What’s Love Got To Do With It?!

Hello, everyone, and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live. Myself, Ashok Gupta. I'm founder and CEO of the Gupta Program. So welcome to all of you to a very special event for Valentine's called what's Love Got to Do With It? That amazing song by Tina Turner. And we go deeper into that subject with our friends Tina the ballerina and Sam the fireman. All right. And it's their love story, and we're going to be talking about their love story. And after this session, we'll also be having a live Q A with myself on Zoom. And if you'd like to join us for that Q A to ask your own questions, ask us about the topics that we've been through today, then simply go to the App Store or Play Store and download Gupta Program. Just search for Gupta Program. You can download it and the live event will happen there. And we'll also share the Zoom link within this chat as well on FA Facebook, if you're on Facebook. So it's time for a love story. Are you ready? And are you sitting comfortably? So we'll begin. Tina and Sam met one day and fell madly in love. They saw themselves as soulmates once before. They felt alone in this uncaring, vast universe. But suddenly, like magic, they felt that deep connection. When they met, and they felt, I'm no longer alone in this universe, they felt unconditional love. And they said to each other, you complete me. And it was a beautiful scene. And of course, Tina and Sam then lived happily ever after. The end. And then the movie credits came up and everyone left the movie theater. And then real life started. So the honeymoon period was over for Tina and Sam, and what then unfolds is the real authentic love story about making it last. Because what then happened? Did that soulmate type connection continue? Maybe it did, but on a different level. What happened was, over time, after the honeymoon period, Tina started feeling that, well, maybe Sam isn't as attentive as he used to be, isn't showing me as much love and care and attention as I first thought. And so she started expressing that to Sam. And Sam felt really criticized by it, and he felt offended and he got really angry. But this made Tina feel even more insecure, to the point at which she would regularly break down and feel very upset. And he also felt very upset. And they started playing a game of tennis, hitting the ball, hitting the ball harder and harder at each other, creating more and more hurt in each other. And it became like a game of hot potato tag. You're it. You've Got my pain now. Oh, no, I can't handle this pain. No, you need to handle the pain. And they started hurting each other and blaming each other. It turned into the blame game. And in this relationship, Tina and Sam started feeling more and more alone. Whereas at the beginning they felt, wow, the unconditional love that I'm feeling is amazing. It was euphoric. It was like a drug. Because finally someone had given Sam and Tina permission to truly love themselves. Us. It's not that the other person injects us with love. No. It's simply that by being in the presence of someone that loves us, it gives us permission to love ourselves. So in some ways, all love is a reflection of self love, it could be said, but as we said, things turn sour. And Tina did what she could to try and get Sam to understand how she was feeling. But that just made Sam feel more and more threatened. And so as they started withdrawing from each other, the garden that originally had lots of flowers in it suddenly started growing weeds. And they both realized that they were in charge of the garden. So with a garden, if you leave a garden to its own devices, weeds will grow, become unkept, and there's no flowers anymore. And they realized they needed to start getting rid of the weeds, which was all this negativity and false beliefs and false thoughts that they started generating about each other. They needed to weed their garden. And secondly, they needed to plant flowers, which were all the good moments together, the positive moments, the loving moments. And if they didn't both tend to that garden, which sometimes we assume will take care of itself, then this would just cause more and more hurt, more and more pain. And they did the best that they could, but still they felt like they were triggering each other. Should they even stay together now? Was it worth it? And they both decided to go on a journey of self awareness to try and understand at a deeper level what was going on. Why was it so easy for my partner to trigger me what is happening there? And so Tina went through some coaching, some parts coaching. She also did some meditation, some mindfulness, to become more self aware of what she was feeling and why she was feeling the way she was. And Tina realized that she actually had a very anxious mother when she was growing up and that she had actually internalized a lot of that anxiety. And she also had a distant, unemotional father, and she really yearned for his love and his approval. The more that she tried to gain that from him, the less and less easy it became. So she felt like she really missed out on that father's love, she felt insecure about herself. She thought, am I not lovable? Because for a child, feeling loved and supported and cared for is so important to feel part of that tribe so that one can survive. And as she became aware of this, she also realized that as a child, she wasn't allowed to express her emotions. And whenever she would be angry or sad, her mother or father would say, stop that. Stop being emotional. Stop being angry. Put a smile on your face. Be the good little girl that you're supposed to be. So she learned that expressing her emotions or her feelings was wrong. So she repressed those emotions deep within her and buried them. And this, she found over time, created her nervous system to become more dysregulated. And she often felt she was in that fight or flight mode, which was either feeling angry with a fight, feeling that flight, where she wants to just run away and feel scared and fearful, or even freeze, where she was just frozen with fear sometimes because those emotions that got stuck and stored up within her. And then over time, she realized through her work that she was experiencing something called anxious attachment, which meant that when she was in a relationship with Sam, she would constantly feel anxious about how he may be feeling about her. And even if he would say he loved her, she wouldn't believe it. Something inside would tell her, no, he doesn't. And she would become hyper vigilant, looking at all his behaviors and seeing clues as to why he doesn't love her, because that's what she experienced as a child. So if my father couldn't love me or my mother couldn't love me, how could this person love me? It can't be true. It can't be real. And it turned out that Sam had become a proxy for her father. And whatever emotions and sadness and anger she felt towards her father were now being superimposed upon Sam. And the more she wanted Sam's love, the more he withdrew. And Sam also went along his journey of self discovery. And as a child, he realized that he was actually brought up in a family where his mother was very dominant and controlling. So he felt very subdued. As a child, he often would experience criticism, maybe even fear, physical hitting, and as a child, would zone out, but find it very difficult to express his emotions because he would also be told off by his father that he's got to be a strong boy and not cry and not show emotion. And so he would avoid difficult conversations and emotional conversations because he just wasn't used to that. And through his work, he realized that Tina was A proxy for his own mother. And he was primed for what we call an avoidant attachment style. So avoidant means that in his relationships, if he discovers challenges, if it becomes very difficult, he thinks, oh, it's not worth it because this is taking away from my freedom, this is threatening my boundaries, and then we'll withdraw from that relationship and zone out from it. And what they both learned through their work was that we attract the partners or people into our lives that bring to surface our unhealed emotions from our past. And often it is that an anxious type will attract an avoidant type. Now, you might say, ashok, well, why on earth is the system set up this way? This doesn't feel very nice. Well, it depends what you believe the purpose of relationships actually are. What are we doing here on this planet? If we only ask those bigger questions, can we then understand what's going on at the relationship level? Let me talk briefly about the karmic cycle and karma. Now, the English way of saying is karma. The Sanskrit original way of saying it is karma. Karma, Right. And when we think of karma, we often think of punishment. That you do something to somebody else and you will receive it. As you sow, so shall you reap. And that's our traditional view of what karma actually is. But actually, this is a very small part of what karma is. It's a Western interpretation of karma. And karma is far more broad ranging than that. And what karma actually is and the word karma itself has a dual meaning. So it actually means both action and the consequences of action and the seeds of action. So let me give you an example of this. Let's say karma is a seed. Now, you plant that seed and you water it, and it grows into a beautiful tree, and it bears fruit, and those fruits have seeds that fall to the ground that then creates another tree, and so on and so on. And that is the karmic cycle. And traditionally, we think, well, if I did something to someone, I will receive that back. But as we said, it's far more broad ranging. It's actually about every action that we take in this way. Every action has a consequence and is imperfect in some way and affects people in certain ways. And what makes us plant more seeds? What makes the karmic cycle continue? Well, in situations, if we react to people in situations unconsciously with raw emotion, according to our past, that sows more seeds. Okay, so let's be very clear. There are two ways that the karmic cycle continues and we keep getting the same things again and again in life. Women often Say I'll keep attracting the wrong kind of man. What is that karmic cycle? It is that if you react unconsciously with raw emotion according to our past reactions, then you plant more seeds. And secondly, if we repress those emotions and don't work through them, that also creates the seeds of karma. The seeds, the fruit, the seeds, the fruit, the seeds, the fruit. And how do you break that cycle of seeding? Well, the karmic system is set up to give you an opportunity to re experience a similar type of event and choose again, choose how you want to be in relation to that event, that person or the situation. So let's bring back Tina and Sam and let's see how that is relevant to Tina and Sam's situation. So Tina re experiences those childhood triggers to bring to her awareness the hurt, the pain, the negative beliefs about herself, the low self esteem, so that she can choose again who she chooses to be. We then become aware of the emotions which are unresolved, the beliefs about ourselves that are unresolved. And we have an opportunity to choose again, to work through it, to be different in this scenario. Okay, and how do we stop sowing these seeds in a relationship? Well, through that third way that I spoke about, which is rather than reacting unconsciously, that's what Sam and Tina were doing before. They were reacting to each other unconsciously hitting the ball harder at each other, who could hurt the most. That's reacting unconsciously. But when we do that, we sow the seeds of karma. More and more of those experiences that trigger us will keep coming up until we shift that response. Or in relationships, people might repress the feelings, repress the emotions. Oh well, I want to be the bigger person. I don't want to express how they made me feel. But then we store up the pain and the hurt inside of ourselves till we can no longer feel, feel the love. And in both of these scenarios, reacting unconsciously or repressing the emotion, both of those scenarios, eventually the love dies. Eventually the love dies. But there is a third way. There is a third way and that is conscious mindful awareness of what is going on within us, an understanding, a compassion for what is happening within us. Now of course this isn't a reason to stay in a obviously abusive relationship or stay in a relationship for the sake of it or for the sake of our personal development. We're not talking about that. But in most cases that self awareness and that self growth has the opportunity to not only keep our relationships but to make them flourish and go to the deeper reason and Purpose behind our relationships. You might say, Asha, what is the deeper reason for our relationships? Why do we have relationships? Well, this we'll be talking more about in our Q and A event straight after this one. But that's for you to decide and think about and reflect. What is the purpose of your relationship? Most of us go into relationships. If you ask most people, why are you going to relationship? They say, to feel loved or to relieve my loneliness and relieve my depressions. Oh, well, that's just what everyone does, isn't it? And all of those scenarios will end in disappointment because our happiness and our sense of self now is externalized and we rely on something outside of ourselves to make us feel happy, to make us feel loved to. And that will never work. I said, well, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of any relationship that we have? A work relationship, a parental relationship, a friend relationship, a romantic relationship? Ultimately, it's for us to decide who we choose to be in relation to that person and become aware of those inner patterns. So if we were just living on an island and they say no manners and islands, if we were living on a desert island by ourselves, where could the growth be? Where could the evolving be? There's no one in relation to us. There's no one who we are reacting to. There's no one that we're working with. There's no one that can give us feedback on ourselves. And so relationships occur in relation to anything. So we can become more aware of that which is unconscious within us and work through it. Of course, all the other lovely things that come with us being social beings. So if we see relationships as or a deeper purpose behind them being the opportunity to heal every false thought and belief we have about ourselves, to become aware of all that which is unresolved within us, to ultimately reunify at a deeper soul level with our partners, with the ultimate reunification with the oneness, the realization that not only are we trying to find and search for unconditional love outside of ourselves, but we are made up of the very essence of love that is our true nature. But we can only discover that when we stop looking for it on the outside and we remove all the barriers to that self awareness might say, well, Ashok, how do we do this? It all sounds nice, but how do we do this? First of all, we recognize that the intensity of our reaction is based on our past, not necessarily the person in front of us. So when we have a reaction, it's very easy to go into the blame game straight away, oh, look what this person did. They're responsible for how I feel. It's their fault. Look what happened. And of course, whether or not it was their fault. The first port of call is self awareness. What's going on within me right now, how am I feeling, how am I reacting? What is being brought up from my past? Because you can't control the other person, you can't control how they're going to respond to your feedback. What you can control is your inner environment and ecosystem. That first port of call of any personal development work is self awareness. And the second thing is looking at how a dove flies. So how does a dove fly? If you think of a dove, how does a dove fly? It needs three things. It needs two wings and the tail feathers to fly. In terms of those two wings, when we look at any personal development in the Western model, it's more a cognitive psychotherapeutic environment where we're going into talking therapies. The Eastern model is more mindfulness and somatic based. And if we look at the first model, Western model, there obviously are some upsides of that. But the downsides are that often we're not even aware of that which is deeply unconscious within us in those talking type therapies. And also we may not have the resources to be able to handle our past and handle those small traumas or big traumas within us. So these can often become difficult to connect to. And we also don't take account of the somatic work, which is that the repression of all those emotions has got stored in our physical body. And that also needs to be looked at and addressed and is a path and a route towards healing. And that's where a perfect complement is, the right hand wing, which is the more mindful approach. This is mindfulness meditation, breathing techniques, vagus nerve techniques, there's so many different names given to this, but essentially the deep relaxation techniques that take us inwards. And in terms of somatic techniques, they're often seen as western techniques, but in fact, somatic work, somatic techniques is very much an Eastern thought. And in fact the practices of yoga and breathing were all to bring us awareness back into our bodies. And then in terms of this model, the approach that we find most powerful at the clinic is something called parts coaching. And it's based on and built upon the work of the brilliant work of Richard Schwartz from Internal Family Systems. And we built upon that. And in this scenario, Tina and Sam go through that parts coaching. And what is parts coaching? Parts coaching is the idea that we aren't just one mono mind or One personality. But we have different parts of our personality and we've got now 10 or 15 different puppets that represent all these different survival strategies, all these different parts of our personality that all are doing the things that they think is right for us. So we have these parts of us, and these parts are then dominating our personality from time to time and then causing some of the challenges that we face. But it's not out of malice. It's because they deeply love us and want to do what's best for us. But now it's time to update them with new information. So parts coaching is very powerful. And that's the left hand wing and the right hand wing, once again is the breathing, the meditation, the somatic work that supports that. We incorporate all of that within the Gupta program as well. So where does that leave Tina and Sam? I'm sure you want them back on camera now. Hey. So Tina and Sam may choose for their relationship to become what they call a sadhana. Now, sadhana is once again a Sanskrit word which means spiritual practice. Whereas before, the purpose of a relationship may have been, I need someone to love me, to take care of me, to fill in some gap within me. I need you to complete me. But that will never work. One of my favorite quotes from Neil Donald Walsh. The purpose of a relationship is not to find someone who completes you, but find someone with whom you can share your completeness. Because as Sam and Tina discovered, the other person can never complete us. They can never be responsible for our happiness. It will never work. And yet that is the main reason most people go into relationships. So they decide to make their relationship a sadhana. And sadhana means a spiritual practice, just like you have yoga as a spiritual practice. It's a discipline for you to go inwards and be aware and grow and self develop. And in a similar way, they see their relationship and the garden that they grow together as a practice, a spiritual practice. And they work together on their reactions and their reactivity. And now there's something even more beautiful. The three key principles I believe in parts coaching that are most healing. The three core principles. See, normally when Tina and Sam were arguing, they were arguing from the childlike level. So as adults, they met, they converse. But when they trigger each other, it's their childlike parts that come out. Those parts within them that were created during childhood that felt that anger, that fear, and weren't able to express it and felt those negative beliefs. The childlike parts come and don't you often feel like that, that sometimes in a relationship, the other Person can just make you feel like a, as a child. And it's quite amazing how that works. And that's what's happening. That because they're a proxy for your mother or father, they're triggering those unresolved wounds. And so the first principle is becoming more aware of our own inner child and our own inner parts. That's the first principle. And that can take us a great way forward. Because when we become aware of that, we recognize that this person in my life has just become a trigger of self awareness. They say, you've been sent nothing but angels and yet it doesn't feel like that, does it? The second principle, the vital principle, is to move from conflict. Compassion is becoming aware of the other person's inner child. Now bear with me on this. We become aware of our own inner child and that takes a certain level. But imagine if we could feel compassion for the other person's inner child. Now what that means is normally when we'd argue with someone, we think, well, they should just know, they should just have the resources to deal with this. Why are they not behaving like an adult? But once we become aware that, look at my dear partner, they've also gone through that wounding. They also have an inner child within them. And it's now something that I can become aware of. It's their responsibility to heal their own inner child. But I can support them in that. And the reason this is so powerful is because when we see an adult, we expect a certain level of behavior, a certain level of awareness from them. But with children we have compassion. Like if a small little child comes and cries or comes and, I don't know, pushes you. You don't take that personally? No, it's just a child they didn't know better. And in a similar way, when we become aware of the other person's inner child, it can really nurture compassion within us for them and what they're going through. And the third level, which is just so incredible and beautiful, is having awareness and compassion for your parents inner parts and your parents inner childs. And that may not be something that we have the resources for initially, but when we do that and we look at the ancestral line, we complete the circle and we see the chain of events that has got us to this moment, this present moment right now, that our parents had their own inner child, their own inner woundings potentially that made them behave in a certain way, that passed that on to this generation and then made them have these, made Tina have those consequences in terms of her relationships with Sam. And that might be passed on to that generation and that generation. At some point in time, someone in that generational line says, stop, deep breath in. It's time to break the chain, break those chains of love. In the words of erasure. So how does this love story end? Should Tina and Sam stay together and work on this or should they go in a different direction? That is up to them and that is both the beauty and the madness of life. That is a mystery because you decide, you write the next chapter. In many cases, Sam and Tina stay together and they're able to work on all of this and it becomes a beautiful journey of self development and self awareness. Or it could be that they find that their arguments are just too toxic right now and they need to go their separate ways and work on themselves in their own way because it's just too triggering being in the relationship at the same time. But in every scenario it's about taking that conscious journey and that is the spice of life. That is the real work to heal the false thoughts about yourself, the false beliefs and systems of our parts and journey to our authentic self, authentic love with the ultimate reunion with the oneness. So I hope you've enjoyed our story time today with Tina and Sam and if you've been affected by what we've gone through or need to speak to somebody, we have many coaches at the Gupta program who work on parts coaching, have been trained in that field and you can find them all on our website@guptaprogram.com and you can contact our wonderful loving coaches who are extremely supportive. Supportive. We also have something called Daily Gupta Size which is through our app, which are daily Zoom calls to support your nervous system and regulation in terms of somatic work, breathing and meditation. And I'd love for us to be there for you to help you understand more about this area. We're constantly growing and learning and we such a beautiful thing when we see people go into that deep self awareness of their parts, their inner children and blossom in self love. It's the most beautiful journey and I wish that for you, whatever journey you take, I wish you lots of love. So now we're going to our Q and A. So please do join us in the Gupta program app and our team will also share the Q and A link in the chat there. So please do join us on the zoom that we're starting at 6.45pm UK time, 1.45pm Eastern and we'll answer any questions that you may have. So thank you so much for watching and please do once again, share this so we want to spread the knowledge about this. What is the solution to the world's troubles right now? It starts with each individual person. It starts from the roots, from the ground up. And for us to heal as a society, as a civilization, through all the many challenges that we'll face, that self love work is the number one priority. If we don't have love within us, how can we love the world? We don't have compassion within us, how can we feel compassion for our fellow human beings? So please do spread this knowledge. Please share this video perhaps with groups on YouTube, on Facebook. We want to spread this message far and wide. So we'll now see you on the Q and A. You can join that once again through the Gupta Program app. And we do also have our webinar series which has just started last week, but you can still catch up. So if you have some kind of chronic condition, it might be me. Chronic fatigue syndrome, long Covid mold, Lyme. We treat a number of different conditions and we've got lots of randomised controlled trials to support that. So we'd love for you to take that journey and join us. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.