Why Relational Intelligence?

A lot happened during Covid for me – namely Relational Intelligence unfolded from its primary reference of two people moving in Contact (CI) to where it now lives, as a mode for understanding our principal physical organization as sensory beings in formulating our relations with the world. The question arose, “How do I conceive myself to be situated in relations to everything?” At the time I was speaking online to a world of people who came from more than 20 nations and almost every continent worldwide. All of them were living in little boxes or were otherwise isolated by the pandemic. This stretched my understanding of what it could mean to be in and of the world. I had to return to the very basic core of my own being. 

I started with my heart and with the gift of heart-feeling as a mode of navigation through the physicality of my being in the world. My purpose initially was to understand what it meant to generate joy. Why? At that moment death was upon the world as the underpinnings of the Covid response. And I, looking death square in the face, fully expect to die in a kind of naked joy of being, even in ecstasy, a recognition of life and all my relations, no matter the circumstances. So, of course, the question was, how do I not wait, how do I get there now? What do I need to know now? And, how do we do this together –invigorating our relational lives, regardless of the pandemic?

And the answer was to once again, reexamine my relational practices as a heart based, physical, attentional being. Again, it was to seek relational intelligence.

These questions led me down many paths, and deeply influenced my post Covid touring. It influences how I talk and think and what I bring to all the levels of my work: teaching, writing, speaking, and coaching. Returning to in-person teaching on this last tour was brilliant, exciting, illuminating and … touching!