We met seven years ago, and the pure physical joy between us has never paused for breath. Keeley Milne

I cannot wrap my mind around why my body so loves his, but oh, how it does.

Every inch—from the curve of his smile, to the way his hair sticks up after sleep, to the strength of his shoulders, his legs, him wrapped around me.

There is no curbing this chemistry.

When we broke up for a time, we couldn’t even meet one another for coffee because we knew what passion it would lead to (and he respected me too much to engage in random sex). There is love, yes—the kind that comes with true recognition of one another, complete with peccadilloes, inadequacies. He challenges my mind—and that in itself is erotic—but this is really about two bodies colliding.

Somewhere that love has meshed with the lust and created a mind-blowing bliss I could never have imagined.

I like to think I am very strong, independent and need no completion. Were I to remain single for the rest of my life, I believe I would remain at peace, loving, happy and engaged with the world around me. I need no other, no better half, no partner.

I am a full, rich being in my own right.

But my pure animal lust for him cannot be denied. I’ve dated other men before him, even been married. Nothing has ever tipped my world upside down like this. He is the ocean to my beach, the lullabye to my nightmare, the cream to my sugar. He is every cheesy line in every ridiculous greeting card ever written.

He is the antidote to my poison.

When I am with him, my mind goes quiet.  For someone who has searched the world over for a mind at peace, this is heaven encapsulated. Perhaps that is why I can then so eagerly turn to tactile pleasures, a kiss, a stroke, a sigh.

My body feels strong with him. He predicts my movements, knows my rhythms, answers with his own. His heat seeks mine, he loves me wholly and deeply. To paraphrase John Mayer, he “never lets my head hit the bed without his hand behind it.”

The sex is full of connection at times, other times just pure unadulterated passion. Always, there is trust.

I fought against this pleasure for years. Believing myself, us, undeserving. I wasted time tangled up in disaster-webs of my own weaving. Now, my heart has opened to embrace this as a part of my new life. In another lifetime, I hated every inch of my skin, every ounce of fat, every freckle and strand of hair.

Now, my body is a miracle in action. Running, hiking, f*cking—I am proud of every movement it makes.

He rolls over in the night and reaches for me, tucks an arm around me, pulls me close. I am blessed abundantly, and I do not push this love away. My body and heart have earned these rights—to be held closely and safely, to be made love to riotously and thoroughly.

To be loved through and through, and then over again.

To be at peace, mind and body.

Keeley Milne~

Relephant Reads:

F*ck, I Love You.

Why Affairs Happen

Understanding Affairs and Why They Happen By James Earl

Affairs are like hand grenades under relationships.

When a couple asks me to help them repair the damage, I usually offer them some plain facts first.

• In the UK, about 50% of long term relationships end in separation or divorce. (Most people have heard that statistic). But more surprisingly:

• The estimated incidence of infidelity of one or both partners in long term relationships isover 50%, according to one reputable UK source.

If this latter figure is right, infidelity is much more common that normally acknowledged.

This fact can sometimes help a couple understand that the crisis they are experiencing is part-and-parcel of many, if not most, normal relationships – not so-called failed ones. And thatthousands of people have trodden this ground before and have managed to get back on track, together.

John and Julie, who I saw recently, are a good case in point. John asked me, ‘doesn’t it make you depressed how bad humans are at keeping their promises?’ I replied, ‘you can look at it that way if you want. But how
about considering how impressive it is that we struggle with really,really difficult ideals despite our weaknesses, and keep on trying?’

Is marriage a ‘difficult ideal?’ Well, experience tells us it is. We ask ONE person to be our best friend, to be our business partner (most couples share the biggest financial commitment of their life in property), to be a co-parent in raising children, to be the centre of our community circle: and then also to be our lover. That is one incredible demand: difficult to ask, and difficult to deliver.

Most couples find, after the first five years – though the honeymoon phase varies enormously – that the relationship settles down to a comfortable normal life offering warmth, security and a feeling of home (the sort of experience we last had when we were kids, if we were lucky). At the same time, we may start complaining that despite the feeling of love and stability, desire has started to diminish, and that the intimate side of things is not exactly ‘hot’. In fact, it may be quite difficult to see your best friend/business partner/co-parent as a lover at all: or perhaps you become aware that they aren’t seeing you like that any more.

Either way, it isn’t really the diminishing of sex that is the issue (that’s just a symptom): it is more the loss of a side of oneself that the other person once brought out, and now seems swept aside by everyday life.
Julie said: ‘the thing is, I still love John.’ He snapped back, ‘how come you did what you did if you still love me?’ She said, ‘I think I just felt re-connected again with some part of me I’d forgotten.’ ‘You mean, sex?’

‘No, not sex, just a sense of youth, difference, excitement, unpredictability.’
It is worth trying to understand why affairs happen, if you are going to recover from them, or to avoid them. The person that strays rarely does it for (just) sex. Nor do they do it in the hope of a new relationship. It is usually down to a lost sense of self that can happen even inloving marriages. A lost sense of self that often another – even random – person can accidentally reawaken in you. (I believe Julie when she says he still loves John. The affair was not to do with her loving John. It was about another side of herself that the marriage had inadvertently crowded out.)

We all want stable marriages, yet complain about them being boring or routine. This is a built-in paradox: security versus excitement, or love versus desire, if you like.

I work with couples all the time who ask me how they can avoid the hand grenade of an affair.The best general advice I can give is to realize that, alongside stability and certainty, we all crave excitement, change, individuality, difference and growth.To achieve this, the most successful couples let the other person develop as an individual, not just as a half of a couple. It means a degree of unpredictability, and even risk, to allow your partner their own space to grow as themselves. But it can be our best security, in the long term.
You might expect a relationship counselor to say ‘it’s good to be close’. I would suggest: ‘it’s even better to make space for each other.’

i can't fix it

i can't fix it ... okay so guilty as charged but then again not really. There is no guilt. Rather, realization. After an amazing session of Body Talk I got off the table and had an epiphany - "i can't fix it." I am the adult daughter of an alcoholic, the lines run deep affecting many in and out of my immediate family and for too many years, most of my life i have attempted to FIX IT. What is it? In my next writings this will unfold and as many of you who read this will no doubt relate to for good or not ... you too may be the carrier of "i need to fix this" or perhaps unconsciously just went about attempting to. Until ...

Are You A Disappearing Woman

Are You A Disappearing Woman? I got married right after college. I never lived on my own.  I had no idea who I was. I knew that I wanted a career. I wanted a family. I wanted it all. Well, the family came quickly and I had two children, but then I began to feel very unfulfilled. I loved being a mom, but knew that I needed more in my life in terms of my “own thing”. I was lost and unfortunately, because I lost myself in this marriage, I ended up divorcing my husband. I can’t be too hard on myself. After all, I saw my mom give up much of her identity in her marriage to my father. She was my role model. She built her life around him, his family, his friends and it worked fairly well. I think they had a good enough marriage, but I wanted more in my life and I had no idea where to begin to find myself. In her Huffington Post article, author, Vicki Larsen speaks about this.  She quotes Psychoanalyst Beverly Engel, author of Loving Him Without Losing Yourself, who calls this the Disappearing Woman -- what happens when women lose track of what they believe in, what they stand for, what's important to them and what makes them happy just because they happen to be in a relationship. "No matter how successful, assertive, or powerful some women are, the moment they become involved with a man they begin to give up part of themselves -- their social life, their time alone, their spiritual practice, their beliefs and values," Engel writes. "In time, these women find they have merged their lives with their partners' to the point where they have no life to go back to when and if the relationship ends." Why can’t we stay true to ourselves in a relationship? Engel says that we want to be nice because we’ve learned that being nice is important in order to sustain a relationship. "She'll pretend to agree when she doesn't really agree, she'll go along with things she doesn't really believe in, and if she does that long enough, she'll no longer know what she feels," Engel says. Author Larsen says "How many women do you know who will break plans or give up a favorite activity for a guy? Not that it's not OK to do that from time to time or for certain situations; it's just that somehow in the togetherness of coupledom too many of us forget to have a life of our own. Instead, we look to our partner to fulfill all our needs -- and get frustrated and resentful when he doesn't. Then we see the problem as something wrong with him, and not us." What are your thoughts? Are we just fulfilling the nice girl syndrome or is it that we don’t have a clear picture of our identity and core essence as a woman outside of a relationship? To Your Success! Bonnie Marcus

Top Ten Most Influential Women in Sport

What qualifies a woman as influential in the sports world? Is it her athletic ability, verbal skills, looks or her ability to lead into new frontiers? Does influence require years of training, bold new ideas or both? Below you will find our opinion of the top ten most influential women in sports.

Women in Sports Media

Christine Brennan

Brennan is a best-selling author, renowned columnist and commentator. She was the first female sports reporter for the Miami Herald before another first as the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins. Her figure skating book, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated. Brennan also broke the story of the pairs figure skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Linda Cohn

Almost 20 years into a TV sports reporting career, Cohn excels at versatility. Whether it’s baseball, basketball, hockey, racing or golf, Cohn covers the sport with ease. In 1987, Cohn became the first full-time female sports anchor on a national radio network (ABC.) She is the author of Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boys’ Club. Cohn’s Twitter profile exhorts her followers to “Go after dreams.” It’s not uncommon for Cohn to make a fan’s dream with a retweet or mention.

Laura Gentile

Gentile is vice president of espnW. As a collegian, Gentile led Duke to their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament and was named to the ACC’s 50th Anniversary field hockey team.

Jemele Hill

Hill is an ESPN columnist and TV analyst with previous stints at the Detroit Free Press and the Orlando Sentinel. Her Twitter profile reads: “I average 36 tweets a day. This makes me awesome.” Well, then.

Georgie Thompson

Thompson is Sky Sports presenter and A League of Their Own panelist. She has better than 378K Twitter followers and is on the first page of leading Twitter directory, Twellow.

Influential Sports Executives

Jeanie Buss

Buss is the Executive Vice President of one of the world’s most popular franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2010, she authored “Laker Girl.”

Wendy Lewis

Women in Sports & Events awarded Lewis with one of its three Woman of the Year Awards in 2011. Lewis is Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of diversity and strategic alliances. She explained some of her job responsibilities to espnW: “It’s more than just having more representation of a particular race or women, but making sure that we are working more toward achieving sort of the ultimate balance. We are doing that by taking a real, very strategic and very micro look at each one of those establishments and the pipeline of folks that they actually have coming in…”

Circe Wallace

Wallace followed a pro snowboarding career by representing similar stars at the Wasserman athletic management group, where she is a senior vice president. Wallace was also the force behind action sports shows on MTV and BET.

Pioneers for Women in Sports

Billie Jean King

King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. She captured a record 20 titles at Wimbledon. Her Battle of the Sexes in 1973 against Bobby Riggs was a catalyst for the women’s movement. King is the Founder and Honorary Chair of the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Pat Summitt

Summitt’s career has spanned almost four decades. Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols have made 30 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. She was named Naismith Coach of the Century. Her teams have a 100 percent graduation rate for all Lady Vols who have completed their eligibility at Tennessee. She earned a spot among “America’s Best Leaders for 2007″ published by U.S. News & World Report.
Don’t miss following women these, either! Lisa Andersen, Aimee Mullins, Amanda Rykoff, Annika Sorenstam, Sarah Spain, Dara Torres, Venus Williams
Whether the ladies are seasoned professionals or relative newcomers in the sports business, the industry’s future looks bright, thanks to them and other leading ladies.

Sam Miller

Totality

Totality

Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming. And the taste of totality will make you more and more capable of being total. And try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head--thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever--you are not total. Slowly, slowly slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit. Habits die hard. But they die certainly--if one persists, they die.

Osho Take it Easy, Volume 1 Chapter 12

Commentary:

These three women are high in the air, playful and free, yet alert and interdependent. In a trapeze act, nobody can afford to be a little bit "absent" even for a split second. And it is this quality of total attentiveness to the moment at hand that is represented here.

We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is "boring" because we've forgotten that it's not what you do but how you do it that matters.

Developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do.

The Disease of Doing

THE DISEASE OF DOING

		“First, the nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood, otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be impossible if you have not observed, watched, realized, the nature of your activity, because activity is not a simple phenomenon. “Many people would like to relax, but they cannot relax. Relaxation is like a flowering: you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon — why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it. “Remember two words: one is action, another is activity. Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn’t matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active. “Action comes out of a silent mind — it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind — it is the ugliest. Act more, and let activities drop on their own accord. A transformation will come to you by and by. It takes time, it needs seasoning, but there is no hurry also. “Now you can understand what relaxation means. It means no urge to activity in you. Relaxation doesn’t mean lying down like a dead man; and you cannot lie down like a dead man; you can pretend only. How can you lie down like a dead man? You are alive; you can only pretend. Relaxation comes to you when there is no urge to activity; the energy is at home, not moving anywhere. If a certain situation arises you will act, that’s all, but you are not finding some excuse to act. You are at ease with yourself. Relaxation is to be at home. “Relaxation is not only of the body, it is not only of the mind, it is of your total being. “You are too much in activity; of course tired, dissipated, dried up, frozen. The life-energy doesn’t move. There are only blocks and blocks and blocks. And whenever you do something you do it in a madness. Of course the need to relax arises. That’s why so many books are written every month about relaxation, and I have never seen a person who has become relaxed through reading a book about relaxation! He has become more hectic because now his whole life of activity remains untouched. His obsession to be active is there, the disease is there, and he pretends to be in a relaxed state so he lies down. All turmoil within, a volcano ready to erupt, and he is relaxing, following the instructions from a book: how to relax. “There is no book that can help you to relax — unless you read your own inner being, and then relaxation is not a must. Relaxation is an absence, an absence of activity, not of action. “Don’t do anything! No yoga posture is needed, no distortions and contortions of the body are needed. “Do nought!”; only absence of activity is needed. And how will it come? It will come by understanding. “Understanding is the only discipline. Understand your activities and suddenly, in the middle of the activity, if you become aware, it will stop. If you become aware why you are doing it, it will stop. And that stopping is what Tilopa means. “Relaxation means this moment is more than enough, more than can be asked and expected. Nothing to ask, it is more than enough, than you can desire. Then the energy never moves anywhere. It becomes a placid pool. In your own energy, you dissolve. This moment is relaxation. Relaxation is neither of the body nor of the mind, relaxation is of the total. That’s why buddhas go on saying, ‘Become desireless,’ because they know that if there is desire, you cannot relax. “Relaxation is not a posture; relaxation is a total transformation of your energy.” Osho, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Talk #4