There’s a powerful and easy-to-use way to shift your “field” to attract more intimacy–and I’ll teach it to you in this episode. This one process will help draw people who are right for you–and help you spot the people who aren’t. Moreover, it will help you notice the small and large invitations to love in your day-to-day life. Hop in to learn more!

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Table of Contents

• How to Attract More Intimacy
• The Place of Profound Loneliness Does Not Attract More Intimacy
• Your Magic Leads You to Attract More Intimacy
• Scooching Closer to Your Being

How To Shift Your Field To Attract More Intimacy

There’s a simple but powerful shift that you can do that will make you more available to intimacy, almost immediately. Stay tuned to this episode of The Deeper Dating Podcast to learn this practice. Hello everybody and welcome to the Deeper Dating Podcast. I’m your host Ken Page, I’m a psychotherapist and the author of the book Deeper Dating. And today I’m going to teach you a simple practice you can do that will almost immediately invite more intimacy into your life. This week and every week I’m going to share with you the greatest tools I know to help you find love and keep it flourishing. And heal your life in the process because the skills of dating are nothing more than the skills of intimacy. And if you want to learn more about the Deeper Dating approach to intimacy, just go to deeperdatingpodcast.com, and there you’ll find a transcript of this episode. And if you join my mailing list, you’ll get free gifts and the opportunity to learn so much more about this authenticity based approach to finding love. I also want to say that everything that I talk about in this podcast is educational in nature, it’s not medical or psychiatric advice.

Subscribe and Leave Ken a Review

Finally, I just want to say that if you subscribe, leave me a review, share your thoughts and feelings or go to the website and just click on ask Ken and leave me a question. All of those are ways to interact and to support this podcast. So let’s jump in. In our lives, we have experience after experience – ways that we relate things that we see, things that we smell, things that we taste, interactions that we have, feelings that we have, physiological experiences and those are our experiences. But then there’s an overlay that follows those experiences and that overlay is the way we understand or ascribe meaning to that event. That overlay hugely depends on the state of mind that we’re in. So if we’re in a stressed-out kind of state and something happens that is a little bit awkward or maybe we have some trauma around this, we interpret that event in a way that maybe scares us or gives us some dread or some concern. If we’re really busy and really rushed, there are a million things that we miss because we’re just focusing on whatever it is that we have to get done. Or it may be that something we ascribe an erotic quality to it or we ascribe a feeling of love to it or it evokes a memory. And there’s this kind of process that happens of experience and then overlay. That overlay determines kind of how we view life and interpret life and understand life. By shifting our state of mind, we shift the overlay that we put on the events in our lives and God knows that includes the events that happen in our relationships.

How to Attract More Intimacy

So in this episode I’m going to offer you a practice that will help you make a shift so that you are in what I call the gift zone. And in that zone you interpret things in a way that invites intimacy, and leads to intimacy. Intimacy with yourself, spiritual intimacy, intimacy with others, intimacy with the world.

When we’re in that state, the state that I call the gift zone, we invite intimacy. It’s a very alive and very kind of raw and true and beautiful state that most of us, unless we’re really upset, unless we’re really anxious, unless we’re really stressed, it’s not that hard to drop into that space. And when we do, we see the world differently.

So what is this gift zone and how can we get there? I’ll just share a story. Someone who was in one of my intensive courses doing this work, learning how to go into the gift zone, how to lead with and acknowledge her core gifts. She said, “This dating thing is more like a living thing. I’m living as a soul, skin to skin, soul to soul with the world and it’s so different and so promising.” And that did lead her, at least in part, all the things that she was doing led her to a wonderful relationship.

Setting the Stage for Success

I’m not saying that the minute that you do this, you’ll instantly be in a wonderful relationship. You can’t make that promise, life unfolds in its own way but I can pretty much promise that the more you live in your gift zone, the more you will invite love, the more you will have access to creativity, the more you will be permeable to the winds of inspiration that are moving through your life. Here’s what I would like you to do to kind of help set the stage for this process. I’d like you to imagine a target and if you’ve been in any of my courses or read my book you know about this concept but follow with me anyway because you’re going to get to have an experience with it in this episode. So picture a target, really simple target and picture that the center of the target is the beating heart of your humanity. It’s the place where you are living kind of purely from your heart and from your experience. It doesn’t mean it’s always happy and pretty in pink and joyful. No, it could be sad, it could be poignant, it could be aching, but it’s alive and it’s you at the moment.

It’s the truth of who you are. It’s the beating heart of your humanity. And the closer we get to the beating heart of our humanity at any given moment, the closer we are to insight, to potential inspiration, unequivocally to transformation and to kind of our personal evolution, to finding the language of our own experience in the world and to intimacy, to love, including our longing for love.

Living in the Heart of Our Humanity Attracts More Intimacy

So it’s not easy to live in the beating heart of our humanity. It’s glorious and it radiates. The more skilled we become at living there, the more beautiful we become, the more our absolute being becomes an invitation to intimacy. And really things happen when we do that. I say that our field changes and it really does. So we want to live there, in the heart of our gift zone, the beating heart of our humanity. It’s this kind of thing that we’ve heard again and again. In dating, it’s kind of the grandmother who would say this, “Honey, just be yourself. Just be yourself.” And that’s sweet and it’s really essentially true but “just be yourself” is not just. Our self is big, our self is mysterious, our self has a language of experience and meaning that is vast and incredible. Just be yourself is no just at all. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of grace and a lot of care, and a lot of learning, but it’s the place to live. So, that’s what we want to do. We want to be able to live in our gift zone and I’m going to teach a practice for that but I’m going to finish explaining the target first. So then as you move out from that bull’s-eye place, as you move out further along the target, you enter into the land of your protections, the land of numbness, the land of your defenses. So the first zone outside of that, we could say that next band on the target, a big band is the zone of protection.

The Place of Profound Loneliness Does Not Attract More Intimacy

When we’re at the bullseye of self, which is hard to live in and hard to bear, we’re right at the core of our truth. The further out we move in that round space, that first inner circle, the closer we are toward the state of protection, the more we’re defended and in the state of protection in its kind of lighter forms, we’re avoiding things, we’re watching TV, we’re getting lost in our phone. We’re numbing ourselves in different ways, we’re kind of doing things not to be in the beating heart of our immediate humanity. The further out we get, the more defended and protected we are. So just picture this target that the further out you get from the core of your being, the more you’re defensive and the further out you get, the more you will be brittle, the more you will feel that your defenses are necessary for your survival.

They become our armor that we live by and live through and live in, and they become a habit. The further out you get when you get out to the end of the zone of protection, then you enter into the zone of disconnection and that’s the place where it’s so empty, it’s dark, it hurts.

This is a place of addiction, this is a place of really profound loneliness. It’s a hard place to be. It’s a place where we are so isolated from the warmth that lives in the center of our being, that our very existence hurts because we’re not connected to it.

Shifting Your State of Mind Leads You to a Place Where You Attract More Intimacy

So all of us have lived in all parts of this target, but the goal and the journey is drop by homeopathic drop to move closer to the gift zone. And by living in the gift zone, you shift your state of mind to a place where you attract more intimacy, where you radiate more intimacy, where you radiate more authenticity. So you’re actually radiating messages of who you truly and authentically are. So, that people who are looking for someone, like who you truly and authentically are, will recognize you, will see you, will hear you, will pick that up because our romantic sensors are incredibly, incredibly, exquisitely refined. And when you’re in that zone, that’s where the magic, the depth of inner experience, the richness, the sense of expansion, the fullness, the tenderness, that’s when these beautiful, beautiful experiences blossom. When we follow those experiences, they blossom inside us and they lead us into a fuller sense of self and a fuller expression. But they also lead us to more risk because of course there is a risk, an existential risk with being real. There are lots of risks. There’s the risk of being real and what the repercussions of that are going to be. There’s the risk of people being hurt. There’s the risk of people being intimidated. There’s the risk of people being jealous. There’s the risk of rejection. And then there’s the risk of the feelings of power and expansion that might trigger feelings of guilt or shame or I don’t deserve this or I don’t know how to handle this.

The Risk of Living in the Zone of Authenticity

There’s the risk of feeling the sadness, the grieving, the trauma, the different human experiences that live in this zone of authenticity. But when you’re in your gift zone, you feel your core essential gifts. You attract intimacy and you invite intimacy. And your overlay of the experiences that you have in your day to day life when you’re in your gift zone becomes an overlay of noticing love and noticing the invitations to love in your life. So this is where I’m going to teach a process now what I call the intimacy fix. And it is really simple process, it’s a self-regulating, self inspiring, self-determined process. And here’s what it is. What you do is you just imagine this target, you just notice where you are. You just think, well, where am I now in this target? Let’s say it’s a kind of just a general day to day moment and you think, well, I don’t know, I’m nowhere, I’m not noticing this target. I’m not noticing my feelings. You drop down a little bit more and you say, “Oh, oh, oh, actually I’m kind of on the edge of some feelings here, a peaceful feeling or a sad feeling.” And then you recognize how much you are in touch with the beating heart of your humanity and you try to hold that space with compassion. The minute you can feel your humanity and hold it with the feeling of compassion, you are in magic land, in some way, and you are affecting the shape of your future just by living that way, just by being that way. That’s the magic of your being.

Your Magic Leads You to Attract More Intimacy

That’s your magic and it’s real and it’s true and it leads to love and it invites love. Or maybe you’re with someone you care about and you’re pissed off, or you’re irritated, or you’re stressed, or you’re just disconnected, and you say, “Wow, well, I’m pissed off. I’m irritated. This person who I love, I’m not feeling the love at this point. I’m just feeling annoyed, I’m feeling denigrating of them, I’m feeling denigrating of myself. I just feel like shit.” And then you notice that and you feel the pain. You feel whatever it is that you are. And then you think, “what can I do at this moment to move more into my gift zone?” So if I’m in pain about something that’s going on and I don’t take care of myself, I’m not going to enter into my gift zone. If I’m in pain and I don’t do something to create healing or communication, I won’t move more into my gift zone. Here’s a tiny segue. This is something I tell people all the time. If you’re stuck in a bad place, in a relational situation or even not in a relational situation, in any kind of situation, if you’re stuck in a bad place and you decide that you want to try to get out of it yourself,try – try once, try twice, and then kind of give up and instead ask for help from someone you trust. The results will be so much more dramatically quick and effective because we can’t lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, we come down immediately.

The Weakest Tool in the Box

But we keep thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can figure this out by willpower,” but willpower is one of the weakest tools in the box. So when we’re in pain, reaching out for help, talking about our pain, expressing what our need is with a safe person is a glorious, glorious way to move into our gift zone with that person. That’s an act of bravery. Here’s another example, you’re walking down the street thinking of whatever and you’re not in your gift zone, you’re not in a bad place, you’re just walking down the street and you think, let me go into my gift zone, let me just move just a little bit more toward the center of that target. Can I do that? Can I just shift a little bit to stand more in the center of the target? So then you do that, you make that shift, you begin to feel your humanity. Maybe you feel sad. Maybe you realize something is worrying you. Maybe all of a sudden you can look up and say, it’s a beautiful day and I wasn’t even noticing it. All of those experiences are fine and often when we are about to move into our gift zone, when we’re about to do this conscious practice of moving into our amazing, awesome gift zone, there’s a ring of fire we go through. Maybe it’s shame. For me, it’s sadness. When I’m out of my gift zone, it’s often because I don’t want to feel certain sadnesses that is in my heart.

Moving Closer to Your Humanity Will Attract More Intimacy

So when I’m stepping into my gifts zone, often there’s going to be sadness, there will be anxiety because those are things that I experience, of things that are not taken care of, that are not done and I can get lost in those. Or I could say, these are the things that I feel on the way to the gift zone, on the way to the beating heart of my humanity. And then I say, “Oh yeah, that sadness. I know that is sadness.” It’s a part of who I am. When I hold the sadness in that way, I’m in my gift zone. When I hold my anxiety in that way, with that little bit of more spaciousness, more compassion, and more acceptance, there’s more breathing room, that’s a gift zone space of handling a problem. So, there I am walking down the street and I do this shift and I just think, “how can I move a little bit more into my humanity?” Now if you’re stressed, you might not be able to do this or if you’re seriously anxious or depressed or worried. But the other times you probably will be able to do it. And why not, let’s try it right now. Just take a minute and just think, “where am I on this target?” And if you’re anywhere near the beating heart of your humanity, celebrate, enjoy that, feel the glow, feel the warmth. Don’t even worry about it, just allow yourself the pleasure of that experience. Shoulder to shoulder, just shoulders touching with that gift zone place, with that intimacy with self, that’s enough, that’s all you need.

Scooching Closer to Your Being

If you’re not feeling that, ask yourself, how could I kind of scooch over a little bit closer to the heart of my being? Maybe it’s an action, maybe you need a walk, maybe you need a nap, maybe it’s time to read, maybe it’s time for something else. But you can ask yourself this question and every time you make the conscious shift to go into your gift zone, you’re living love and you are inviting love. And this is the other thing, it feels like an inside thing, but it affects your field, it affects the things that happen. When you live that way, there is an effulgence, there’s some kind of radiating of something that I don’t know how it works, but it does draw love. Also, you are at your most beautiful at those times. There’s a way that you are lit from within, even in sadness when you’re in your gift zone.

Conclusion

So this is a beautiful practice that you could do at any time you want and it will make you more beautiful. It will make you radiate the beauty of your being more. It will affect the amount of love in your life because the overlay that you’ll be adding to your experiences will be an overlay that invites and appreciates and notices love that much more. So I hope you enjoyed this exercise. You can go to Deeper Dating Podcast and click on ask Ken at the top and just share your experiences so that I could share them as well with this community. Enjoy this process, it’s gorgeous, it’s you and it’s fun. So, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Deeper Dating Podcast.