The First Years of Marital Commitment

MARITAL COMMITMENT AND the treatment of couples who are in their

first marriage are the focus of this chapter. In American society,

this refers mainly to couples who are in their twenties, or in some

instances, in their early thirties, who have not been married previously.

Couples in later stages of marriage and gay or lesbian couples are the subject

matter of subsequent chapters.

What do we need to know to work therapeutically with couples in their

early years of committed relationships? We need to understand, in the

broadest terms, the nature of marriage, cohabitation, and commitment in

such relationships.

The next section delineates the nature of marriage, cohabitation, and

commitment. Following that is a brief review of family development and

the concepts of individual and marital life cycles—with some reference to

family life cycles and the central tasks of those cycles as they pertain to first

marriage—and the commitment process; and integrative marital therapy,

involving object relations, system theory, and cognitive behavioral constructs.

Clinical illustrations of how interventions are made with couples

and individuals requesting marital therapy are then presented. Because not

all couples have difficulties with all parts of early marital adjustment, illustrations

are taken from a variety of cases. Next, reference is made to

some issues typically found in therapy with mainstream White American

couples and couples from other ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.

The majority of extant research literature deals with differences between

White Americans and African American or Hispanic couples. A brief summary

is provided in the final section.

SUMMARY

PAIRS premarital counseling and training offers premarital couples rich

resources that will enhance not only their intimate relationship but also enrich

and emotionally deepen their personal and family lives. Research documents

that the PAIRS experience results in achieving far higher levels of

self-worth, emotional literacy, emotional maturity, and relationship satisfaction.

Love and community are well documented to be potent healing

powers that create longer, healthier, more joyful lives (Ornish, 1990). This

chapter presented premarital assessment, counseling, training sequences,

and preventive support from the PAIRS perspective, as applications of a

powerful technology for healing, building, strengthening, and sustaining

healthy marital and family relationships.

The PAIRS technology is available to train counselors and through them

their clients in how to build lasting, satisfying, healthy, successful relationships.

With successful lifelong marriages, there will be healthier children

and reduced suffering in successive generations. It is the profound hope of

the PAIRS network of leaders and trained professionals that PAIRS, as an

educational and counseling resource, will become an essential part of the

training for all those who provide therapy, counsel, assist, and train couples,

particularly premarital couples. This knowledge base needs to be culturally

incorporated as a universally expected foundation for every new

couple considering a permanent commitment to building a lasting, stable

marriage and healthy family life together.

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS

At the close of the semester program, participants often wish to continue

their group learning and practice in a preventive maintenance format.

They often request monthly meetings with the support of their PAIRS instructor

or the PTP. Requests from class groups often include a desire for

periodic weekend workshops, usually once or twice a year. Repeating the

Bonding Weekend Workshop is most often requested because it helps to

maintain access to the core emotional openness needed for bonding and

intimacy.

A PAIRS Three-Year Preventive Maintenance Program is under development

for graduates to sustain their strong foundation for loving, healthy

marriage and family relationships. This program provides opportunities

for those who have had PAIRS experiences (including premarital assessment

and OFFICE PAIRS) to refresh and practice a wide range of skills,

such as the Fair Fight for Change with Peer Coaches, PARTS Parties, Dialogue

Guides, Daily Temperature Readings, and Genograms. Options in

this program include continuing monthly three-hour classes, periodic sixmonth

one-session check-ups, and twice-yearly day-long seminars. Fees for

this program vary by the options chosen by each couple. Based on years of

experience conducting PAIRS programs, relationships clearly benefit from

a psychoeducational program in knowledge and skills in building and sustaining

intimacy in relationships and this benefit can be sustained with

regular preventive support.

CONTRACTING—CLARIFYING EXPECTATIONS

Based on Clifford Sager’s work (1976), the PAIRS curriculum culminates in

an integration and application of all the tools and concepts learned in the

proceeding months toward a revised relationship contract. To prepare for the

Contracting Weekend, the Powergram (Stuart, 1980) is examined as a model

for understanding how power is shared and decisions are made in each relationship.

Using this model, couples address where and how to change the

division of power and responsibilities so that both are satisfied with their

degree of input, influence, and responsibility, and areas of autonomy in decision

making. Couples use the Museum Tour of Past Decisions, to review and

learn from past decisions about which there may remain a residue of resentment

or hurt.

Participants extensively journal to clarify expectations and needs in their

relationship. They examine all areas of life—work and career, leisure time,

money, housework, children, in-laws, religious observances, sexuality—and

rank areas of importance or dissatisfaction in order of urgency. Couples

also identify their core expectations or Walking Issues—the ones that are

nonnegotiable. Couples work together to make a priority list of those issues

they agree need adjustment through negotiation. They are coached in Contracting

Sessions by other couples using the Fair Fight for Change as the basic

structure for contracting. They also use any of the other tools they have

learned in PAIRS.

Through contracting, couples discover that seemingly impossible differences

can be bridged with goodwill, hard work, and support. They now possess

the self-awareness and necessary skills to continue this recontracting

work after the course on an on-going basis at home using the full range of

skills in their PAIRS Tool Kit. Issues that have not yet been resolved are identified

and prioritized for homework, and couples have a network of peer

coaches on whom they can draw if they need assistance. Lifetime friendships

are commonly forged in the group, and there is a profound sense of trust and

community that group members enjoy. It is typical for class groups to continue

to meet on a regular basis and continue to provide a network of support

to one another. They form a caring community. Some groups have met for

many years following the Relationship Mastery Course.

In contrast to individual growth activities, such as individual counseling

or therapy, PAIRS highlights the importance of the couple as a crucible from

which healing, personal growth, and the development of higher capacities

can emerge. Thus, sustained intimacy and pleasure are assured and the relationship

becomes a lasting source of authentic love, mutual respect, and

trust between two growing and evolving partners. Premarital couples in

PAIRS courses find enormous support from veteran couples. They acquire

mentors, role models, support figures, and (for the younger premarital couples)

new surrogate mothers and fathers to support them and reparent

them toward successful marriage. Couples considering a second marriage

find opportunities to explore what went wrong for each earlier and take responsibility

for their part so that the old maladaptive patterns do not

reemerge in their new relationship. Many divorced individuals who take

PAIRS as singles have vowed never to reenter another relationship until

they understand what happened and acquire the skills to assure a different

outcome the next time around. PAIRS training provides the strongest opportunity

for the newly committing couple to acquire the skills, concepts,

understandings, self-knowledge, and strategies for building deep intimacy

and assuring a lasting, healthy marriage.

PLEASURE—SENSUALITY AND SEXUALITY

Couples explore how they can expand the range of pleasure that they share

together. PAIRS recognizes three special biological needs (sources of pleasure)

that require physical touch met by the married couple: Sensuality, Sexuality,

and Bonding. The Pleasure Weekend Workshop is devoted to removing

barriers to pleasure and enhancing skills and understandings that enable

couples greater pleasure, joy, and fun through stimulation of the senses,

touch, and physical closeness. Same gender groups explore: (1) early experiences

and messages that have impacted one’s development as a sensual and

sexual being; (2) playful exploration of gender differences in romantic turn

ons and turn offs; and (3) sexual saboteurs and stereotypes, myths, and fallacies

about sex. Cross-gender conversations and guided visualizations

about early experiences with sex development help generate more empathic understanding between partners and more acceptance for their biologically

based differences.

Sprinkled throughout the weekend are exercises designed to open the five

senses, as well as guided massages where couples practice giving and receiving

pleasuring touch with feedback. The Guided Face Caress and Foot Massage

are among the most enjoyable moments of the entire PAIRS program.

Along with these sensual exercises, an explicit film on lovemaking is

shown that re-focuses the couple on intimacy and pleasure, and helps to relieve

performance anxieties. Participants fill out detailed and explicit inventories

to help identify romantic, sensual, and sexual preferences,

dissatisfactions, and wishes for change. Couples are guided through a safe

process in which they share their pleasure inventories with each other and

discuss their reactions and feedback. Often, a lack of communication or a

buildup of resentment or fear of hurting or embarrassing one another has

blocked giving and receiving pleasure freely. Sensual and sexual pleasure

dates (McCarthy & McCarthy, 1990), which are assigned for homework,

give couples permission to experiment in new and creative ways with both

giving and receiving pleasure. Couples usually leave the weekend with a

renewed sense of hope and excitement about their sex life, and frequently

describe breakthroughs in the following weeks from having been able to

enjoy each other based on leveling about their physical and sexual needs

and preferences.

The roots of jealousy—the downside of natural sexual possessivness—are

examined. Participants are shown how the Web of Jealousy, comprised of

fear, shame, pain, guilt, and rage, negatively affects self-esteem and trust.

Jealous reactive behaviors to stem the pain and control outcomes often

make matters worse, creating a Jealousy Infinity Loop. Through a Jealousy

Journaling Exercise with guided discussions with partner, couples come to

understand one another’s jealous reactions and vulnerabilities to jealous

reactions. Betrayal and love triangles are discussed. The essential steps to

prevent jealousy are presented using guidelines developed by Shirley Glass

(2003).

EMOTIONAL REEDUCATION, EMOTIONAL LITERACY, AND BONDING

PAIRS dives even more deeply into emotion via the PAIRS Bonding Weekend

Workshop. PAIRS adapted the New Identity Process (Casriel, 1972) to

the couple orientation of PAIRS, calling it Bonding Work. Casriel, a

renowned specialist in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction in

therapeutic communities, originally developed this expressive process to

treat character disorders. Paul MacLean’s (1973) A Triune Concept of the Brain and Behavior is presented as a model to understand emotional memory

that, when activated, does not know time and place and is experienced

as reoccurring now. Participants learn several different positions for holding

their partner while he or she is expressing intense emotions. Participants

learn how to progress from less intense emotions to more intense

expression, to the reexperiencing of emotions in full measure. In this intense

emotionally open state, emotional reeducation can occur. Once individuals

have emptied old pain, they become open to receive positive,

comforting, and affirming messages about themselves from their partners

and the group. When ready, they are assisted in construction affirmations

of their own value, rights, and entitlements. They replace old or toxic

choices with new, healthy attitudes and decisions.

During this process, couples develop deep empathy and compassion for

one another. They discover that, not only can they handle their partners’ intense

emotions, but they can also offer their partner comfort through holding

and touch when they are in pain. Over the course of this weekend,

participants commonly lose their fear of both their own and their partners’

emotional intensity. They experience directly and observe in others how an

intimate relationship generates intense emotions about bonding, belonging,

needing one another, never leaving, and being loved for oneself. They learn

that the expression of these powerfully intense emotions cements their

bond at the deepest of levels and can restore passion to their relationship.

The culmination of this workshop is the Death and Loss experience in

which participants enact saying goodbye to their deceased loved one. They

are led to speak what would need to be expressed to say goodbye. Music

and the use of carefully chosen sentence stems make this an emotionally

charged and deeply meaningful exercise for partners. They experience the

depth of their bond in the “experience” of losing one another through

death. This exercise also allows communication about the meaning of their

lives together. Rest-of-life wish-baskets are shared between partners.

MY HISTORY AND UNIQUE SELF

A study of family systems, through psychodramas enacting Family Systems

Factories and what happens with the addition of children (Dyad-Triad) leads

into the study of each person’s own family of origin. Genograms, a threegeneration

family map, allows exploration of influences in the family of

origin and reveals the invisible rules, scripts, and loyalties that may be affecting

current relationship. Participants also revisit their personal history through Guided Visualizations and Intensive Journaling to discover the impact

of early messages and past decisions, especially regarding love, adequacy,

and worth. They uncover their Revolving Ledgers, the emotional bills of

debts owed from the past that, as they walk through the revolving door of

life, they hand to whomever is there. Participants identify intense overreactions

to relatively minor behaviors of their partner that indicate the

presence of Emotional Allergies (another concept unique to PAIRS). These allergies

are acute sensitivities to whatever now reminds a person of pain or

threats from the past. Allergic responses are accompanied in the present by

protective reactions (ideas and emotions) and protective behaviors that

were used to manage the pain long ago.

Tools for healing allergies and past painful experience include the Healing

the Ledger Exercise and the Museum Tour of Past Hurts and Disappointments.

Here, partners confide previous painful or frightening experiences

to one another. This confiding helps the listener to understand and have

more compassion for the partner, and it helps the speaker to express pain

safely to a comforting, validating, and supportive partner. Partners are

shown how to hold each other in a nurturing way, while they are expressing

and releasing old pain. Participants may use the Letting Go of Grudges

Letter as a journaling and/or confiding tool, for finding relief and freedom

in working through grudges (hurts held in angry resentment to protect

from risking being hurt again). Through these experiences, participants

clear up misunderstandings of one another by reclaiming their personal

history rather than continuing to project and blame their partner. They reconnect

with suppressed early experiences and decisions that have been

interfering with their ability to trust or be intimate with their partner. Partners

also learn they can help to heal instead of hurt one another.

Couples also find that Emotional Allergy Infinity Loops underlie many of

their unresolved conflicts. Such a loop occurs when a person’s behavior

triggers an emotionally allergic reaction in his or her partner. The partner’s

allergic reaction then triggers an allergic reaction in the first partner,

whose reactive behavior then retriggers the second, and so on, ad infinitum.

In the throes of an Emotional Allergy Infinity Loop, each partner

often re-experiences the worst pains of childhood and the helpless reactions

of a small child. Typically each feels, “if it is like this, then I cannot be

here!” Each forgets to see his or her partner as a friend and experiences

the partner instead as the enemy. Each becomes lost in a reactive state of

believing the worst about self and partner and of using primitive protective

actions. Devastating distance can grow.

Couples now develop concepts and a language to understand and explain

what they are experiencing when they are conjointly in the grip of such

emotional intensity. As participants begin to understand and discuss their

Love Knots, Early Scripts and Decisions, Ledgers, Grudges, Emotional Allergies,

and Emotional Allergy Infinity Loops, they become capable of taking

responsibility for their own reactions, rather than blaming the other.

Couples are helped to strategize together to devise “emergency exit ramps”

from their loops and to work together to escape those slippery slopes.

Through empathy for the partner’s “child responses” and revision of beliefs

about the meaning of the partner’s behavior, the Emotional Allergy Infinity

Loop can be transformed into a Loop of Vulnerability and Empathy (LOVE).

To help see their unique self and inherent personality differences, participants

rate themselves on the Meyers-Briggs type indicator (Kiersey-Bates).

Through the use of exercises to illuminate the differences between the poles

of the four basic personality preference scales, couples begin to see how

many of their disagreements and conflicts are better understood as differing

styles of decision making, problem solving, information gathering, and

style of interaction. Differences, which had appeared to be threatening and

perceived as personal attacks, can now be reframed as temperament differences.

This often allows individuals to accept their own preferences and

styles, and helps couples approach their personality differences with a

sense of humor and even with compassion, instead of frustration, resentment,

or fear. Additionally, couples begin to appreciate how their differences

can be complementary in accomplishing life tasks together.

Participants also learn the “PARTS of Self,” a system of classifying and

understanding the various aspects of their own unique personality. Drawn

from the work of Virginia Satir, participants learn to identify and give meaningful

names to their subpersonalities, usually names of renowned figures

in culture, history, or literature. Disowned or suppressed PARTS of a person’s

psyche tend to act outside of a person’s control. Coming to know and

discover the positive value in each PART of Self allows each person to better

coordinate, utilize, and, if necessary, transform these PARTS so that they are

acting in harmony with personal goals and life choices. Their PARTS can be

perceived as resources. In a series of PARTS parties, classmates act out the

PARTS of one individual, and later the PARTS of a couple. The PARTS party

players help individuals or couples discover new and more creative combinations

of PARTS that the couple can use in conflict and stress or even romance.

Following these PARTS parties, individuals and couples explore their own

inner cast of characters and experiment with ways to rearrange the PARTS

they tend to use the most. In doing so, they discover how to better use all

their resources and uncover new possibilities for interactions with their partners

that are more harmonious and productive.

CLARIFYING ASSUMPTIONS

Partners’ expectations of one another, conscious or unconscious, are largely

formed by long-past experiences. Unspoken assumptions and hidden expectations

lead to great misunderstanding. A Mind Reading tool is taught for

respectfully checking out assumptions rather than proceeding without

knowing what is true for the partner or with mind reading without permission.

To help couples become more aware of their hidden assumptions,

Gordon catalogued the common Love Knots, or unexamined beliefs, that sabotage

intimate relationships. (See If You Really Loved Me . . . , Gordon, 1996.)

Couples learn to recognize knots and to untangle them so that they lose their

power to sabotage the relationship.

COMMUNICATION AND PROBLEM SOLVING

PAIRS begins with a presentation of the Relationship Roadmap, the basic PAIRS

model of how relationships succeed or become stuck and fail. Couples learn of

the essential role of confiding in intimacy and then how to listen and speak in

ways that deepen their level of confiding. They are taught the Daily Temperature

Reading, in which they are expected to confide in one another each day

sharing Appreciations, New Information, Puzzles, Complaints with Request

for Change, and Wishes, Hopes, and Dreams. Participants then read and

practice Virginia Satir’s (1988) The New Peoplemaking and discover how the

style one uses can be a far greater problem than the actual issue under discussion.

When stressed and communicating in stress styles (Blaming, Placating,

Computing, and Distracting), the underlying problem goes unresolved.

Couples are then taught the Leveling Style of Communication practiced in the

congruent position (face to face, hands in hands), which is a foundation for

the subsequent confiding work in the course. They cultivate the skill to slow

down communication using Empathic Shared Meaning, taking turns being the

speaker and the listener with feedback to assure understanding. They next

learn how to confide a negative reaction to their partner’s behavior all the

way through in safety using the PAIRS Dialogue Guide. The Dialogue Guide

leads the speaker through a sequence of 18 “I-Statement” sentence stems regarding

this negative reaction. Maintaining eye contact, holding hands while

they speak, giving verbatim feedback, and not answering the complaint or

introjecting defensiveness helps couples to stay connected to one another

and avoid misunderstandings. They discover how to speak so that the other

person really wants to listen, and how to listen with empathy so that the

other feels deeply heard and understood.

One of the many paradoxes of PAIRS is how direct and skillful engagement

of conflict builds greater closeness, trust, and confidence in the relationship.

Couples are taught safe and structured ways to move into the

intense emotion regarding a conflict as a first step toward resolving an issue.

The Emotional Jug is one of the core metaphors of PAIRS. When emotions are

cut off or suppressed, it is as if they are poured into a jug and stopped up

with a cork—a cork that becomes the “stiff upper lip” of indifference. Partners

are taught how to safely remove the cork and “blow their lid.” An initial

expression of anger quickly gives way to more vulnerable feelings like fear,

pain, or grief, which is followed by relief and then gratitude for their partners’

listening and acceptance. This process can occur relatively quickly

when couples master the tools and are not fearful of each other’s emotions.

By learning how to express fully one’s fear, pain, and anger in safe and nondestructive

ways, and to do so in the arms of their beloved, and/or with the

support of peers, the bond between intimate partners powerfully deepens.

The Emptying the Jug Exercise is also taught as a prenegotiation release and as

an emotional confiding tool that may be used like the Daily Temperature

Reading.

The PAIRS anger and conflict management tools were adapted largely

from the work of George Bach (Bach & Wyden, 1969). They include the Anger

Rituals (the Haircut, and the Vesuvius) in which one partner asks permission

of the other to vent in a time-limited fashion with as much intensity as is

present. The Anger Rituals help to contain anger in those who explode or

speak caustically and to give permission to be angry and assertive to those

who rarely allow themselves to do this. Once suppressed emotions around

an issue are released, couples can then productively engage the Fair Fight for

Change, another Bach ritual adapted by PAIRS for use as a structured negotiation.

Here, couples learn to fight for the relationship, rather than against

their partner. Peer couple coaches guide the partners through the fight format,

prohibit dirty fighting, and enable reflective evaluation of the partners’

emerging healthy fight styles. Peer coaches learn as much about the Fair

Fight process when coaching as they do when negotiating their own issues.

Through a Shared Art Exercise in class and Follow-the-Leader Dates as homework,

issues related to power and control, leadership and followership, flexibility

versus rigidity of power roles, as well as the impact of unspoken

assumptions are all brought to the surface and examined. Couples discover

that they can remain connected while disagreeing and that they can grow

closer through successfully addressing their differences. A potent sense of

“we,” a sense of shared competence, higher self-esteem, and greater generosity

and goodwill ensue from safely and successfully finding a real, mutually

satisfying, win-win solution to conflict.

THE PAIRS RELATIONSHIP MASTERY COURSE

The full PAIRS curriculum is divided into six main sections:

1. Communication and problem solving;

2. Clarifying assumptions;

3. My history and unique self;

4. Emotional reeducation, emotional literacy, and bonding;

5. Pleasure—sensuality and sexuality; and

6. Contracting—clarifying expectations.

The following summary highlights specific PAIRS exercises and key concepts

in italic.

MORE ABOUT RECOMMENDATIONS

Very often PTPs recommend and encourage premarital couples to participate

in the four-month PAIRS Relationship Mastery Course developed for

the specific purpose of practicing, improving, and sustaining healthy marriage

relationships. This semester-long course is recommended because it

not only fully addresses relationship fundamentals, it also addresses emotional

literacy, understanding one’s history and oneself, as well as advanced

topics such as pleasure (sensuality and sexuality) and relationship

reconstruction.

Alternatively, when appropriate and available, the PTP may recommend

that the premarital couple attend one of the shorter PAIRS programs. These

include the one-day PAIRS JumpStart, If You Really Love Me . . . , and the

Jewish, Catholic, or Christian PrePAIRS programs; the two-day Passage to

Intimacy Workshop; or the three-day Christian PAIRS or PAIRS First programs.

The PAIRS website, www.pairs.com, provides descriptions, schedules,

and location information about these programs. The short programs

contain a careful selection of pieces from the full PAIRS curriculum tailored

to specific target groups. Most of the short courses begin with understanding

the PAIRS Relationship Road Map, learning basic communication and

confiding skills as well as how to complain constructively to effect helpful

change. Each program adds further PAIRS pieces that are appropriate for its

purpose. The PrePAIRS and PAIRS First programs were originally designed

for couples in the early years of relationship commitment. These courses are

highly appropriate for premarital couples seeking to strengthen their relationship

through learning intimate relationship fundamentals.

The premarital couple with moderately high ego strengths, emotional

literacy, and openness to learning often finds that the 6- to 10-hour assessment,

by itself with the new insights and brief but specific skills and

concepts offered, is sufficient to gain renewed confidence in the relationship

and in plans to marry. The PTP may also recommend one of the

shorter PAIRS workshops to provide elaboration, practice, and consolidation

of the new concepts, skills, and strategies that have been developed in

the assessment. An invitation is issued for them to return when need

arises in the future, indicating the PTP’s interest and availability as well as the normal inevitability of the need for continuing attention to the

work of a relationship.

For the majority of premarital couples (considering that about half of all

marriages end in divorce) and especially for those who are emotionally illiterate,

ignorant about successful relationships, and unskilled at intimacy,

PTPs routinely recommend the 120-hour Relationship Mastery Course. This

program affords the breadth, depth, time, and practice needed to change destructive

attitudes and behaviors. This Mastery Course is recommended for

those who already have complex issues, are possibly in mutual allergy, may

be embarking on a second or third marriage, or are on the verge of breakup

but not ready to give up. Typically, the PTP will remain available to the assessment

couple for evening 90-minute office sessions to oversee extra practice

with the PAIRS skills during their participation in the course, and then

again after the course for any “RePAIRS” that may be needed to refresh the

concepts, practice the tools, or help the couple get quickly unstuck should

they again become negatively entangled.

When a course or workshop is not immediately available, the PTP may

counsel premarital couples in need of more training via OFFICE PAIRS until

they can participate in a PAIRS program. The PTP selects concepts, exercises,

and experiences thought to be most cogent to their missing competencies

and then teaches these in a series of 90-minute sessions. In locations where

there are no available PAIRS courses or workshops and when a couple cannot

travel to one in another location, the PTP may contract to lead the couple

through the content of one of the shorter PAIRS curriculums in a defined series

of 90-minute sessions. When engaging a PAIRS curriculum, each purchases

a participant’s handbook for the selected course and a copy of The

Passage to Intimacy book, which provides a deeper presentation of the ideas,

skills, or attitudes under study. In such OFFICE PAIRS activities, couples receive

homework assignments and are expected to practice daily the skills

they are learning. OFFICE PAIRS is not undertaken lightly. Teaching these

skills is usually easier and more natural in a group setting than in the office.

THE PAIRS PREMARITAL ASSESSMENT

The format Gordon developed for the PAIRS premarital assessment begins

with a two-hour joint interview with couples to explore their history together,

establish the context of their relationship, and set initial goals and

plans for the assessment. It involves questions such as:

• How did you meet?

• What drew you together?

• What made you decide to commit to this relationship?

• What are family responses and reactions to this relationship and your

reactions to each other’s families?

• What are you seeking from this counseling?

• What are your questions of the counselor?

• What are your vocations and how does your work and work communication

styles affect your relationship particularly during times of stress.

This longer session is needed to grasp the fabric and playing field of the

relationship. The 50-minute hour simply cannot build the trust, connectedness,

and collaboration needed for this initial inquiry.

Next schedule two-hour individual interviews with each partner: This

time provides an opportunity to discuss what might be uncomfortable to

share in a joint session. These sessions gather the individual social and

emotional histories—family conditioning, early beginnings, models from

the parental marriage, sibling relationships, decisions and experiences regarding

love, trust, caring, criticism, competition, power, communication

styles, and marital role expectations, including their hopes for the future

as well as fears. Beliefs, expectations, experiences, and life decisions that

might affect the couple’s relationship are tracked, including invisible loyalties,

changes through time in previous relationships, a history of previous

marriages or engagements and what led to their dissolution, children,

job changes, communication and power impasses, disappointments and

how they were handled, and personal hopes and dreams. The individual

sessions generate an attitude of openness and growing curiosity on the

part of each participant about unique histories, and the conditioning each

has brought to the relationship including how differing styles and expectations

may mesh or clash. These individual sessions open windows to

new understandings that have not previously been realized or considered.

Next, a two-hour joint interview for feedback is scheduled. The PTP inquires

about and carefully listens to new thoughts or questions that may

have arisen from their exploration of issues. The PTP then reviews pertinent

data that has been collected and offers specific significant relationship

concepts and skills as applicable, such as the PAIRS Dialogue Guide, a

communication tool for complaining without blaming. Or a listening skill.

Or an exercise designed to uncover mind reading. Or hidden expectations

that in PAIRS are called Love Knots, such as, “If you loved me, you would

know . . .” A nonblaming attitude is maintained throughout. Humor, as

appropriate, is often included along with pertinent wisdom and insights.

The PTP relabels and reframes many past behaviors and intentions, pointing

out how blame is often not the issue. The PTP demonstrates how enormous

misunderstandings have often arisen from a lack of information,

which if asked for and then given, would clarify misperceptions and hidden

assumptions.

In this joint session and, if needed, in one additional joint session, the PTP

provides possible explanations of issues that have become tangled or difficult

in the relationship. The PTP then discusses formats for acquiring specific

relationship knowledge, relationship skills, or specific competencies for

emotional literacy. These formats might include PAIRS courses and/or OFFICE

PAIRS counseling sessions. These suggestions may also include books

to read, specific exercises to practice, and brief workshops to attend that

have proven to be effective.

PAIRS Competencies: Attitudes and Strategies for Successful Long-Term Relationships

1. Affirm the essential role of regular bonding with an abundance of physical closeness

and emotional openness to sustain intimacy. Satisfactorily blend sensuality, sexuality,

and bonding in marriage.

2. Choose play, pleasure, recreation, creativity, and humor for the relationship to balance

the necessary duties and hard work required to maintain the relationship,

home, family, and economic security.

3. Express important hurt, fear, or irritation directly to each other in words, asking to be

heard and understood with empathy. Recognize that what is left unsaid in a relationship

is of ten more harmful than what is said.

4. Seek forgiveness for hurts inflicted in the relationship by taking responsibility for

transgressions, repairing and restoring damages, and expressing regret for pain experienced

by partner. Partner, in believing the pain is understood, feels assured that

transgressions will not easily reoccur, restores trust and forgives. Let go of grudges

and choose to forgive.

5. Give up being right. Invite and express diversity. Welcome differences as sources of

vigor, perspective, and healthy growth of a relationship. Choose to learn from each

other.

6. Choose trust, truth, mutual respect, and fidelity as the foundation of a lasting, loving

relationship.

7. Extend goodwill and positive intent. Do what is pleasing and satisfying to partner.

Choose to engage in caring behaviors. Be a good leader or a good follower as

each fits.

8. Know each other ’s pleasure and pain buttons. Refrain from triggering negative

reactions.

9. Develop a strong sense of “we.” Have intentional rituals, customs, and styles that

create a unique relationship and family identity.

10. Encourage connecting to friends and community to assure each has adequate autonomy,

independence, and breathing room. Balance the intense closeness and needful

interdependence that is at the center of a permanent passionate relationship.

11. Maintain active connections with extended family and other couples and families to

provide community, perspective, and support for the relationship and family.

12. Regularly express gratitude, appreciations, blessings, wishes, hopes, and dreams.

Positive expressions focus couple and family on desire, fulfillment, and happiness,

rather than on victimization, deprivation, scarcity, outrage, or despair.

PAIRS Competencies: Conjoint Couple Skills to Create and Maintain Intimacy

1. Confide in one another regularly with emotional openness and empathic listening.

2. Complain to one another regularly (without attacking) including requests for change.

Can listen to complaints without defensiveness.

3. Resolve differences and conflicts by seeking to learn rather than to prevail. Use fair

fighting that involves confiding, empathic listening, complaining with requests for

change, and contracting, effective win-win solutions, all without manipulation and dirty

fighting.

4. Agree on areas of autonomy, areas of consultation, and areas of mutually shared ownership

and decision making.

5. Clarify hidden assumptions and unspoken expectations to minimize misperception

and misunderstanding.

6. Help one another heal pains and disappointments, resolve emotional allergies, and

clarify hidden assumptions. Conjointly heal and resolve emotional allergy infinity loops.

7. Meet basic needs for sensuality, appropriate sexuality, physical closeness, bonding,

and intellectual and emotional sharing with one another.

8. Follow clear, equal, negotiated boundaries regarding what is private and not shared

with others outside the relationship.

9. Initiate change when the status quo (division of roles, responsibilities, and privileges)

is not satisfactory. Follow through on negotiated changes.

PAIRS Competencies: Emotional Literacy

1. Comfortable with the names and manifestations of the five basic emotions, i.e., pain,

fear, anger, love, and joy. Identifies and expresses these emotions and can listen empathically

to them.

2. Recognizes defensive overreactions as emotional allergies based on painful memories.

Takes responsibility to reduce, control, and change inappropriate responses.

3. Recognizes being emotionally open vs. emotionally closed. When feeling attacked,

threatened, or denied, evaluates reality by checking out speaker ’s meaning and intent,

rather than assuming and reacting defensively via rationalizing-explainingjustifying,

withdrawing, avoiding, or fighting back.

4. Expresses pain, fear, and anger without attacking or blaming.

5. Listens without interjecting self-concerns. Creates and maintains emotional safety for

others.

6. Uses anger constructively to assert self, set limits, define boundaries, and effectively

solve problems. Expresses anger appropriately and safely to release suppressed

emotions.

7. Believes in one’s own value. Feels lovable and good enough without having to be perfect.

Accepts having healthy needs and actively pursues getting them met, including

the biological needs for physical closeness and emotional openness in an intimate

relationship.

8. Experiences and expresses emotions of a type and at an intensity that appropriately

fits and that sustains action in accord with one’s purpose, intention, and circumstances

(emotional efficacy).

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF PREMARITAL COUNSELING FROM THE PAIRS PERSPECTIVE

The PAIRS trained professional (PTP) translates the PAIRS concepts and

tools found in the 120-hour experiential PAIRS Relationship Mastery

Course into an effective counseling approach that is titled OFFICE PAIRS.

A PTP is a licensed mental health professional who has been trained in the

PAIRS professional training program. PTPs have had more than 100 hours

of direct experience with the PAIRS concepts and training exercises. During

their training, PTPs personally experience the full range of PAIRS exercises,

usually with their partners. After training, most PTPs teach, practice,

and internalize the PAIRS concepts and tools. In OFFICE PAIRS, the PTP

personally and directly helps the couple learn PAIRS competencies, practice

them under an experienced eye, and apply them outside the office and

obtain feedback on their “homework.”

When working with a premarital couple, the PTP holds in heart and

mind an awareness of what is necessary to be an effective partner as well as

those skills, attitudes, and strategies couples need to assure an ongoing satisfying

relationship, conducive to family permanence. These competencies

focus on three areas: (1) emotional literacy; (2) conjoint partner skills for

building and maintaining intimacy; and (3) practical knowledge, strategies,

and attitudes for sustaining positive marriage and family life. Tables 2.1,

2.2, and 2.3 list these competencies.

The PTP holds these competencies in heart and mind as a standard for

what is needed to sustain couple satisfaction. When couples seek counseling,

the PTP notes which of these competencies are missing and develops

priorities and strategies for offering knowledge and training in what is

needed. Effectively addressing what is missing with interventions, new understandings,

and the teaching of new skills, especially for the premarital

couple, can prevent years of confusion, misery, and probable later family

disintegration. Without training in new competencies, the couple cannot

advance far. During the early romantic “illusion” stage of a relationship,

moments of hurt, misunderstanding, noting differences, or use of power

often trigger doubts and fears about the relationship. Those couples in

early relationships coming for counseling are typically experiencing challenges

to illusions of perfect fit and unconditional love. This is the optimal

time to develop the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to build a solid

relationship rather than an illusory one.

ABOUT PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills (PAIRS) is a curriculum

for intimate relationship skills training. PAIRS grew from the ashes

of marital disaster. The creator and developer of PAIRS (co-author

Lori Gordon), on the demise of her own 17-year marriage, set out to find

missing answers. PAIRS is drawn from many emerging humanizing interpersonal

therapies of the second half of the twentieth century (Satir,

Casriel, Bach, Sager, Brandon, Framo, Bowen, Wynne, Perls, Guerney,

Brandon, Zilbergeld, etc.). PAIRS has evolved over 30 years. Gordon has

refined the keys to intimacy and shaped and polished the training exercises

needed to create deep personal transformative learning by relationship

partners.

PAIRS has been experienced by tens of thousands of couples, many

who were on the brink of divorce (DeMaria, 1998); and by tens of thousands

of individuals, wanting to develop skills to prevent a repeat of the

devastation of relationship breakup. Gordon’s self-help book for couples

and individuals, Passage to Intimacy (1993), presents the main ideas and exercises

of PAIRS that can be learned at home and practiced outside the

classroom. Incisive descriptions and thoughtful discussions by PAIRS

Master Teachers, a review of research about PAIRS, and critical issues

such as the PAIRS Ethics Code for teachers are brought together in Building

Intimate Relationships: Bridging Treatment, Education and Enrichment

through the PAIRS Program (DeMaria & Hannah, 2003). The PAIRS experience

significantly increases relationship satisfaction, sustainable love,

and commitment.

A central tenet of PAIRS is that sustained intimacy is required to maintain a

lasting marriage. When intimacy, the deep emotional experience of loving

connection, is lost, the ground the marriage is built on becomes shaky.

Good will is then lost and the desire (and ability) to solve problems, overcome

obstacles, and persist in the face of fear and uncertainty, quickly

erodes. With its emphasis on intimacy, PAIRS goes to the heart and the

heat of the matter. Once couples learn to create, re-create, and sustain

intimacy, many premarital and marital issues, such as commitment, cooperation,

fidelity, and creative management of differences, are much more

quickly resolved.

PAIRS is designed to (1) realign attitudes and beliefs about love and relationships

and about marriage and family life; (2) train and evolve each

partner’s self-knowledge, emotional literacy, and emotional efficacy; and

(3) change ineffective behaviors that diminish intimacy by teaching those

behaviors and skills that increase intimacy and relationship enhancement.

The PAIRS curriculum is a theory-based, cohesive, orchestrated

body of concepts and practical activities that is a powerful technology

for change. PAIRS has, thus far, proven effective in every population, including disadvantaged youth, middle and high schools, foreign cultures,

entire families, business groups, faith-based adult education, separated

and divorcing couples, premarital couples, and devitalized couples

in marital doldrums.

Premarital Counseling from the PAIRS Perspective

THE PREMARITAL COUPLE treads a challenging path between falling in

love and solidifying a commitment. Premarital couples seek professional

help to prevent or to understand and resolve relationship difficulties

that may have arisen even before marriage. The status and

circumstances of premarital couples seeking help vary from the youngand-

inexperienced to the previously married (with or without children) to

long-term cohabiters who have not committed to marriage. The premarital

couple is wise to be cautious. Statistics tell us that the likelihood they will

find happiness and longevity in marriage is despairingly low whereas 90%

of couples married during the years 1945 to 1949 made it to their 10-year

anniversary. Forty years later, barely 70% of those married during the

years 1985 to 1989 celebrated a decade of wedded bliss—and the statistics

continue to decrease (Fleming, 2003).

Premarital couples seek assurance that they can create a lifelong intimate

partnership. Each partner needs accurate concepts, conducive attitudes,

technical knowledge and skills, and practiced competencies to

sustain a loving relationship. As in ballroom dancing, the couple relationship

gains best through co-learning, by acquiring and practicing these intimate

relationship skills together. The couple needs to acquire high levels

of skill to continue dancing lovingly in the face of changing family life

with its unrelenting and often discouraging economic, domestic, and

parental responsibilities. The counselor, who wishes to effectively offer

such knowledge and skills to couples, needs to undertake relevant professional

training. Such training is not yet established in most graduate clinical

programs.

Pineal Gland (Human Compass)

The pineal gland is a cone-shaped body, reddish in color, about

half an inch in length, and not much larger than a grain of wheat. It

is attached to, and situated over, the third ventricle of the brain,

weighing about two grains. It is composed, in part, of nerve cells

containing a pigment similar to that present in the cells of the retina.

This strengthens the argument for its function as an eye in earlier

animal species.

In the Taoist terminology, the Niwan-Kung corresponds to this

gland. In the cauldron, it is considered to cultivate the highest level

of the spirit in the practice: Congress of Heaven. When the gland is

fully developed it will tell us where our destination is.

Tongue touches the Palate

Embryologically, the pituitary begins by manifesting as an outgrowth

of the mouth cavity. This outgrowth takes the form of a

pouch, which gradually extends toward the brain. By the end of the

fourth week this protrusion contacts a downgrowth from the brain

called the infundibulum. The pouch then develops into the anterior

lobe of the pituitary, whereas the infundibulum, representing an

outgrowth of the oldest part of the nervous system, develops into

the posterior lobe of the gland. There is a space between the walls

of the anterior and posterior parts of the gland, which persists

throughout life as the cleft of the gland. The pituitary gland is divided

into an anterior or front portion, which is composed of glandular

tissue and a posterior or back portion, which is composed of

nerve-like tissue. The anterior portion produces several hormones

which stimulate distant structures such as: a growth hormone, a

hormone which stimulates the adrenal cortex, a thyroid stimulating

hormone and also a hormone which stimulates breast milk production

and another which influences pigment production by certain

cells of the skin.

The posterior part of the gland is an extension of the hypothalamus,

that portion of the brain to which the pituitary is attached.

The posterior lobe of the pituitary body secretes several important

hormones, two of which deserve special attention. One of them,

called pitocin, has a powerful stimulating effect on the pregnant uterus and is frequently used in cases where labor is slow and

ineffective. The other, called antidiuretic hormone, controls the salt

and water content of the blood.

In animal studies, an active pituitary produces alertness. A tired

or dull pituitary produces sleepiness and general dullness. During

hibernation or winter sleep, an animal in cold weather passes into

a cataleptic state in which it continues to breathe, more deeply but

more slowly than when awake. The internal secretions of all of the

glands of hibernating animals show changes during this period but

the most marked effect is found in the pituitary in which the cells

shrink as if they too were asleep or resting. When the spring comes,

the pituitary gland cells again become normally active.

In the Taoist System, special attention is given to properly stimulate

and harmonize the energy center related to this gland. Attempts

have been made to mix pituitary gland energy with sources

of cooler energy such as sperm and earth power. This constitutes

a cauldron for cultivating the spirit in the practice called the sealing

of the five sense organs.

Pituitary Gland

The pituitary gland is about the size of a pea, situated almost exactly

in the center of the head at the base of the brain and just

behind the root of the nose. It hangs suspended from the underside

of the brain like a cherry from the limb of a tree. It is grayish

yellow in color. In the adult it weighs about five grains, or 1/1400 of

a pound.

Its name is derived from the Latin word, “pituita”, because it

was supposed to secret a fluid which lubricated the throat. It was

believed that the secretion filtered through the porous ethnoid bone

that intervenes between the pituitary body and the nasal cavity.

Thyroid Gland: Gland of Energy

The thyroid gland is located in the throat and lies in front of and

on either side of the windpipe and just beneath the larynx (voice

box) and is connected just below the Adam’s apple. This gland

arises from the same tissue and almost from the same spot as

the anterior lobe of the pituitary body. It weighs about an ounce.

Each lobe of the thyroid is about two inches in length, and from an

inch to an inch and a quarter in width.

The thyroid gland is highly vascularized and receives many times

more blood in proportion to its size. It is noted for its high degree of

functional activity. It is heavier in the female than in the male and

becomes enlarged during sexual excitement, menstruation, and

pregnancy.

The thyroid gland’s secretion is called thyroxin, which contains

iodine.

The thyroid is an energy gland and its secretion is the controller

of the speed of living. It affects the metabolism of practically all the

tissues of the body. The principal function of the hormone is to

regulate the rate of oxygen consumption, which is tantamount to

the body’s metabolic rate, which can be thought of as one’s “rate

of living”. This hormone is required for normal growth and development

of the brian, muscle and bones and it indirectly affects the

activity of other glands of internal secretion as well. Too little thyroid

hormone produces a condition of sluggishness. With too much,

there will be marked apprehension, alertness, nervousness, loss

of weight, increased thirst, frequent urination, profuse perspiration,

intolerance of heat, insomnia, frequent stools, rapid heartbeat and

palpitations.

In the Taoist Approach, the energy center at the thyroid is considered

to be one of the most important centers in the body because

it controls the growth of the dense vehicle and mental development

and it is very closely related to all of the other six energy

centers under consideration. It is the great link between the brain

and the organs of generation (reproductive organs). In the Taoist

Esoteric System, the thyroid energy center is called Hsuan-Chi

(the twelve story) and is used as an energy Center only to draw in

power. It is not ordinarily included in alchemy because when it is

open it is hard to protect. However, in the greater and the greatest

enlightenment of the Kan & Li, we draw enormous stores of power

from this energy center to alchemically mix with the power of other

energy centers in order to produce an ever greater source of power.

Hypothalamus

The hypothalamus is part of the forebrain, the same part of the

brain from which the cerebral hemispheres develop. The hypothalamus

provides a connecting link between the cerebral cortex

and the pituitary gland. Though the pituitary gland is considered the

master gland, nevertheless, there are stimulatory and inhibitory

agents originating in the hypothalamus, which regulate pituitary functions.

This ancient area in our brain is also intimately concerned

with the regulation of energy balance through the control of appetite,

sleep, body temperature, the regulation of sexual function and

control of water balance.

Disturbances in the hypothalamus may cause such endocrine

disorders as sexual precocity, absence of appetite with extreme

loss of weight, diabetes insipidus and disorganization of the sleep

pattern.

Indeed, the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland are both functionally

and anatomically related. Our thoughts, our hopes and joys,

our worries and our sorrows, our very nervous constitution all profoundly

influence the hypothalamus-pituitary complex. In the Taoist

Esoteric System, the energy center of Tien-Ting (in the mid-point

of the forehead) corresponds to the hypothalamus.

Thymus Gland

This is the gland of child development. It is situated in the chest

between the lungs and behind the upper part of the sternum (breast

bone). It descends and covers the upper portion of the heart, overlapping

the great vessels at the top of the latter. It reaches its greatest

size at the beginning of puberty, gradually disappearing thereafter

at which time it is marked by a loss of glandular structure. It

does persist, however, and some of the secreting cells remain

throughout life.

In Taoist Yoga, when properly and proportionally activated the

energy center at the thymus alchemically harmonizing with the

energy from the pituitary gland energy center and the generative

force residing in the sperm and testicles, can reverse the aging

process. This occurs in the practice of the Greatest Enlightenment

of the Kan and Li, in which white hair becomes black, teeth

grow back again, and a youthful appearance develops.

Ovaries

The ovaries, like the testes, have two functions: first, to provide

ova or egg cells and secondly, to secrete sex hormones. The hormones

of the ovaries are estrogens and progesterone and unusual

conditions androgens may be produced.

The ovaries are awakened to activity when a young girl reaches

11 to 13 years of age. The “female” hormones serve to develop the

secondary feminine sex characteristics of breast growth, pubic

and auxiliary hair, maturation of the genital tract and also the contours

of the female figure, and many contribute to the psychological

characteristics of the woman. Inadequate or absent ovarian

stimulation by the pituitary gonadotrophic hormones, failure of the

ovary to respond, or an abnormal response to the stimulation, results

in many disorders ranging from inborn failure to menstruate,

subsequent cessation of menses and development of male characteristics.

In the Taoist system, we regard the ovaries as one of the great

energy centers of the female. The female can awaken and transform

the great energy from the ovaries to the higher center.

Spleen

The spleen is located beyond the left end of the stomach, between

it and the diaphragm. It is bean-shaped and has a deep blue-red

color. It weighs from five to six ounces and is soft, spongy, and

fragile. The spleen controls blood destruction.

In the Taoist Esoteric system we regard the spleen as the entrance

for solar force, which vitalizes the dense body. Without this

vital elixir no being can live. From the spleen this sun force is sent

to the solar plexus and from the solar plexus this fluid-like energy

flows along the filaments composing the nervous system. In this

way it permeates every part of the physical body. energizing each

and every cell with its life force.

According to Chinese medicinal theories, when a person is

healthy, life energy is stored by the spleen and extracted from the

blood in such large quantities that it cannot be used inside the body.

Therefore, the life energy radiates outward through the pores of

the skin in straight lines, drives out poisonous gases, inimical bacteria

and viruses and assists in preserving a healthy condition of

the physical organism. It also prevents armies of disease germs

which swarm about in the atmosphere from entering the dense

vehicle.

According to the Taoist system, after eating, the vital solar force

attracted by the spleen is consumed by the body in great quantities.

When the meal is heavy, the outflow of the vital fluid from the

body is perceptibly diminished and does not then cleanse the dense

vehicle as thoroughly as it does when the food has been digested,

nor is it as potent in keeping out inimical germs.

Therefore, overeating renders a person more likely to catch cold

or succumb to disease. During ill health the spleen furnishes the

vital body with very little solar energy, and at this time the dense

body seems to feed on the vital body. In the Taoist system it is said

that we have to repair the vital body, which can then help the dense

body to get stronger.

In Taoist Esoterica, the “solar plexus” is regarded as the largest

cauldron of the vital body which can alchemically mix or harmonize

the generative force with the life energy from the energy center

corresponding to the pituitary gland, during the practice of Greater

Enlightenment of the Kan and Li. The spleen, as mentioned before,

corresponds to a part of the “solar plexus.”

Ovaries

The ovaries, like the testes, have two functions: first, to provide

ova or egg cells and secondly, to secrete sex hormones. The hormones

of the ovaries are estrogens and progesterone and unusual

conditions androgens may be produced.

The ovaries are awakened to activity when a young girl reaches

11 to 13 years of age. The “female” hormones serve to develop the

secondary feminine sex characteristics of breast growth, pubic

and auxiliary hair, maturation of the genital tract and also the contours

of the female figure, and many contribute to the psychological

characteristics of the woman. Inadequate or absent ovarian

stimulation by the pituitary gonadotrophic hormones, failure of the

ovary to respond, or an abnormal response to the stimulation, results

in many disorders ranging from inborn failure to menstruate,

subsequent cessation of menses and development of male characteristics.

In the Taoist system, we regard the ovaries as one of the great

energy centers of the female. The female can awaken and transform

the great energy from the ovaries to the higher center.

Testes

The male gonads or testes lie in the scrotal sac and the normal

size varies from that of a walnut to that of a pigeon egg. There are

two parts to the testes, the tubules, which produce the sperm, and

the Leydig cells, which produce the principal masculinizing hormone,

testosterone. Leydig cells also produce small amounts of

estrogens, the female sex hormones.

The testicle is under the control of gonad-stimulating hormones

or Gonadotrophins. Just before the onset of puberty, gonadotrophins

are released, causing the testes to mature and to secrete

increasing amounts of testosterone. This induces development of

the secondary sex characteristics such as development of the penis,

pubic and auxiliary hair growth, increased muscle mass, voice

changes, beard growth and all the signs of manliness in vigor and

perhaps even influencing deportment and behavior.

With adequate gonadotrophins and androgen production, the

tubular germ cells ripen into sperm cells. In the case of disorders

of the testes, secondary sexual characteristics will not develop if

there is an androgen deficiency during puberty. If this occurs after

maturity, a partial regression occurs. A pituitary disease may be the cause of this deficiency also. In the Taoist Esoteric System, we

believe that there is tremendous potential in the energy of the sperm

and sex hormones. We awaken and transform this energy to the

higher centers.

Kidney

The human kidney is a bean-shaped organ weighing about half a

pound. We have two kidneys located within the abdominal cavity

and protected at the rear by the spinal column and the big muscles

of the back. The tops of the kidneys are just beneath the ribcage.

The right kidney, above which lies the liver, is usually a little lower

than the left. About 1,700 quarts of blood flow through the

kidneys each day.

Among the kidney cells are certain glands of endocrine secretion.

The kidneys produce blood pressure-elevating substances

causing hypertension at times. Erythropoietin is a substance pro

duced by some kidney cells, that stimulates the production of red

blood cells.

In the Taoist Esoteric System, the Ming-men (the Door of Life) is

the energy center corresponding to the activity of the kidneys.

Adrenals

The adrenals are a pair of glands capping the upper ends of the

kidneys. When they are removed, death ensues rapidly. The gland

is composed of a cortex (outer portion) and a medulla (inner portion).

The outer portion produces the sex steroids, the glucocorticoids

(corticosterone, hydrocortisone) which are involved in the

control of carbohydrate, lipid and protein metabolism and the mineralocorticoids

(aldosterone, deoxycorti-kidney tubules), affecting blood volume and blood pressure control. The adrenals are flat

triangular structures. The size and weight is somewhat variable.

Each is about 5 cm long and weighs between 3 and 6 grams

and is slightly heavier in the male than in the female.

The inner portion of the adrenals is developed from the ectoderm,

the outer layer of cells of the embryo. This is the same tissue

that produces the sympathetic nervous system. The inner

portion secretes adrenalin and noradrenalin. Adrenalin is involved

in the “fight or flight” response, whereas noradrenalin causes more

vasoconstriction resulting in marked elevation in blood pressure.

The amount of adrenaline and noradrenalin that circulates in

the blood is minute in quantity but its action is powerful and

farreaching.

Its release is triggered by impulses from the sympathetic nervous

system in times of mental or physical stress, the entry of

adrenalin into the blood causes a tremendous heightening of vigor.

The brain and the sympathetic nervous system become activated.

Concentration of blood glucose is raised by conversion from glycogen,

which is stored in the liver. More blood cells are poured into

circulation from the blood pools of the liver and spleen. The heart

beats more strongly and faster, the pupils of the eyes are dilated,

enabling the person to see more clearly, breathing is more rapid,

the body temperature rises and the basal metabolism is increased.

There is an opposing effect on the digestive system, however,

wherein there is a loss of appetite and reduced motility.

Adrenalin adds strength and alertness to both physical and

mental activity. It gives force in combat and swiftness in flight. As

the activity of adrenalin is regulated by the sympathetic nervous

system, the secretion of it can be increased by the stimulation of

these nerves alongside the spinal column.

Some doctors believe that there is a condition called “low

adrenals”. A person with a deficiency of adrenalin will appear weary

and sensitive to cold, have cold hands and feet, loss of appetite, a

tendency to worry, will weep easily and will sometimes even have

a nervous breakdown. In children, learning problems develop,

growth is slowed, and they cannot be driven or hurried. If we inject

someone with adrenalin, his heart will contract more violently and

beat faster, he will feel anxious, and will get frightened easily and, if

subjected to it for some time, will become a very nervous person.

It is obvious, then, that an intricate, delicate balance of various

factors is involved in maintaining a proper harmony of the activities

of the various organ systems. In the Tao Esoteric System,

the center for adrenal activity is to be found in the Chi-Chung. This

is a very powerful energy center and is located in the area that is

called the “solar plexus”, which corresponds anatomically to the

location of the adrenals, the spleen, the pancreas and the kidneys.

Endocrine Glands and Taoist Energy Centers

The hormones are chemical messengers produced by the endocrine

glands in minute quantities but eventually affecting every single

cell of your body. The secretions of the endocrine glands empty

directly into the blood where they find their way to various organs,

stimulating or suppressing them, or in some way influencing their

activity.

In the Taoist Esoteric System the energy centers do not belong

to the physical body at all but are regarded as adjuncts of the “vital

body”, which are set apart and crystallized to the necessary density

in order that it may perform certain special manifestations of

this vital body. Each gland has a specific work to perform. When in

good health they all work together in perfect harmony. The endocrine

glands are of special interest to the students of Taoism in

relation to the circulation of the Microcosmic Orbit. In order to explain

some of the energy centers in terms of modern anatomy, one

has to look to the endocrine glands for correlation. The correlations

may or may not be right, but that is the best that one can

hypothesize at this stage of the art.

Transmitting the Power to help Open the Channels

a. Gathering the power to the palm and finger.

b. Restoring the power.

c. Transmitting the wet sickness and the cold energy away.

Healing Hand

a. Buddha Palm

b. PaKua Palm

c. Checking the aura and weak energy field.

d. Correct and harmonize the circulation system, lymph system,

nervous system, Chi flow system.

e. Point to stop pain and stress.

Iron Shirt Chi Kung

Before guns were used, the Chinese depended very much upon

Kung Fu. It is at that time, about one-tenth of the Chinese nation

was involved in such practice, which they engaged in from what is

found at the present. At first one had to develop internal power - to

get the warm current (energy), to open the Microcosmic Circulation,

complete another six special channels (routes) and an additional

24 normal channels (routes) so that the internal power could

be circulated freely. One then learned how to strengthen one’s vital

organs and to protect them with internal power or “Iron Shirt”. Only

then did one go on to practice fighting styles because without internal

power the styles were not effective in combat.

It is written that internal power took many years to develop. One

had to throw a straight punch up to 2,000 times a day for from

three to five years or strike the top of a water well 1,000 times a

day for as much as ten years or until the water was thrown out by

the force of the blow.

The main purpose of the Iron Shirt is not for fighting, but to perfect

the body, to win great health, to fight disease and to protect the vital

organs from injuries. Most important in Iron Shirt training is Changing

the Tendons & Cleansing the Marrow, and the Self-Regenerative

Hormone.

Level I:

· Iron Shirt Chi Kung breathing.

· Awakening and circulating of internal (chi) and rooting power

through exercise.

· Directing the internal power to strengthen the organs. Filling

the 12 tendon channels with Chi.

· Training and opening the fascia and filling them with chi.

Level II:

· Cleansing the marrow.

· Changing the tendons and cleansing the marrow.

· Training and opening the fascia and filling them with Chi.

· Self-stimulation of the vital organs.

· Strengthening the tendon and uniting the fascia, tendons, bones

and muscles in one piece.

Level III:

· Regenerating sexual hormones.

· Storing sexual hormones in the fascia and tendons.

· Directing the internal power to the higher energy centers.

After these three levels of Iron Shirt Chi Kung are mastered, the

powerful application of the resulting energy is taught in “Healing

Hand.”

Seminal Kung Fu: Taoist Secret of Energy

For more than 5,000 years of Chinese history, “the no outlet method”

of retaining the seminal fluid during the act of love has remained a

deep secret. At first it was practiced exclusively by the Emperor

and his innermost circle. Then it passed from father to chosen son

alone, excluding wives, daughters and other family members. The

method permits a man to retain bodily secretions which are an invaluable source of energy when stored and recirculated to the

vital centers.

Sages of all time and places have found that conservation of

the precious energies of the seminal fluid and ovarian energy deeply

affects a human’s life. Whoever holds his vital seed finds that he

spontaneously seeks to preserve living things from waste, decay

and harm. On the other hand, those who excessively spend the

fluid and its vital force crave outer stimulation at any price, for they

desperately need to replace their own lost energies.

One prevents loss of this biochemical energy by not ejaculating.

Stopping ejaculation is not to be confused with stopping orgasm.

The No Outlet Method provides an altogether unique and

superior type of orgasm.

Every vital function is invigorated because one no longer discharges

life energy through the genitals. Real sexual fulfillment lies

not in feeling the life go out of you but in increasing awareness of

the vital current that flows through the loins. The body is further

replenished by a method of “Steaming” the vital energy up from the

sexual centers to the brain and higher organs. The life enhancing

process is completed by exchanging with one’s partner energy

released during moments of excitation.

The sages have considered one drop of semen equal in vital

power to one hundred drops of blood. The Indians refer repeatedly

to “Amrito”, the elixir of life, a rejuvenating substance from sexual

energy. The production of this elixir, which Westerners would call

a higher hormonal secretion, allows the body to enter higher and

higher states of energy.

Most people in our consumer society spend more than they

earn. They borrow themselves deep into debt. Through poor habits

they also spend more vital power than they earn.

Let us say that people earn 100 units of life force through breathing,

eating and resting but spend 125 units of life force through

gluttony, overwork, anxiety, constitutional weakness, and frequent

loss of the vital fluid. They must continuously borrow vitality from

the brain and other vital organs. This theft of vital energy from one’s

own reserves induces mental and physical sickness and premature

aging. We teach you how to overcome worldly sex desire and

a way to earn 125 units and to spend 100 or less. The imbalance

of one’s personal energy economy is first corrected by reducing

the disastrously wasteful expenditure called ejaculation, while experiencing a nourishing balanced energy exchange with one’s partner.

Tai Chi Chuan - Long and Short Forms

In order to benefit from the still, slow and soft movements of the Tai

Chi Chuan form, it is necessary for one to have cultivated an awareness

of Chi and internal power through the Opening of the Microcosmic

Orbit and Tai Chi Chi Kung. The Tai Chi Chuan form further

educates the body to serve the mind through relaxing and

strengthening. In addition, Tai Chi Chuan can be used as a selfdefense

technique, but only if one is able to properly circulate and

utilize the intrinsic energy called Chi so that every movement of

the body is guided by internal power.

Before beginning to study the Tai Chi Chuan form, the student

must have completed:

1) Opening of the Microcosmic Orbit;

2) Tai Chi Chi Kung ( 13 movements);

3) Iron Shirt Chi Kung Level I;

4) Seminal and Ovarian Kung Fu Level l.

(Course Nos. 11 and 12)

The staff includes western M.D.s, nutritionists etc. Master Chia

regularly visits each center to lecture and individually counsel Taoist

practitioners. He also aides all students in increasing their circulation

of Chi by “passing energy”, especially to those who for

whatever reason feel blocked. This is not “instant enlightenment”,

only an experience of higher Chi flow so that the student may better

learn to create it on his own.

Future volumes of the Esoteric Taoist Yoga Encyclopedia will

explore in depth these other ancient disciplines whose methods

have largely been kept secret from westerners.

Seminal and Ovarian Kung Fu

This ancient Taoist yoga practice sublimates and transforms

sexual energy through its circulation in the Microcosmic Orbit. The

conservation of this precious, biochemical force has been recognized

by sages of various esoteric traditions as a major revitalizing

factor in the physical health and spiritual development of both men

and women. The turning back and circulation of this generative

force from the sexual energy centers to the higher centers invigorates

and rejuvenates all the body’s vital functions. Real sexual

fulfillment lies in preventing the indisscriminate loss of this vital

current and in experiencing a deeper level of orgasm. These techniques

can be used for personal transformation — both physical

and spiritual. Prerequisite: Course No. 1— Opening the Microcosmic

Orbit (Course No. 7)

Dah Uh Gong Nei Kung Five Finger Kung Fu

The Dah Uh Gong Nei Kung stytem integrates both static and

dynamic exercise forms in order to cultivate and nourish Chi which

accumulates in the organs, penetrates the fascia, tendons and

muscles, finally reaches the hands and fingers. Practitioners of

body-centered therapies and various Healing Arts such as chiropractic

medicine, polarity therapy, shiatsu and Swedish massage

will benefit from this technique. Practiced sequentially, it functions

to expand and relax the breath, calm the mind and adjust posture.

The approach is simpler to learn than Tai Chi Chuan and easier to

execute than yoga. Through the practice of Dah Uh Gong the student

will learn:

· To expand your breathing capacity

· To strengthen your internal organs

· To tone and stretch your muscles

· To strengthen your lower back and abdominal muscles

· To normalize your weight

· To develop your ability to concentrate for self-healing

Prerequisite: Course No. 1— Opening the Microcosmic Orbit

(Curse No.5)

Tai Chi Chi Kung: Foundation of Tai Chi Chuan

Without the circulation of chi through the channels, muscles and

tendons of the body the Tai Chi Chuan movements are only physical

exercises. The practice of Tai Chi Chi Kung awakens and circulates

Chi energy and is therefore the foundation for the mastery

of Tai Chi Chuan. The potential to develop our self-healing capabilities

begins with the discovery of the flow of this vital energy through

the Microcosmmic Orbit. This circulation is enhanced and sustained

through the practice of Tai Chi Chi Kung which assists in

improving health through correct posture, movements and calming

of the mind. This particular form is comprised of 13 movements.

Prerequisite: Course No. 1 — Opening the Microcosmic

Orbit. Course No. 6)

Iron Shirt Chi Kung Highest Form of Chi Kung

The physical integrity of the body is sustained and protected through

the accumulation and circulation of internal power (chi) in the vital

organs. This energy is stored in the fascia which is a layer of connective

tissue covering, supporting or connecting the muscles or

inner organs. Over time, the Iron Shirt Chi Kung practice strengthens

one’s vital organs as well as the tendons, muscles, marrow

and bones.

Historically, the practice of Iron Shirt Chi Kung was a prerequisite

to the effective study and eventual mastery of the various

Kung Fu fighting styles. However, the main purpose of Iron Shirt

Chi Kung is not for fighting; it is to achieve excellent health by increasing

stamina and the body’s ability to fight disease and defend

its vital organs from unexpected injury. Prerequisite: Course No. 1

- opening the Microcosmic Orbit. (Course No. 4)

Iron Shirt Chi Kung is divided into three levels of instruction, I, II,

and III. (See detailed description later this chapter.)

Chi Massage — Taoist Rejuvenation

Using internal power chi and gentle external stimulation, this

simple yet highly effective self-massage technique enables one to

collect, and then direct Chi to the sense organs and other parts of

the body for self-healing purposes.

Taoist Rejuvenation dates back 5,000 years to the Yellow

Emperor’s classic text on Taoist, internal medicine.(Course No. 3)

Six Healing Sounds

This self-healing method uses simple arm movements and vocalizations

to produce a cooling effect upon the internal organs. The

Six Healing Sounds quickly eliminate stress, improve digestion,

reduce insomnia and headaches and relieve fatigue. This method

is useful to meditators as well as runners, practitioners of martial

arts, and other intense exercise systems that tend to buildup excessive

heat in the body. (Course No. 2)

Taoist Esoteric Yoga Course Offerings

There were original nine Taoist Esoteric Yoga Centers in the U.S.

offering personal instruction in various practices ranging from the

Microcosmic Orbit to Tai Chi Chuan, Pakua, Hsing I.

Taoist Esoteric Warm Current Meditation as these practices are

also known, awakens, circulates, directs and preserves the generative

life force called chi through the major acupuncture meridians

of the body. At progressive stages, dedicated practice of this

ancient esoteric system eliminates stress and nervous tension,

massages the internal organs, and restores health to damaged

tissue.

This practice is of particular use to practioners of polarity therapy,

shiatsu, Kundalini yoga, Swedish massage and other healing arts

in which the exchange and cirulation of life force — energy ki, prana

or Chi — must be maintained while working with clients or students.

The first two formulas are described below. The remaining

5 formulas will be described when offered.

Opening of the Microcosmic Orbit is the first level in the Taoist

Esoteric Warm Current Meditation. Through unique relaxation and

concentration techniques, it provides for purification of the first two

major acupuncture channels of the body, the Functional and Governor

meridians. Master Chia will assist students in the mastery of

this technique by passing energy through his hands into their energy

channels. (Course No.1)

Completion of the Microcosmic Orbit is a prerequisite for any

student who intends to study the higher levels of Taoist yoga which

includes various forms of Chi Kung, Seminal and Ovarian Kung

Fu, and the long and short forms of Tai Chi Chuan.

Fusion of the Five Elements and Cleansing of the Organs is the

second level of the Taoist Esoteric Warm Current Meditation. At

this level one Iearns how the five elements (earth, metal, fire, wood,

water) and their corresponding organs (spleen, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys) interact with one another in three distinct ways: producing,

combining and threatening. This formula combines the disparate

energies of the five principle elements — and their corresponding

emotions (sympathy, sadness, joy, anger, fear) — one

harmonious whole. The filtering effect upon the entire psycho/physical

system is particularly powerful as these combined energies

circulate throughout the Microcosmic Orbit and the Six Special

Channels.

(Course No. 9)

The second formula is taught in three parts.

Part I: The 12 steps for collecting, fusing, harmonizing and

cleansing of the organs;

Part II: The opening of the three Chung-Ma (Thrusting Routes)

and the nine Tai-Ma (Belt Routes);

Part III: The opening of the Positive and Negative Legs and Positive

and Negative Arms.

Seventh Formula: Reunion of Man and Heaven - True Immortal Man.

We compare the body to a ship and the soul to the engine and

propeller of a ship. This ship carries a very precious and very large

diamond, which it is assigned to transport to a very distant shore. If

your ship is damaged (a sick and ill body), no matter how good the

engine is, you are not going to get very far and may even sink.

Thus we advise against spiritual training unless all of the channels

in the body have been properly opened and have been made ready

to receive the 10,000 or 100,000 volts of super power, which will pour down into them. The Taoist approach, which has been passed

down to us for over 5,000 years, consists of many thousands of

methods. The formulae and practices we describe in these books

is based on such secret knowledge and the author's own experience

in over ten years of study and of successfully teaching hundreds of

students.

The main goal of Taoists:

1. This level - overcoming reincarnation.

2. Higher level - the immortal spirit.

3. Highest level - the immortal spirit and immortal body, like a

mobile house to the spirit and soul.

Sixth Formula: Congress of Heaven and Earth Immortality

The sixth, most advanced, formula is difficult to describe in words.

It involves the incarnation of a male and a female entity within the

body of the adept (this might correspond to the Crown Chakra,

Sahasrara). These two entities have sexual intercourse within the

body. It involves the mixing of the Yin and Yang powers on and

about the crown of the head and being totally open to receive energy

from above and regrowth of the pineal gland to its fullest use. When

the pineal gland is at its fullest, it will serve as a compass to tell us

in which direction our aspirations can be found. Taoist Esotericism

is a method of mastering the spirit, as described in Taoist Yoga.

Without the body, The Tao cannot be attained, But with the body,

truth can never be realized. The practitioner of Taoism should

preserve his physical body with the same care as he would a

precious diamond because it can be used as a medium to achieve

immortality. If, however, you do not abandon it when you reach

your destination you will not realize the truth.

The sixth formula consists of:

(a) Mingling (uniting) the body, soul, spirit and the universe

(Cosmic Orbit).

(b) Full development of the positive to eradicate the negative

completely.

(c) Spirit returned to nothingness.

Fifth Formula: Sealing of the Five Sense Organs

This very high formula effects a literal transmutation of the warm

current or Chi into mental energy or energy of the soul. To do this

we must seal the five senses, for each one is an open gate of

energy loss. In other words, power flows out from each of the sense

organs unless there is an esoteric sealing of these doors of energy

movement. They must release energy only when specifically called

upon to convey information. This might correspond to the Brow

(Ajna) and Throat Chakra (Vissuddha).

Abuse of the senses leads to far more energy loss and

degradation than people ordinarily realize. Examples of misuse of

the senses are as follows: If you look too much, the seminal fluid is

harmed; listen too much and the mind is harmed; speak too much

and the salivary glands are harmed; cry too much and the blood is

harmed; have sexual intercourse too often and the marrow is

harmed, etc.

Each of the elements has its corresponding sense through which

its elemental force may be gathered or spent. The eye corresponds

to fire; the tongue to water; the left ear to metal; the right ear to

wood; the nose to earth.

The Fifth formula consists of:

(a) Sealing the five thieves: ears, eyes, nose, tongue and body

(b) Controlling the heart, and seven emotions (pleasure,anger,

sorrow, joy, love, hate, and desire)

(c) Unite, transmutes the inner alchemical agent into life

preserving true vitality.

(d) Purifying the spirit.

(e) Raising and educating the spirit, stopping the spirit from

wandering outside in quest of sense data.

(f) Do away with decayed food, depending on the un-decayed

food, the universal energy is the True Breatharian.

Fourth Formula: Greatest Englightenment of Kan and Li

Greatest Yin And Yang Mixed II

This formula is Yin and Yang power mixed at a higher bodily center.

This is to reverse the aging process, to re-establish the thymus

glands to increase natural immunity. This means that the radiation

of healing energy stems from a more powerful point in the body

and provides vast benefits to the physical and etheric organism.

The Fourth Formula consists of:

a. Moving the stove and changing the Cauldron to the higher

center.

b. Absorbing the Solar and Lunar power.

c. Greatest mixing, transforming, steaming and purification of

sperm power (Generative Force), soul, Mother Earth,

FatherHeaven, Solar and Lunar Power for gathering the Microcosmic

inner alchemical agent.

d. Mixing the Visual power with the Vital power.

e. Mixing (sublimating) the body, soul and spirit, (True

Breatherian).

This might correspond to the heart Chakra (Anathata).

Third Formula: Greater Enlightenment of Kan and Li

Greater Yin And Yang Mixed I

This formula comprises the Taoist Dah Kan Li (Ta K'an Li) practice.

It uses the same energy relations of Yin and Yang inversion but

increases to an extraordinary degree the amount of energy that

may be drawn up into the body. At this stage, the mixing,

transforming and harmonizing of the energy in the Solar Plexus (it

might correspond to the Manipura Chakra) takes place. The

increasing amplitude of power is due to the fact that the third formula

draws Yin and Yang energy from within the body, whereas, the

third formula draws the power directly from Heaven (above) and

Earth (ground wire - Yang and Yin, respectively) and adds the

elemental powers to those of one's own body. In fact, power can

be drawn from any energy source, such as the moon, wood, earth,

light, etc.

The Third formula consists of:

a. Moving the stove and changing the Cauldron.

b. Greater Water and Fire mixed (male & female intercourse).

c. Greater transformation of sperm power into the higher level.

d. Gathering the outer and inner alchemical agents to restore

the generative force and invigorate the brain.

e. Cultivating the body and soul.

f. Beginning the refining of the sperm power (generative force,

vital force, Ching Chi).

g. Absorbing Mother Earth (Yin) power and Father Heaven (Yang)

power. Mixing with sperm power (body) and soul.

h. Raising the soul.

i. Retaining the positive generative force (seminal) force and

keeping it from draining away.

j. Gradually do away with food and depend on self sufficiency

and Universal energy (Breatherian).