Five Good Minutes with the One You Love

Jeffrey Brantley

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• Publié par: New Harbinger Publications
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 0001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781608824557
• Langue: English

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100 mindful practices to deepen & renew your love every day
Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine
New Harbinger Publications, Inc. -->
Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books
Copyright © 2007 by Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
www.newharbinger.com
Cover design by Amy Shoup; text design by Amy Shoup and Michele Waters-Kermes; acquired by Tesilya Hanauer; edited by Carole Honeychurch
All Rights Reserved.
Fourth in the Five Good Minutes™ series
Five Good Minutes is a trademark of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Epub ISBN: 9781608824557
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as:
Brantley, Jeffrey.
Five good minutes with the one you love : 100 mindful practices to deepen and renew your love everyday / Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57224-512-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-57224-512-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Love. 2. Intimacy (Psychology) 3. Interpersonal communication. 4. Interpersonal relations. I. Matik, Wendy-O, 1966- II. Title.
BF575.L8B7234 2008
158.2--dc22
2007044737
09 08 07
This book is dedicated to all those who have graced my life with their presence and love, and most especially to my dear wife, Mary. May your blessings be multiplied and benefit many others. —J.B.
In the beginning, there was just life. And then there was life with the love of my best friend, Adrienne Melanie Droogas, whose heartfelt loyalty and sacred love held no boundaries. She is my greatest teacher and inspiration.—W.M.
contents
introduction
part 1. the foundation
part 2. the practices
opening your heart
1. open the door for love
2. glad to be alive
3. write from the heart
4. make room for love
5. relaxed body, clear mind, open heart
6. cultivate curiosity
7. silent harmony
8. breathe mindfully
9. free your heart
10. rest in beauty
11. give it away
12. feel the joy
13. soft belly
14. your good works
15. blessings to you
16. silent renewal
17. circle of love
18. deepest desires
19. your own best friend
20. count your blessings
21. activist of the heart
22. may peace find you
23. dump the grudge
24. may I be free from pain
wise love
25. joy is us together
26. forgiveness walk
27. looking at you
28. acknowledge every gift
29. may you be well
30. look inside
31. holding hands
32. give thanks for the hard times
33. laugh out loud
34. take a bow
35. affectionate listening
36. a mile in your partner’s shoes
37. love without return
38. share some silence
39. honor your commitments
40. how can I help?
41. take the good with the bad
42. your blessings on me
43. patience on the journey
44. holding you
45. stars of compassion
46. extraordinary love songs
47. be an ally
48. appreciate the differences
49. a spoonful of reassurance
50. here for you
51. appreciate the little things
love in action
52. no pain, no blame
53. take a “shake-it” break
54. offer forgiveness
55. greeting ritual
56. ask forgiveness
57. anchor of love
58. turn off the autopilot
59. forgive yourself
60. work together
61. safe with me
62. waves of serenity
63. free from it all
64. what is really going on?
65. warming the cold silences
66. fishing for feelings
67. anger and fear
68. to each his own style
69. fighting for control
70. end the tug-of-war
71. mindful listener
72. impatience is not you
73. time spent apart
74. bedtime blessing
cherishing life
75. invitation for love
76. dear stranger
77. bed magic
78. elemental truth
79. miracles of life
80. flames of romance
81. no ill will
82. hand in hand
83. thankful for you
84. altar of love
85. abundant love
86. your family circle
87. embrace your differences
88. may you always be happy
89. be vulnerable
90. prayers for animals
91. too much work, not enough play
92. say yes to life
93. stairway of dreams
94. dear mother and father
95. harmonize with reality
96. it takes a village
97. memory game
98. the way of not knowing
99. find the ocean in a seashell
100. entering the mystery
introduction By Jeffrey Brantley, MD
Would you like to try a new approach to love?
What if your partner (or other loved one) joined you?
Love is such a complex subject, with so many faces. So much has been written and said about it already. What would a new approach be like?
Consider the following:
“I love you. ” These are words everyone wants to hear, and yet these same words, curiously, come more easily sometimes than others.
What does “I love you” look like “in action?”
How do these words feel inside you—deep inside your body, your heart, and your life?
“I love you.” These words change and take on richer meaning when relationships grow over time, as awareness builds on affection, and patience and generosity toward one’s beloved emerge in actions, both large and small.
Have you ever wished that you could know love more deeply? Renew love more easily and sweetly? Explore the landscape of relationship with your loved one more completely?
“I love you.” Speaking these words to another can point both of you toward something great and mysterious about being human and being alive. Would you like to explore that mystery more intentionally every day of your life?
The answers to these (and other) questions about love in your life might be closer than you think. Finding answers and wisdom about love that is true for you might require only that you pay a closer and more kindhearted attention to yourself and to your loved ones in the moments and spaces of daily living.
What if all it takes to enhance your capacity to love—and to nourish and protect all that is good, beautiful, and healthy in yourself, in those you love, and in the world—begins with paying attention, on purpose, in a kind and nonjudging way, right now, in this moment? In this and our other books, we refer to such a way of paying attention as “ being mindful .” The awareness that arises from paying attention in a kind and nonjudging way is called mindfulness.
In our three previous books, Five Good Minutes , Five Good Minutes in the Evening , and Five Good Minutes at Work , we offered easy, mindfulness-based practices that can be done in just five minutes of “clock time,” and yet hold the potential to be radically transforming.
The power of these practices is that they invite you to step back from the rush and momentum of busyness, inattention, and habit energy (the familiar and often unconscious ways of thinking, feeling, and inhabiting your body) and explore the power of being present (being “mindful”). From that base of presence through mindfulness, you are invited to set a clear intention and then to act wholeheartedly in specific, easy-to-follow practices organized around distinct themes for each book.
Presence, intention, and wholehearted action —these are the keys to your five good minutes. They are the vehicle for transforming five minutes of simple clock time into something radically alive, new, and filled with possibility.
In our earlier books, we focused the practices on themes related to daytime activity, evening hours, and work situations. We invited readers to be curious, to have fun, and to explore the possibilities that arise from acting consciously, with intention, in the present moment. The practices we offered ranged from whimsical to reflective to physically engaging.
In this book, we invite you to explore the power of presence, intention, and wholeheartedness through five-minute practices directed at your most important relationships—explicitly, toward those you love. You may want to invite your partner and other loved ones to share some of these practices with you. Any of them can be done by anyone, and a number of them are designed to be shared.
Applied to important relationships, the five-good-minutes approach offers even the busiest people a precious opportunity for personal enrichment, a wiser relationship to their inner life, and a stronger bond with those they love.
The organizing themes for this book are: “Opening Your Heart,” which is about growing self-awareness, warmheartedness, and compassion; “Wise Love,” which deals with practices for nourishing, enriching, and protecting your relationship; “Love in Action,” which is about facing everyday difficulties and challenges and building the practical skills needed in healthy relationships; and finally, “Cherishing Life.”
The final theme, “Cherishing Life,” acknowledges that one is continually in relationship to all things, and that by noticing and gently exploring this broader context for love, the depth of feeling for any single person or creature actually grows.
And, if being present, setting intention, and acting wholeheartedly sound either confusing or overly simplistic, don’t worry! You will receive very clear instructions, and you can move at your own pace. Your discoveries and lessons will arise as you actually do the practices.
The five-good-minutes approach is most effective because of what you do and your direct experience.
Your richest benefits will come from the doing—from your direct experience of practicing mindfulness, of setting intention, and of doing your practice wholeheartedly.
This means that you can have some fun. You don’t have to do all 100 practices. And you definitely do not have to worry about “getting it right.” You are in charge! You decide. If you practice with an honest effort, you cannot do anything wrong. You just have to actually do your practice, in some fashion, a