Ethical Non-Monogamy, Polyamory and Open Relationships: A Healthy Approach

In today's lesson, we’ll go over the basics of everything regarding Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM). There are many different definitions, relationship structures and approaches we can choose on our ENM path. With this information, you'll begin to build a foundation of understanding and self-awareness that will be crucial as you embark on your ENM journey. This will help you minimize overwhelm and confusion, so that you can approach this lifestyle feeling deeply empowered, liberated, and fulfilled!

Ethical Non-Monogamy is a bold approach to relationships that can impact your life in incredibly positive and healing ways. However, ENM also has the potential to cause a lot of heartbreak and hardship if you jump in for the wrong reasons, or if you're not quite ready yet. In today's lesson, we'll discover, deep down, why you’re truly drawn to ENM, so that your journey can add to your life’s meaning instead of creating more stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. Through practical information and a powerful, gentle movement-based meditation, you'll come out feeling clear and secure in your next steps on your ENM path!

Let’s talk about the common fears and challenges that come up around Ethical Non-Monogamy. It’s crucial to identify what challenges may come up on your journey so that you can feel as prepared as possible and still enjoy your relationships. In today’s lesson, I’ll also be guiding you through a gentle movement-based meditation to help you feel into your biggest potential obstacles while approaching ENM. You’ll also learn how your body can feel safe enough to navigate these challenges, so you can expand beautifully through this journey, instead of risking further trauma.

Today, we’ll talk about how to create relationship agreements to help you have the safest, most healing, and most satisfying ENM journey possible. Without reflecting deeply on your needs, setting boundaries accordingly, and communicating them clearly to all parties, you can risk great emotional despair. As we’ve talked about, ENM is bound to stir up old wounds, so it’s VITAL to do everything we can to communicate about consent, boundaries, and agreements in all situations and relationships.

Jealousy is one of the hardest aspects and most talked about challenges that people fear before even trying ENM, and also experience during the journey. Jealousy can feel really difficult inside our bodies, but if we understand how to be with these feelings and move through the insecurities beneath, we can come out on the other side feeling so much more empowered, secure, and able to truly and selflessly love! In today’s lesson, we will explore why jealousy can feel so intense, how to shift the emotion, and a guided movement meditation to help you begin feeling more secure.

Many people find it difficult, especially at first, to regulate their excitement and balance time with having new partners, which may cause resentment, unintentional neglect of one or more partners, and overall relationship rifts that may dampen the excitement, pleasure, and joy of this whole ENM experience. In today’s lesson, we will learn the science behind New Relationship Energy (NRE), or the “honeymoon period,” which can potentially lead us to sabotage our relationships, how to modulate excitement without diminishing it, and how to feel most supported as you add more partners into your life.

Today, we are going to explore the challenge of having needs and desires that differ from your partner’s, and therefore may potentially cause conflict. It’s essential to know that these differences will come up and how to be prepared to navigate them as smoothly as possible. This way, you can embrace even more love and compassion through the journey without insecurities intensely rushing in. We’ll also do a gentle movement meditation to help you embody the way you want to approach these potential conflicts in your relationships and ENM journey.

Let’s talk about how to navigate health and safety around physical acts of pleasure, as well as expanding your boundaries, which is an incredibly rewarding part of many people’s ENM journey. Because so many people have experienced sexual trauma in past relationships, it’s crucial to address what obstacles may come up around your pleasure-filled explorations and how to transmute these obstacles into unimaginable self-growth and expansion. We will first review information around how trauma contributes insecurities around pleasure-based intimacy, and then ease into a guided movement meditation to help you envision and embody your most confident intimate and erotic self.

Today, we’ll talk about the common challenges of dating that you’ll likely experience through your ENM journey. Whether you’re single, partnered, monogamous, non-monogamous, dating is often HARD! That’s why I’ve designed today’s lesson to help you gain awareness and work through potential dating challenges, so that you can enjoy and embrace the benefits of each relationship and grow immensely as an individual, without becoming more guarded or closing your heart.

Today, we are going to sum up all the elements of ENM we’ve learned through this course and send you off with one last movement-based meditation to help you embody the most authentic version of yourself as you navigate this journey. That way, you can officially take your first steps feeling as empowered and confident as possible!