*Content Warning*
The following post describes a seminar I recently attended. It has some sexual (but not explicit) content. If the idea of developing deep connections with strangers through the use of eye contact, breath work, and touch offends you, please don’t read any further. The article primarily describes the elements of the seminar that helped me in the tactical realm, but also includes some descriptions of intimate touch.
-Greg
I was standing outside a hotel ballroom with about 150 people waiting to enter the seminar space. Most folks had beaming smiles and were excitedly chatting. Some people looked absolutely scared to death. One of the assistant instructors struck up a conversation with me. “Are you nervous?” she asked.
Why would I be nervous? I spent 25 years hunting armed bad guys. A relationship workshop couldn’t be that rough.
I had no clue.
By the end of the first day of training, I was in a seated position facing an attractive woman I had never met. Within three minutes, without saying a single word to her, using only eye contact, breathing, and energy projection, the woman was smiling uncontrollably with a look of lust in her eyes. She started slowly rubbing her breasts while grinning seductively.
What the fuck was going on here?
The most astounding thing was that this woman I was working with wasn’t responding to anything I was doing TO her. This wasn’t some pickup artist wizardry. She was responding to the changes I was making in myself.
When I got back to my hotel room at the end of the first day of the workshop, I started thinking about what I had learned and the personal improvements I had made. I realized that if I could make a woman I had never met so turned on that she started rubbing her breasts in public by using the power of my facial expressions, eye contact, and presence, I could also use the same energy to influence potential criminal attackers.
That’s what this article is about.
But first, a bit of the backstory about how I got here….
One of my favorite authors who writes in the relationship field is David Deida. I’ve enjoyed his books and videos for almost 20 years now.
A few months ago, my friend Nathalie called me to let me know that one of Deida’s top students was conducting a relationship seminar in Austin. I had never heard of the guy, but Nathalie had been following him for some time and she assured me that he was very knowledgeable. We both booked our seminar admission tickets and Nathalie booked her airfare to fly to Austin for a visit.
The workshop was titled “The Art of Sacred Intimacy.” and was co-instructed by John Wineland and Kendra Cunov. In the opening introduction the instructors told us that we would be practicing a form of tantric yoga.
When I say something like “Tantric Yoga” lots of people think “hippie orgy.” It was nothing like that. There was a lot of playing with the art of eye contact, energy, breath work, and touch, but there was no actual sex.
The goals of the seminar were to explore male/female polarity and to cultivate more loving personal relationships through the use of presence, consciousness, attention, eye contact. breathing exercises, facial expressions, and body posture. The training focused on indirectly influencing others. We weren’t trying to directly change anyone’s behavior. We focused on the changes we could make to ourselves that would encourage emotional and behavior changes in our practice partners.
The workshop was evenly divided between male and female students. We were given the opportunity to practice with a single partner all weekend (most married couples did this) or to partner with a series of strangers. Nathalie and I decided not to practice with each other exclusively, but to challenge ourselves more deeply by working with people we didn’t already know during the course of the three-day (28 hour) class.
We each ended up working with eight different opposite-sex partners over the course of the long weekend. Interestingly enough, a lot of the people taking the class were repeat students. I would guess that about 70% of the people there were either repeat students or folks who were training to be instructors in the system. That impressed me a lot. When folks pay lots of money to take a class a second (or more) time, that’s a mark of a good instructor and quality material.
The class was a mix of lectures, same sex practice sessions, mixed sex practice sessions, and group breathing/physical exercises. It was intense. I left each day completely exhausted. For perspective, the class was more intense than a multi-week Krav Maga law enforcement instructor school. It was more intense than Shivworks ECQ and EWO classes. It was more intense than a Master Groundfighting Instructor school that had me visiting the chiropractor on the way home from class every day.
While the seminar was not as physically intense as the classes I listed above, it was incredibly mentally and psychologically demanding. It contained some difficult physical work, but I was able to complete the physical exercises even with my recent knee surgery.
The breathing and connection exercises facilitated more heart-opening psychological change than any of the ayahuasca, MDMA, and San Pedro Cactus ceremonies I’ve experienced in countries where such substances are legal to use for healing and personal development.
Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the workshop’s contents. I learned a lot and I’m noticing deep psychological changes that have persisted for the three weeks since I completed the seminar. My friend Nathalie reports similar psychological and personal growth.
I could write for hours about the contents of the training class, but this is a tactical blog. I want to share three insights I downloaded from the workshop that will directly affect my training classes and personal safety.
Increased Connection- The drills we did had the goals of embodying our communication with more love, trust, attention, and presence. While that has obvious advantages within a romantic relationship, it will also help me to better connect with my students and with strangers.
Parts of the class consisted of working lunches and dinners where we were instructed to take some of the stuff we were learning and apply it out on the streets of downtown Austin. On the final day of class, I went out to eat lunch as the annual Austin marathon was ending. As I was waiting for the traffic light to change in order to cross a busy street, I decided to practice some of the body language and breathing exercises I learned.
Within seconds of starting the practice, a mentally handicapped boy who was in a wheelchair being pushed by his sister began to talk with me. He showed me the medal he got for completing the marathon and told me about how he and his sister had completed three other marathons together. I was standing in a group of about 30 people on the street corner. The boy didn’t talk to anyone else. Did my practice facilitate our connection? It’s hard to know, but I think it did.
On the second day of the seminar, I was walking to dinner after dark. I saw a somewhat deranged homeless guy ahead of me on the sidewalk (an unfortunately common sight in downtown Austin). The man was screaming and striking his shopping cart violently with a pool noodle.
As I got closer to him, I began practicing my breathing exercises while covertly palming my pepper spray in case they didn’t work. When I got about 10 feet from the man, he stopped striking the shopping cart, dropped the pool noodle, and smiled at me. I nodded and smiled back. He said: “Have a good night, brother” and calmly began pushing his cart the opposite direction. His tantrum instantly abated.
These exercises worked well for me, but I’d always recommend having a back up plan just in case.
Wild stuff. Being able to quickly calm a situation and facilitate an emotional connection through body language, eye contact, and breathing is almost like witchcraft. I wish I had known how to do this while I was still working as a cop.
Better body language to reduce victimization- One of the exercises we did in the men’s practice session was working with a partner to assess and improve body language. We all worked to display body language that would indicate trust, openness, and confidence.
When I looked around the room at the other men practicing, I noticed that all of them appeared extremely confident. None looked like vulnerable victims. I thought that potential criminal attackers would likely pass up these men in search of easier prey.
That’s an important skill set for all of us to cultivate. I’m going to use some of the drills from the seminar in upcoming classes I teach in order to show my students how to display a more confident attitude to reduce their risk of criminal attack.
Psychological resilience- The class spent a significant period of time on drills working with partners who were expressing intense emotions. The drills were mostly oriented towards being able to stay open, loving, and present when your romantic partner is exceptionally angry and/or emotional.
Instructors taught the skills of emotional regulation and psychological resilience via breath control and presence. We learned techniques that helped us not to be as bothered by external circumstances. Being able to stay calm in emergency or stressful situations has innumerable benefits for both relationship success and criminal risk reduction.
I’m normally a pretty calm guy. With that said, I’ve noticed myself being even more chill in stressful situations since the seminar. I think this skill set is one of the most important things I cultivated during the training seminar. I’ll be using some of the exercises in my future classes to better develop emotional regulation in my students and to quell potential emotional outbursts.
The seminar was intensely challenging, but more rewarding than I could have ever expected. I will most certainly use the skills I learned to live a better life every day in the future.
If you would like to see more of John Wineland’s work, check out his YouTube Channel and read his Book:
Some of the above links (from Amazon.com) are affiliate links. As an Amazon associate I earn a small percentage of the sale price from qualifying purchases.
