Romancing yourself

Passion coach Vena Ramphal. Photo by Irven Lewis

The British Yoga Festival was in full swing at the Design Centre in Islington, north London, last  weekend.  I visited on the opening day and was drawn to one of the workshops in particular,  it seemed different from the others, full of promise. Entitled 'Head, Heart and Hips: the Yoga of Relationships' and led by Vena Ramphal,  a 'passion coach' who specialises in relationships, the workshop lived up to its promise and was  intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
What Vena  really teaches you and encourages you to do is to have a fuller, more meaningful relationship with yourself. She says that one needs to see oneself as a whole, never as a 'half', stressing that being with someone is not about being completed by someone else but about being enriched by and enriching someone's life.

Photographer: Vanessa Mill. MUA: Tori Harris. Model: me

In the workshop we covered topics such as breath, the body, the mind, manifesting and using savasana, the corpse pose, as a way to listen to the body. Savasana is the most important yoga pose!
Vena talked about cultivating romance and ended with five very important points which I am passing on to you, my readers, in the order in which  I received them and without any commentary of my own:
1. Romance doesn't just happen. It needs to be invited in.
2. You can't force the magic. Romance will visit when it's ready.
3. A clear relationship nurtures romance.
4. Romance breathes in the space(s) between you.
And the final one, which I thought was really  beautiful and nourishing: always have a secret romance with yourself.
Thank you Vena, you truly are a breath of fresh air!