Swiping Up: Course Outline
Day 1 - Reflection: Along the way: Shaping the journey toward partnership
You might be thinking how tiring and time-consuming the dating game will be. You are going back out again into the world of the unknown, hoping for a positive process and outcome. What if you could design what your dating experience will be like? To activate this, we need to start with acknowledging the normal self-limiting conversations that come up when we embark on new adventures.
Day 1 - Practice: Finding your 3 gestural quality anchors
Through imagery you’ll discover the top qualities you want to bring to this partnership seeking process. You’ll learn to become grounded in these qualities through a process of visualization, touch, and movement. These will anchor you in the dating adventure ahead.
Day 2 - Reflection: There they go: Partnerships that inspire you
We often learn through the love stories we experience through television, movies, books, and the people around us. We gravitate to those partnership examples that resonate with us. What inspires you about the way they are together? Do they cuddle? Is independence important to them?
Let’s begin to observe and collect, like wildflowers on a walk, the relationship qualities you find most satisfying, creating a bouquet of what’s important for your future partnership.
Day 2 - Practice: A guided memory experience
Let’s take a positive trip down memory lane to remember some partnerships you were around and write down what you admired in them. This ‘memory experience’ will be a source from which you gather specific descriptions to add to your own written romantic partnership vision.
Day 3 - Reflection: Let’s talk about desire
Relationship magic doesn’t just happen. We make it happen. Intimacy and, for most people sex, is a key part of a long lasting romantic relationship that ebbs and flows over time. Today is an important day to imagine how your desires will be expressed in your partnership. You will hear about sexy connection possibilities and the importance of communication around intimacy. You’ll uncover your deepest wishes.
Day 3 - Practice: Let your body guide you: A solo sensorial visioning and touch practice
What does an inspiring, satisfying and real relationship include that would light you up? Let’s go inward to enliven your senses. Your imaginary partner will enter the room and engage with you through your own movement, breath and touch, igniting ideas of connection and sexual possibilities to add to your written vision.
Day 4 - Reflection: Cleaning up, rising up: The partner you’ll be proud to be
What would it mean to you to feel ‘ready’ when your future partner walks in the door? Learn the essentials to organize and observe where you are on your current relationship life path and elevate the ‘you’ that will welcome this new person into your life.
Day 4 - Practice: Acknowledgement and getting things done
Let’s engage in a writing and movement practice in which you will first acknowledge what you have successfully accomplished in one of the key areas of your life. You will then complete a diagram that exemplifies short and long term actionable steps you are willing to do. Identifying and embodying these will prepare you on a practical level to offer your next partner the elevated you that you can be proud of.
Day 5 - Reflection: Supporting each other to get needs met
Have you had a relationship that became strained when you turned to each other for everything? Psychotherapist Esther Perel speaks about the dangers of placing all of our hope for fulfillment and connection on our partner. We ask them to act as our friend, lover, advisor, and to be with us on our spiritual path. Rarely can we find this in one person. It takes a village. Today we will look at what feeling supported means to us and what connections, beyond our relationship, can help us meet those support needs.
Day 5 - Practice: Which wishing well? Clarify where you’ll go to fulfill your many wishes
You love to swing dance but could do that with a number of partners. Maybe you only want to share erotic massage with your partner. You want to cook meals with your partner and sometimes others too. Today you’ll draw a diagram to reveal what is most important that you’ll be able to share with your future partner and what can be shared beyond with a broader community.
Day 6 - Reflection: Being a part of a team: Being together in challenging times
If there is anything you can count on is that life will present obstacles and challenges to one or both of you along the way. Today we will consider how you would like to move through these moments together. What might it be like to maintain a sense of ease and stability? What skills or practices might support you to take challenges in stride as a team?
Day 6 - Practice: We made it through: A joyous description of a resilient partnership
Big challenges are easier to meet in a spirit of creativity rather than reactivity. Let’s project you into the future so we can create a broader perspective on moving through difficult times in a relationship.
Day 7- Reflection: Compiling your elevated vision
Today you will assemble your Partnership Vision to bring together all the work you did throughout this Journey, painting a clear picture of what you want in your next romantic partnership. You may have more you want to refine with time. It’s a work in progress, just like you. This vision exercise will help you clarify what you want and make it easier to share those wants with others.
Day 7: Practice: Letting the world know what you want
What’s next? Will you update your dating profile or have a conversation with some friends? We’ll explore different mediums to spread the word. You’ll move beyond any worry and put your vision of a romantic relationship into action.