Bhahn - Heart of Relating: Communication Beyond Ego

Praise for Heart of Relating

This is truly a Course in Miracles for relationships.

Malcolm Stern, Co-founder of Alternatives, Psychotherapist and Author

Heart of Relating is a very useful and important work. It gives you, in a concise way, deep insight into how to know yourself and how then to communicate from your essential self to the essential self of others. We are at an epochal time of change in which humanity, worldwide, needs conscious communication skills to be taught and learned as the heart of a secular ethic that empowers all people. This book will give you a jump-start in being a leader in fostering this necessary transformation.

Richard Moss, MD., Author of Inside-Out Healing and The Mandala of Being

Every week my work colleagues would ask, Whats the topic? On Love Without Falling Week, I showed them the Love Paradigms Model and they all wanted copies. It touched a chord.

Anonymous member of the first Heart of Relating Study Group

I love Heart of Relating - what a passionate offering to the world. I was inspired to fuse your exercise in Look Whos Talking Week with my own work on a teaching weekend and also adapted your wonderful diagram in a workshop for parents. You have clearly articulated what is deeply true and I am sure that your work will be a resource for facilitators to enhance all kinds of self-enquiry workshops.

Joanna Watters Teacher and Founder of This Beautiful Work: supporting a radical acceptance of present moment reality

My heart was firmly closed to relationships when I started to use Heart of Relating to explore my inner world. After only a few weeks, I literally felt my heart opening again and an important, loving relationship fell into this space.

Elena Brandwood, Occupational Therapist

This isthemanual for the nuts and bolts of healthy relating, which should be handed out at birth! I want to see it in every school, church, government, social services department and community of every kind.

Sally Eaves, Retired School Teacher

The message is pure, simple, easy to grasp and from the heart. As a therapist I will certainly use Heart of Relating with clients.

Kat Collier, Massage Therapist

A beautiful blend of deep wisdom and useful strategies for cultivating authentic relationships; most importantly, with ourselves first.

Linda Lantieri, Author of Building Emotional Intelligence

On Ego Watch Week I made an Egometer, which I put on my car dashboard. This has transformed my driving. Ive always enjoyed the thrill of powerful cars, which endangered and scared passengers. The Egometer showed me how often I was speeding and accelerating just to feel better than others. Now I have a smaller car and my Egometers indicator stays mainly central meaning that I am calm and non-reactive.

Ian Fenwick, HR Study Group Member

CARMELLA BHAHN

COMMUNICATION BEYOND EGO

Copyright 2015 Carmella Bhahn

The moral right of the author has been asserted. Front cover photograph and design: Carmella BHahn

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

You are encouraged to use this material in both your personal and work life and are requested to always mention Heart of Relating as the source of what you share. Talk and tweet and about what inspires you and help it reach the people who will benefit from it, but please observe the copyright laws and recommend that friends and clients, etc. purchase their own copies of this work. Thanking you.

H ouse of H ahn

Matador

9 Priory Business Park,

Wistow Road

Kibworth Beauchamp

Leicester LE8 0RX, UK

Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

Email:

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

eISBN 9781784629687

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Also by Carmella BHahn

Benjayas Gifts (with Mhaletta), 1996

Mourning Has Broken, 2002

When I was nine, my headmaster, Mr Partington, inscribed in my autograph book

Enquire within upon everything

I did.

This course was crafted for and is dedicated to anyone moved to do likewise

especially my son, Asher.

Contents

Finding the Words: My Story

I was speechless as a child for no apparent reason and unable to connect with others or life in a normal fashion. Doctors agreed that I was not autistic, just highly sensitive, and no rational cause was ever found for my silent state. Locked in my inner world, I became an avid people-watcher with a growing fascination for how humans relate. This has never waned.

My first hesitant words tumbled out at six and I remained verbally challenged and petrified of speaking in public for the next 20 years or so. School was difficult to say the least and there was no How to Relate and Communicate class on the curriculum to assist my progress. Finally, at 29, when speaking live on BBC Television to millions of viewers about the unusual water birth of my son, Benjaya, I realised that at least I had cracked the challenge of speaking to an audience!

So, now I could speak in groups of all sizes, but I was disturbed by communication in general. I was particularly confused by the blatant mismatch between what many people said and what they appeared to be feeling. I longed to discover how to match my inner and outer worlds and how to relate well especially for my childrens sake. I knew that they would imitate my behaviour and that their natural relating skills held the key to how I wanted to behave around them! They were exquisitely present with everything they encountered; totally authentic without trying.

Sadly, I realised that much of my own intrinsic knowing was in hiding. My teenage desire to look good, be special and be admired had created a mask and I had fallen into emulating others and trying to be someone else rather than allowing my Self to unfurl and express. To create satisfying relationships, I would have to drop this mask and set about replacing anything I had absorbed that no longer resonated with me. Replace with what? This was the question that spurred me on to become the hunter/gatherer of the