goes back to your, you know, saying about when you're in love, you're being the love. You're in this state of beauty and you're sharing that state of beauty with others. And I really feel like that's our core essence to begin with. And so when I, or you, or anyone can remove the judgments, the obstacles, the pain and the hurt by resolving them, you don't really remove them, you resolve them, then you get to stay in that place of your essence of just being the love that you are. And therefore that other person permission to be human. And Leah, permission to be human. It sure does feel good not to be holding judgment.

Dr. Willow: 15:32

This myopic view of the way it should be dissipates and then you can actually be with what truly is, to be deeply in presence with that relationship. And you know, we had an interview the other day where it was one of the phrases they said was what happens what happens for you when you know, you do that thing that triggers me. What happens for you when I say this thing that triggers you like what's going on? And so I think that piece around getting curious and just that curiosity also breeds really powerful presence within relationships. And that's where true intimacy comes from because then you're dropping into, you're dropping into presence and you're dropping into trust. You're like, let me just find out what's real for you, what's true for me. And from that place, we can move forward into a more vulnerable, connected state.

Leah: 16:25

Yeah, you know, kind of back to this idea of what does the energy of love look like when negotiating.

Dr. Willow: 16:34

Yeah, yeah, tell us

Leah: 16:36

and all this stuff. Yeah, I mean, it was great to sort of figure out how to navigate that in my professional life. And I would say like one more thing professionally that may be unique to my industry, your industry, is that I'm not afraid. I mean, I was. But what I learned to do is to not be afraid of someone falling in love, but to

Dr. Willow: 16:59

Yeah, I think it's so healing for people when you can receive their love, but you still have that boundary of like, great, you love me. That's wonderful. And I'm still holding the energy of love over here. You're responsible, I think that's key too in any relationship. You know, whether it's a work relationship or a person in your family or your friends, it's like you have to only take responsibility for what's yours and let them take responsibility for what's theirs. So if they're stuck in the emotion of love with you as a professional That's up to them. You can give them the information, but they have to find their way to understanding the difference between the emotion of love and the energy of love. And if you're holding a strong boundary of like, I'm in the energy of love with you, but not the emotion of love, then they get that mirror neuron, right? They get that like, Oh, okay. I'm starting to understand how this works now.

Leah: 17:54

Well, I'm really operating under two concepts and finding my way to help bridge them together for the person. One is fall in love. Fall in love, fall so deeply in love that who you discover you're in love with is you. And my job as a good professional is to hold up the mirror the whole time and go, fall in love baby, look at this face, look at this precious being, yes! Yes, keep going, keep going, keep going. And the illusion is who you think you're falling in love with is me, but no, we're on a journey for you to fall in love with you. And then to give them and show them the felt sense distinctions between the energy of love and the emotion of love. And the first place it's easier to connect to is who do you love? You know, who are you already in relationship with in the emotion of love? And then you practice the energy of love by going out in the world and really experiencing how the felt sense is different. And there's nothing like dating. That gives you like the perfect experience to

Dr. Willow: 19:10

felt sense that you keep saying, like, let's give the audience specifics on that.

Leah: 19:15

Well, so, you know, when you're in the emotion of love and you're in a relationship and it's like, it can be draining, right? It's like you get, there's a lot of give and a lot of take. With the energy of love, it's not quite as depleting. There's an effervescence to it. There's an excitement. There's a looking forward to, but there isn't as much of a heavy weight or a burden. Sometimes you might be in an uncomfortable situation where you have to put some clear lines or boundaries or a stronger container around a connection. But it's not.

Dr. Willow: 19:47

Yeah, it's not as deep.

Leah: 19:49

And it doesn't pull on your tender heart you know you might still get palpations and like you're what's the word twitterpated. And you're excited and all of that energy that bubbles is all there it's kind of like when you're excited about going on a trip. And you got this great vacation coming up, and you're just, you got a little jazz in your step. That's how I think of the energy of love. Or sometimes the energy of love is just really peaceful, and it's chill. And there's just flow to it. And so, you know, you're just, you can be yourself. But again, there's nothing that's going to cost you too much. Other than just being in integrity and being responsible for how you're showing up. So that's sort of how I would describe the felt tense. Would you add anything to that?

Dr. Willow: 20:36

The energy of love. I mean, all of my patients for, you know, these past couple decades that I've been treating people, they all definitely feel my love. so I feel like my cultivation of my being in love with life, with myself, with the universe, with this process called life, I think that can, they can sort of rest in that and bask in that. So when somebody has a highly cultivated sense of the energy of love they are very magnetic. You want to be around them. That's very healing to be around them. You know, sometimes I think patients just come to me just to be around me, not because I'm not great of an acupuncturist or therapist although I am. But you know, I think also it's just that energy of love is it's got a, yeah, like a lighter quality to it. There's not so much depth to it. There's, there is depth to it, but it's a different kind of depth that doesn't, yeah not into a well.

Leah: 21:47

love goes

Dr. Willow: 21:48

Mm hmm.

Leah: 21:49

Yes, The energy of love goes wide. And and I'm glad you brought up that the energy of love is also a place where we can transmit healing energy from our hands. We can transmit arousal from our hands. We can transmit any emotional vibration, connection, resonance from our body to someone else's body. And so if you're in the healing arts, and you put your hands on bodies, then you are really likely very connected to the energy of love. Because as you're passing healing energy, loving energy, forgiving energy, hope energy, faith energy, whatever the case may be, belonging energy, you are transmitting the energy of love, and so you can become very skillful at that, and that's one of the things that tantricas end up having a lot of practice with in, in the work and a lot of couples who are playing with this.

Dr. Willow: 22:45

Felt sense of the emotion of love is, oh, it's such a much, it's like you can feel it in your heart. You can feel where this is a place where actually we can Yeah, we can actually leak energy and we can take on people's energy pretty easily because the boundaries are more blurry they're not quite as solid when you're in the emotion of love with somebody.

Leah: 23:08

Vulnerability is more acute.

Dr. Willow: 23:10

But oh way more way way more. Yeah, absolutely And you know, it just depends too on how much you love that person. Like how or I was going to say how much you want that thing or that person or that situation to come through, the emotions are going to be higher stakes. You know, if it's something that you're really, really desiring. So again, that desire and that expectation, that's kind of why the buddha says, you know, it's, The root of suffering because it's this thing that, you know, may or may not be attained and if it's not, then there's the suffering. And if it is, so we can transcend all of that by dropping into the energy of love more and more.

Leah: 23:55

Well, here's a good example. If you have a child. ding, ding, emotion of love, like, and that child is out in the world, and you worry about that child, and you love that child, and, or you have to split that child with a spouse, and you don't get them all the time, like, that ache, where it feels like your heart lives on the outside of you, attached to another being, like, that's the emotion of love. If you have a

Dr. Willow: 24:20

my dog just this morning. I'm like, I really miss my dog.

Leah: 24:27

right, like that. That feeling inside that you get for your pet, that's the emotion of love. Also, like, I've been reading these love stories. Big surprise. And and there are these vulnerable moments in the storytelling. And I get that sinking feeling. Like, like when I remember falling in love, and I get that sinking feeling of like, oh, here's a tender little insecurity. Or here's a place where someone's being really tender and really vulnerable. And I can viscerally feel it. Now, I'm not necessarily in the emotion of love with this book, but I'm reading about the emotion of love and the reading of it brings me right back to that moment in time when the energy of your love wants to transform into the emotion of love. And when you've got big chemistry with someone your emotion of love becomes very magnetic. it wants to draw you in, and that's when this distinction, I think, is one of the most energetically responsible things that we can be present to, that we can be in inquiry around.

Dr. Willow: 25:39

When the emotion of love starts to take over the space of the energy of love, it doesn't mean that the energy of love isn't there anymore. That can still reside. Yes, but you almost can't control the emotion of love, like, it's just gonna come. I mean, you can push it off, you can stave it off as long as you think you can, but at some point it's gonna take over you. I think that's a good distinction too, it's like, it just comes. It's just, you love what you love, you love who you love, it's just, you don't have control over it.

Leah: 26:15

Yeah, I think you can have an awareness around it that can keep you from tragedy per se. But it, it will, you have to keep tending to it. And this is where agreements are really important. And, and there are parts that like, like you said, it's going to do what it wants to do and how you support it and hold it is how, it's what depends on how painful it is if things have to change. And so this is where it gets very confrontational is when we are dating and someone isn't ready for what we're ready for and trying to manage your heart and your feelings around all of that because it's so tempting. So I was dating a guy and I was really at this place in my life where I was calling in the PhD of relationship as I like to say. I wanted the mega mega of partnership in this lifetime and I'd done so much work to kind of prepare myself for it. Also, I had done a lot of open relationship experimentation for years and I was ready to really pair bond. Met this great guy and he had done the teacher training and we started hanging out, becoming friends, and then we started having trips together, and then we started looking at, well, maybe we should work together. And we had so many wonderful values that were living in the ballpark of the same house. So it was like how we traveled we loved, how we thought about money we loved, how we thought about spirituality was right on top. How we thought about sex was great, how we liked a vacation, how we like to work, so many things were in alignment. And I had known because of previous relationships that every time there was a breakup for me, it was because there was a value that didn't line up and I was ignoring it in the beginning. So I was going to be very careful about not ignoring when there was a mismatch. And he, for the first time in his life, was so excited about open relationships. And I'm like, I'm just coming out of like 15 years of experimenting with open relationships. No thank you. And I also didn't want to hold him back. I didn't want to convince him. He'd had three marriages. He's a serial monogamist. Like these were all warning signs. And so we would have these conversations about the emotion of love and the energy of love. And because that value is misaligned, I wasn't like protecting myself in the way that a lot of people think about protecting themselves where they wall themselves off. I was keeping myself authentic and available for love, but I was monitoring the emotion of love. Because it wanted to pull me in. And there were times when, and we made an agreement, we're just going to do the energy above. And then... My heart would start to crack open. It was like, Ooh, I want to put you in a room. I really want to put you in a room. And I would have to say, okay, check in time. I was like, you know, I'm really liking this. I'm really loving the direction we're going and my heart is wanting to place you and I want to check in. How is your heart doing? How are you feeling about the emotion of love? And he would tell me, let's stick to the energy. Let's stick to the energy. I'm not ready for that. And it hurt. It was an ouch. I was really bummed, but I respected him. I had high regard for him and I had high regard for myself. And so I don't want to be in love with someone who's not in love with me. I don't want to be in the emotion of love by

Dr. Willow: 30:07

so how long were you able to dance with this one?

Leah: 30:10

you. Well, once I really realized, okay, we're likely not going to have a future. It's time to like, let that idea and fantasy go. So what is it that I want? Well, I don't want to waste my time when I'm looking for my PhD in relationship. I got a guy who needs to come into town. So we decided to practice sex magic, a certain type of Tantric lovemaking, where you bring your intentions fully into the container, into the space. You share them with your lover. And my share was, I want to bring in the love of my life. And so we would make love with setting that energy out into the world. And very quickly, within, I would say, less than four months, Matthew came into my life.

Dr. Willow: 30:54

And when Matthew first came in, he was he was, energy of Love, like, he was a client, right? So you were in that teacher student

Leah: 31:02

Yep, so that was energy of love. And so when we decided to go, okay, are we complete with our professional relationship because we were feeling like wow there's such a pull here. I want to investigate this then we changed containers. Went to the beach we did a ceremony, okay, we're gonna let go of the professional construct because I can't be in relationship as a woman if I'm teacher, I needed to take the teacher archetype off, I needed to take the student archetype off of him, so that him and I could just be man and woman, doing life together. And then we had full reign to go, let's jump into the deep end with the emotion of love. But I'm so grateful for the experience that this other partner gave me to really deeply explore being romantic with somebody, having sex with somebody, being lovers with somebody, being BFFs with somebody, and sticking to the energy of love. And then to, I just thought I was so smart to use this opportunity to pull in what I wanted. It didn't have to be a relationship that was wasting time until the one arrived. I could be purposeful draw in.

Dr. Willow: 32:17

Think that

Leah: 32:18

love

Dr. Willow: 32:19

wise. And, you know, I guide a lot of my single women who are still in the dating realm. And ultimately they do want to find their one. They want to find their beloved, the one that they're going to spend the rest of their lives with. And, you know, and they'll date all these guys and he's got this, but he doesn't have that. And the this and the that. And I'm like, well, he sounds like a great practice partner. You know, you can just practice with him, practice your Tantra stuff with him, practice your vunerability with him. And if there's not a lot of like emotional attachment to him turning out to be the one or some way or some, you know, certain style of relationship, then he's a really great person to do sex magic practice with, especially if there's good sexual chemistry.

Leah: 33:02

Yeah. And to just be able to go, I can hold myself in this. It doesn't have to be so out of control. We can hold each other's hearts with protective loving energy and stay in agreement with where we're headed and check in with each other and go, how are we doing? I'm feeling tempted. And then just be there for, be in your body, be there for being brave if you have to tell the person I'm not ready for the emotion of love. And also being real and vulnerable and feeling your feelings when you're disappointed because they aren't ready at the

Dr. Willow: 33:39

Yeah, I think that is one of the big fears around doing this is like, well, if I open up and like have this, you know, practice partner, like if I go there with him and start doing these tantric practices with him, then he's going to fall in love with me and I'm going to have to deal with that. So really, this piece around communicating, like having the conversation, having this conversation, hey, do you know about the difference between the energy of love and the motion of love? This is something that I'm exploring right now. Let me tell you what I've learned. Yeah, yes, send them this episode. Like you let me tell you what I've learned and so this is where I'm at with you I am in the energy of love and I'd like to use our connection because it's really awesome to you know call in my beloved because that's what I'm calling in and I don't think you're it, you know, and I

Leah: 34:34

Right, or to call in your next job, you're looking for a job, you know, to call in a new car, to sell your house, you know, the greatest buyer.

Dr. Willow: 34:45

And that, I think if you can be, there's a new level of respect and honor is created, is co created when you say to someone like, God, our chemistry is amazing. You're amazing. Like, you check all the boxes and I don't feel like I can drop into the emotion of love with you. I don't feel like you're my one. But, like, hey, let's use some of this time that we have together and use it wisely.

Leah: 35:12

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, this is the thing that I think people often do to set themselves up is they act like they hear what the person is saying, but they aren't really taking it in. There's another part of them that's in the fantasy of, oh, you just don't realize it yet.

Dr. Willow: 35:32

Oh, you're gonna fall in love with me. Oh, yeah, I'm so great. You're gonna fall

Leah: 35:37

right. Try it. You're going to, you will wake up and you will realize I am the

Dr. Willow: 35:40

and you know, again, you can't control this stuff. It either is or it isn't. So keeping your finger on the pulse of what is so crucial. And that requires presence, which comes from feeling sensation in your body. You know, if you're starting to feel that deep heart, achy, achy, oh my god, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, if they go away, I'm going to be shattered. You know that feeling, you know, it's very different than like, oh, if they go away, whatever, the next person will come and I'll be good.

Leah: 36:10

yeah, that's actually a good point because you could have that sinking ache and not attach to it. When you stay in the energy of love, you would notice the sensation, but you are not your biology. You are not your brain chemistry. You can actually choose and go, wow, I'm really noticing some sadness or some grief or some letdown or some disappointment. Because I want this big yummy feeling to continue, but I'm gonna allow this sinking feeling to just kind of keep me in check. I'm gonna allow it to be a sign and information and guidance to go, let me reel in where I'm leaning too deep into the emotion of love. Let me get back into the energy of love. And so then you have to find out what helps you get back into the energy of love. Well, go go be in love with the world. Go be in love with nature. Go be in love with somebody you meet at the checkout line.

Dr. Willow: 37:07

Go do something you love to do. Like, what's your love task? What's the thing that when you're doing it, you're not trying to get better at it. You're not trying to do it so someone else likes you for it. You're not trying to, you know, do anything other than what you're doing. For a lot of people, their love task is like gardening or cooking or painting. It's some kind of creative project usually. I love to like

Leah: 37:33

Yeah,

Dr. Willow: 37:33

walk chant.

Leah: 37:34

Yeah, you so do.

Dr. Willow: 37:35

you know,

Leah: 37:35

paint a rock.

Dr. Willow: 37:37

thing is.

Leah: 37:37

ha ha

Dr. Willow: 37:39

Yeah, she loves to paint a rock. I mean, Whatever your love task is, you go do that and you be again in the capital I capital N IN-Love. You know, this is, it's all very reminiscent of what a lot of spiritual teachers talk about, which is like, look, there's this field of is-ness. There's this field Of pure consciousness that we are just visiting in, you know. This persona, Willow, that persona, Leah, we're just visitors in this field, so it's never born, it never dies, and there's a lot of love in it, you know. But it's not emotional love. A lot of teachers will talk about like the sky, that field, that plane of love, that energy of love is the sky, but then the clouds are going to pass through, and those are the emotions. And those are the emotions of love which are not always ooey gooey, sometimes they're fuck this hurts, god this is painful, I don't want to, I wish I hadn't fallen in love with that person, you know, and so it can be all different kinds of clouds passing through that sky.

Leah: 38:42

Sometimes they're raining, they're stormy. So like coming back to the emotion of love, how conscious can we be when we are In the awareness of going there, and we can partner with someone and go, we're going to do this together, I'm going to receive you in my heart, and I will endeavor to protect your heart, and you're placing me in your heart, and you're going to endeavor to protect mine. That was actually the thing that really sealed the deal with Matt. is he texted me and he said, I'll protect your heart if you'll protect mine. As we decided, as we made it official, we're going to head in this direction. And that just went ding, ding, ding. I am throwing the covers off this heart and we are going. We're going there.

Dr. Willow: 39:27

You know, I love that. It's so sweet. I know you guys are so sweet together. So there's also though, I just had this flash of like, there's so many relationships out there and I know I've been in them myself. You have too, I'm sure, where it's like, we're not in that, we're not in that agreement. Like, we're not going to protect, we're. Not that deep into each other's hearts. And those relationships can last years, they can last decades, they can last a long time, and that's why you can feel so lonely inside of a relationship. Because the true rooms in your heart are not being occupied, yet somebody's walking the hallways.

Leah: 40:08

You want to know what I think it is? I think it's when the energy of love is devoid from the partnership. Because the emotional love is there. If that partner got in a tragic accident, you would be devastated. If they, you know, there are big things in life that could happen that would just feel like your heart was being ripped out of you. So even though it might be a little numb, They're still very much in the emotion of love because you'll do the hard shit. And sometimes it feels like you've been doing the hard shit for 10 years. And you could use some relief, you know, like, can we get the joy back that also has to do with the emotion of love, not just the hardship? And that's where I think the energy of love is something to be reminded of. It's like, hey, this tending to love thing requires your presence. It requires you to draw the energy of love and spread it and bathe them in it and bathe yourself in it and to go do things. to do things in nature, to do things that you love to do together, you have to like actively, you can't just You know, we get so lazy, we get so complacent. And it's that complacency that takes the joy from love out of our lives. So when you add some energy of love, when you touch them with your hands, because you're conscious of what you want them to experience, Babe, I want you to feel desire, I'm going to send desire into your body. Then we're going somewhere, then we get to reactivate some juice. So it's this energy of love and this emotion of love are two major ingredients that we need in our life, but the emotion of love without the energy of love is like the secret ingredients missing. And you have a bland

Dr. Willow: 41:50

Mm.

Leah: 41:50

darling. The casserole needs some salt.

Dr. Willow: 41:57

laughs I love that, yes.

Leah: 41:58

Please top that with cheese.

Dr. Willow: 42:00

laughs Yeah, you got it. I mean, and that, that's very yin yang, you know, it's like the one does not exist without the other. They do go together. Like once you've dropped into the emotion of love with somebody, because truly the emotion of love doesn't come from that other person. It comes from you. It comes from your own love inside of your own heart and your own being. And so when you're falling in love emotionally with another person it's because of all the love that you've cultivated, both energy and emotional.

Leah: 42:36

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So tell us what you think about the emotion of love and the energy of love. We want to hear your stories. How can you help us come up with even better language that describes the felt sense of the emotion of love and the energy of love? If you have a love story to tell us, man, we love those! So you can email those stories to Support@SexReimagined.Com. You can leave us a voicemail on our hotline, which is www.SpeakPipe.com/SexReimagined and you can leave a comment on this episode whether you're watching this on YouTube or you're listening to it on your favorite streaming app.

Dr. Willow: 43:14

Yeah, sending you all so much love, the energy of love. And we really do love you guys. We won't go to therapy with you, but we really do love you.

Leah: 43:23

Yes. Unless you become our new best friend, then we'll totally go to therapy with you, but you got to figure out how to do that. All right, y'all. Love, love,

Dr. Willow: 43:31

Ciao.

SxR Announcer: 43:34

Thanks for tuning in. Leah Piper is a Tantric sex master coach and a positive psychology facilitator. Dr. Willow Brown is both a Chinese and functional medicine doctor and a Taoist sexology teacher. Don't forget, your comments, likes, subscribes and suggestions matter. Let's realize this new world together.