This course is an invitation for you to come into a more loving relationship with yourself, and by extension, a more loving relationship with the people and world around you.

I’ve put this course together because, time and time again, I find that the number one struggle folks have in their intimate and romantic relationships is that they’ve become disconnected from themselves.

Our dominant culture teaches us, from a young age, to ignore our own boundaries, to do things to please others, and to be selfless. Sometimes, as a reaction to that, we go to a different extreme, and become selfish, ignore what other people need or dissociate from how we impact others.

This course is all about coming back into an actively engaged relationship with the one person who we know for sure we’re with for life: our Selves.

• You’ve been feeling run down, exhausted, and find it hard to prioritise what matters to you most.
• You’re tired of ‘chasing’ peak experiences and want instead to find comfort in what you already have.
• You enjoy being creative and thinking outside the box to find solutions.
• You aren’t looking for a quick-fix solution to all your problems.
• You want to slow down and fall in love with your Self and your life.
• You’re keen to find sustainable, daily practices that support your existing therapy, wellness, and health routines

I’m no stranger to the struggles of having a good relationship with one’s self. Years of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and being all kinds of queer in a cis-hetero-normative world (plus some pretty heavy trauma in relationships) had me in a low place with myself more than once in my life.

In trying to find myself again, I got caught up in what I call ‘the chase’. The chase to catch some kind of experience: endorphins highs from dancing, parties, sex, festivals, going to the gym, being part of intentional communities, group practices for emotional processing, doing drugs, shopping in person, shopping online: you name it. I chased—and I caught! But none of those things I caught ultimately helped me to come back into a more loving place with myself. And in all the spaces where I explored the chase, I found myself overcome with relationships that lacked depth but demanded a lot of energy, depleting the resources I needed for my Self.

None of these things are inherently bad or unhealthy. But it is the chase for them that is unhealthy. In simply chasing these things, we use them to band-aid over the deepening wounds of the loss of our relationship to self, and by extension, our relationship to what I’d call ‘spirit.’

To me, spirit is about connection to that which is beyond our individual self. It’s about community that isn’t limited to human beings, nor is it limited to that which we can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste. The endorphin rush we get from doing joyous activities is a connection with the ephemeral, but if our only source of connection with the ephemeral is through those things, we end up losing the awareness of spirit. And it is spirit that nourishes us and allows us to more deeply know ourselves. It is through deeply knowing ourselves that we can come to have stronger and more resilient relationships.

This society divorces us from ourselves and from our spirit so early on in life, and the only endorsed sources we are given for connecting to that-which-is-beyond-us become patriarchal religions and The Chase.

Getting out of The Chase means we have to get okay with being bored from time to time. It means we have to slow down. It means we have to challenge the metrics by which we measure our self worth, and we need to learn how to be in healthy relationships with our own selves. Not individualistic, self-centered, narcissistic relationships with ourselves where we discard the concerns or needs of others—I mean we need to get to know ourselves, understand ourselves and where we’ve come from and what we’ve experienced in life, in order to better know what we need, what we dream of, and what we actually have the capacity for.

Every so often, we all need a little refresh.

This course offers a deep a profound journey into a deeper knowledge of yourself.

Drawing from the wisdom of somatics — including meditation practices, movement practices, and music — you’ll be guided into new ways of exploring self awareness, experiencing safety, cultivating intimacy, and nourishing relationships. The daily meditations invite you into sensory explorations, memory recall, journaling, creative expression, movement, and contemplations. This work asks you to be actively engaged, whilst remaining gentle and honoring of your own boundaries.

Through these practices, you’ll be invited to come into a new relationship with the person you’re spending your whole life with: you!

• a replacement or substitution for healing work with a qualified professional therapist,
• something you follow just by reading along,
• part of a ‘sales funnel,’
• exclusively for people who practice polyamorous relationships.

My name is Mel, and I’m a relationship coach who guides social misfits and cultural rebels to experiences of joyful, embodied, authentic, open relationships.

I’m a white-presenting 2nd generation settler of MENAHT and Celtic/Anglo descent. I was born in the UK, grew up in Kuwait, and Canada has been my home since 2004. I am grateful and humbled to live, love, study and share, as a visitor on the beautiful and sacred Unceded territory of the K’òmoks First Nation, which are traditional territories of the K’omoks, Pentlach, Homalco, Wei Wei Kai, Wei Wei Kum, and Tla’amin peoples — people who have been in relationship with this land and these waters for 10,000 years.

I hold a certification in Counselling for Intimacy in Relationships from the Vancouver College of Counselor Training, and am trained in Holistic Peer Counselling and ZEGG Forum facilitation. My current studies are focused on Somatics and Trauma-Informed approaches to healing: I am a student with Somatic Experiencing International, working towards my certification as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I am also in the process of completing my training as a Somatic Movement Teacher with the Institute of Applied Somatics. I previously studied with the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education.

I have been teaching in one form or another for over 25 years, and currently sit on the faculty at the Vancouver School of Healing Arts, in addition to freelancing non-monogamy and consent workshops and education to schools, institutes, and community groups.

I’m queer, and practice relationship anarchy as a solo polyamorous person. I’m also dyslexic, and live with Long Covid. I’m a survivor of sexual trauma, gaslighting, and complex PTSD.

I practice anti-racism, anti-oppression, and support decolonization.

I refute binary gendered scripts.

I support inclusion.

I advocate for consent culture, feminism, and dismantling the patriarchy.

I support accountability and compassionate community care.

I bring all my experience to the work I do.

There is nothing to ‘fix’. This is about tuning in to and stepping into a more conscious relationship with yourself.

This course is self-directed and online. Over the first 21 days, you’ll recieve access to new materials each day.

You can log in at any time to access the course materials, either through your web browser, or in the Group.App application on your mobile device. You’ll find audio recordings of the daily meditations, and suggested music listening to accompany your day’s activities.

You choose the pace and how much of the course you want to do. I recommend doing it over 21 days to get the full experience of renewal, but you may want to space this out over 21 weeks instead of 21 days, or print out each day’s coursework to form a page in your journal.

• Space in your home for solitude. You might want to clean or spruce up a particular area where you can comfortably journal. Some activities will guide you to create altars or visual reminders of your self-relationship, so you may want to prepare a space for this. You might want to include a candle or an object with personal significance to you as a ‘centering’ tool (such as a piece of art) in the space you are using.
• A journal (physical, electronic, or otherwise) to record your experiences and reflections.
• 15–30 mins every evening for reflection, and 15–30 mins during each day for the activity (30–60 mins/ day in total).