Clinterview on Sex

Recently, I was interviewed for a web radio talk show called “Sex And Happiness”. The host, Lauri Handlers, is a published author, tantra yoga expert, and respected seminar leader who runs a business called Butterfly Workshops. One of my blog posts, Ride The Lightning, was featured on her website in September.

Lauri specializes in working with people to maximize their happiness and pleasure in intimate sexual relationships.

As you can guess.....we got on like a house on fire. The interview was spectacular.

So here it is. Just click on the link below.

Sexual & Emotional Availability

Stranger In Me

       This poem was written somewhere around 1995. It’s the shortest poem I’ve ever penned, but that’s part of what makes it special to me. There is power in its simplicity and directness.
        

STRANGER IN ME

My greatest fear  
Is that someone I don’t know
Lives inside of me
And I can’t make him go

            Clint Piatelli

©2012 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Yin My Yang

       The Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang proves a powerful talisman. As I engage in the practice of living a more balanced life with more internal harmony, I am reminded that nothing is all everything.
       As an artist, it’s important for me to have access to my emotions. My creativity becomes manifest through my mind and my body; thought followed by action. But creativity springs from my passion. And passion is a fire of feeling. After spending many years of my life in varying degrees of emotional shut down or emotional denial, I can tell you from first hand experience how much more enjoyable and meaningful my life is when I allow myself to feel. Deeply. Fully.
       Emotions and feelings are often described as feminine energies. For argument’s sake, I’m going to stick with that, without getting into a philosophical discussion about labeling. So I’ve accessed my feminine energies by allowing myself to feel. As essential as that is for me, I sometimes have difficulty balancing that feminine energy with the other side of the proverbial coin: my masculine energy.
       What that looks like is that I can get too caught up in how I feel. I can, at times, let my emotions get away from me, and allow them to take up too much space. I can get lost in how I feel. This can lead to erratic and over-emotional behavior. It can lead to trouble.
       I’m not advocating clamping down on my self expression. I’m talking about exercising some perspective when I feel something. Sometimes it’s as much what I think as what I feel, and how those thoughts and feelings fuel each other. Sometimes I create a feedback loop between my head and my heart that, like any closed system, reinforces itself until powerfully acted upon by an outside force. That powerful outside force needs to be me, and sometimes I disappear. My head and my heart are not me, although sometimes I behave like they are. That’s when I can get into trouble. When I forget that there’s a higher self here; a “Me” that is responsible for balancing the feminine energy with the masculine energy. The me that needs to bring some control and perspective and temperance into the equation.  
       I refer to this control and perspective and temperance as masculine energy. I maintain that when either man or woman does not balance their masculine and feminine energies, then we become less than three dimensional. For me, when I feel strongly, especially when I love someone or something, I can be guilty of not balancing those energies. Sometimes it’s not even a question of balance. Sometimes it’s more about finding my higher self in that moment, and not getting lost in either the masculine or the feminine. Because the balance between the two comes naturally when I am operating as a full human being. When I’m centered and at peace with who I am, the balance takes care of itself.
       I feel deeply; and I can express those feelings, and at the same time exercise proper control. And, being a relatively well adjusted adult, that's usually what I do. Exercising proper control doesn’t necessarily mean, for example, that I don’t say cry when I'm sad about something. But it does mean that I don’t get lost in the sadness. It means that I don’t let the sadness define me. I can feel sad. But I am not sadness.
       If I exercise too much control, I can become stiff, dispassionate, shut down, and disconnected from people and from life. f I don’t exercise enough control, I can become over-emotional, and that can lead to some poor decisions or erratic behavior. I’ve noticed that it’s disconnecting to be either lost in how I feel or not in touch with how I feel. Both extremes lead to a disconnection.
       If I get angry, for example, I don’t have to act on that anger. I can take a step back, and later use that anger to fuel my actions, but not allow anger to run my actions. Like using fire to cook my food instead of letting it burn me. And I can make that analogy with just about any emotion. For emotions are like fire. They can cook. Or they can burn.
       Again, it’s not about being over analytical and micro-managing control in the moment. It’s about coming from a different place. Coming from my heart, using my head, listening to my gut. Operating as my full being. While still letting the self, the me, be in charge.
       Not getting caught up in what I’m thinking and feeling has traditionally been a challenge for me. My heart is huge and full of feeling. My mind is active and highly intelligent and imaginative. In other words, in the realm of me, my heart and my mind are both very big entities.
       That doesn’t mean I have to let either of them run the show. I can recognize them for the wonderful, beautiful, powerful forces of nature that they are without allowing either to overcome me. As I develop a more defined, more solid sense of self, a more solid sense of who and what I am, I live from a different place. A place more fully reflective of the me, the whole me, and nothing but the me.
       Sometimes I do that, and sometimes I don’t. It’s a practice, a way of being that I’m coming to understand and live more fully. I feel like I’m involved in a constant and wonderful education that is life long. I’m committed to that education.
       When I get lost in my work to become a better person, a bigger person, a more evolved and enlightened person, my dear friend Mira tells me "Remember. You are not a self improvement project.". She's right. I am, however, engaged in creating myself as the man I want to be. For me, part of that means better balancing the masculine and feminine energies. Being the Yin and the Yang. Being in the flow of my unique and beautiful self.


©2012 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Plerk ®

       I’m an artist. I like to think of all of life as my canvas. Artists know how to play. When a painter is painting; when a musician is making music; when a writer is writing; they are in essence, playing.
       I’m not saying that there isn’t work involved in those activities. There is. Lots of it. But it boils down to the distinctions we make about why we’re doing it, how we’re doing it, and how we relate to those distinctions.
       The verb “Work” is defined as: “To be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a purpose or result”. Loosely speaking, then, virtually anything you do, from walking down the street to Starbucks, to punching in from nine to five, can be considered “work”. Because there is activity involved, with an intended achieved result.
       Play, on the other hand, is defined as “ to engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose”. Notice that In both definitions of play and work, there is “activity”. The basic difference between work and play then comes down then to the distinctions we make between two things: the reason we’re doing it (the result, the “Why”), and the way we’re doing it (the “How”).
       How about coining a new word? Fine, I will. The combination of play and work:  “Plerk”; spelled this way to be pronounced properly. If I spelled it “Plork”, it would be a better linguistic combination of the two words, but would result in pronunciation problems that would lead people to think the word had something to do with swine flesh.
       Combining the definitions of work and play that I previously sited, I could say that “Plerk is an activity engaged in for enjoyment where you also have an intended result”. That nomenclature feels a little stale. So let’s go with this: “Plerk” is defined as “To engage in an activity you enjoy with the intent of creating something”. That’s much better.
       My most engaging activities, the ones where I feel most truly alive, are when I’m “Plerking”. My intended creation could be something tangible, or it could be something completely ethereal, which I’ll get more to in a moment. So writing to me is plerk. So is playing music. In these two examples, I love doing what I’m doing. And I’m creating something as well. What a beautiful thing. Plerk is beautiful.  
       In the creation of something completely ethereal, what I mean is that It doesn’t have to be a “thing”. I’ll use an activity I call Tennis Racquet Rock Star® as an example. Tennis Racquet Rock Star is like air guitar, but you have a tennis racquet in your hand instead of just air. It beats air guitar to hell, because you actually have something in your hands. You have a tool. And that makes all the difference. It doesn’t have to be a tennis racquet, however. I’ve used brooms, canes, basically anything with the approximate length of a guitar that doesn’t weigh much.
       In the case of Tennis Racquet Rock Star, or TRRS®, the achieved result, what I’m creating, is to look like I actually know how to play the guitar. That’s not a “thing”, but it is an intent. I have all these great moves, and I appear to have all the correct fingerings and hit all the notes. Someone watching me who did not know me would think I was the next coming of Eddie Van Halen.
       Now if I were doing TRRS with no intention of looking like I knew what I was doing, then I would just be playing. And that’s fine. But I personally get much more enjoyment when I create the illusion that I know how to play. So I actually like to Plerk more than I like to play.
       Plerking for me is a fuller experience, because the act of creation allows me to bring more of myself into the activity. In the case of TRRS, for example, if I were just playing, I would not be using any of my analytical abilities. If I’m attempting to look like I know what I’m doing, then I need to have analyzed and studied guitarists. And I enjoy analyzing and studying. If I’m Plerking at TRRS, I’m also using my sense of timing, and my dexterity.
       I’ll also have to move. I’ll have to dance. Not only because I enjoy moving and dancing; not only because the music moves me to do that; but because great guitarists have great moves. And I’ve studied those moves, mimicked those moves, and come up with some of my own. So I’m compelled to move and dance and mimic and come up with my own for reasons of play and work. Plerk. And lots of guitarists make expressive, crazy faces. So I get to act a little too. Actually, I make expressive, crazy faces when I play drums. In fact, I make expressive and crazy faces a lot. Period. So maybe it isn’t really acting. Anyway, you get the idea.
       I understand that for most people, work is not so enjoyable. In that case, then play is extremely important. Because you need that yin and yang. If most of your activity is engaged in to achieve a result, and you don’t enjoy that activity very much, you need to balance that out with enjoyable activity where you have no intended result at all.
       That said, try incorporating more Plerking into your life. See what it feels like. You may find you enjoy it so much that you spend more and more time Plerking. And that could lead to a new avocation. A new vocation.
       Maybe even a new career.


© 2012 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Weekend At Bernie's

       Last weekend, I took a trip to someplace that I haven’t been to in a while. And I stayed way longer than I should have. I spent the weekend at Bernie’s. Bernie’s place is in my own head. And it’s not an oceanfront mansion. It’s more of a crack house.
       On Friday, I was not being very loving to myself. I don’t know why I chose to go there. For months, I’ve been good at getting myself out of that space, either by myself, or through calling somebody and getting some support. I’ve increased my support network a great deal over the past few months. I’ve got members of my family on board now. I've reconnected with a few people who I consider nothing less than spiritual tour guides. I’ve got amazing people I’m doing Landmark Education with. All that, on top of the already solid network of wonderful friends and relatives. On this day, however, I didn’t use my tools.
       What I’ve also been good at doing for a while is not acting from that unloving place. When I find myself there, I’ve been able to get myself out of it so I can take action. Or, if possible, and not logistically detrimental, put off actions until I get out of this bad neighborhood. When in doubt, I’ve done nothing. Nothing until I got greater clarity. And that has served me very well. But I didn’t do that on this weekend.
       Because I chose to be at Bernie’s Crack Emporium for most of the weekend, I ran a story in my head and took some actions from an unclear place that was missing love. Love of self and love of another. And my actions had an impact. On myself and on somebody I care about.
       I thought I was past that. I really did. But I’m not. I still need work on it.
       Currently, I am holding both regret and gratitude. Regret because I took something someplace it did not need to go, and it caused some damage. It damaged a relationship that matters to me. I've apologized, which is a critical step in getting clean with it and moving past the setback.
       But there is also gratitude, a feeling that I need to nurture and nourish. Because if I stay in regret, I’m doing the same thing to myself that I was doing whilst at Bernie’s: beating myself up and not coming from a place of love. And if I stay in regret and beat myself up, I miss the opportunity to use this breakdown to have a breakthrough.
       If I forgive myself, I realize that I created this because there is something I need to get from it. There are lessons here. There is my own stuff showing up that I still need to work on. And, as my dad used to say; “Rome wasn’t built in a day. And neither was Cleveland.” In other words, no matter who we are, no matter what our challenges, growth takes time. Growth happens in stages. It’s not a straight line. And no matter how much I’ve grown, I’m going to, occasionally, fall back into an old pattern and make mistakes. That doesn’t negate what I’ve done. It doesn’t wipe away how far I’ve come. Many people have told me that I shine. That they see a light from inside of me. The times of relative darkness, like my weekend at Bernie's, don't vanquish all the times that I do shine. With caring. With passion. With so much love.
       Sports fans, I’m on the field. I’m in the game. The game of personal transformation. The game of creating a life that I love. I’m playing it. Hard. Every fuckin’ day. And, just like my boy Tom Brady, I’m going to miss some throws. I’m going to have some really bad games. I’m going to throw some picks. I’m even going to throw some picks that cause me to lose the game that day. But I don’t quit. I get back up, dust myself off, and keep at it. I learn from my mistakes. I keep correcting bad habits. And I don’t allow my critics to distract me from my mission. Most importantly, I don’t allow myself to distract me from what I’m creating.
       And that means staying the fuck away from Bernie’s Crack Emporium.