The Conscious Heart

Seven Soul-Choices That Create Your Relationship Destiny
By Gay Hendricks,Kathlyn Hendricks

Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks identify seven soul-level commitments they argue are necessary for a relationship to remain vital and evolving over time. Drawing on their own marriage and decades of couples counseling, they examine how fear, control struggles, and unconscious patterns block genuine intimacy, and how choices around honesty, appreciation, and creativity can restore it. The book also addresses sex, money, and major life transitions — from blending families to aging — through twenty-one practical lessons and six core exercises.

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Concepts
  • Seven Soul-Commitments
    The foundational choices Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks identify as necessary for a relationship to remain alive and evolving, honesty, appreciation, creativity, and others.
  • Co-Commitment
    A partnership in which both people take full responsibility for their own feelings and growth while supporting each other's, contrasted with codependent reliance.
  • Essence-Sex vs. Persona-Sex
    A distinction between sex that expresses your genuine self and sex that performs a role; the book argues essence-based intimacy deepens over time while persona-based intimacy fades.
  • Removing Projections
    Identifying the feelings and qualities you unconsciously project onto a partner and reclaiming them as your own, which reduces conflict and deepens honesty.
  • Soul-Choices
    Conscious decisions — moment to moment and over the long arc of a relationship — that shape whether intimacy deepens or contracts.
Chapters
  • Part 1. The Path of the Conscious Heart
  • Introduction. Plum-Blossom Courage
  • Chapter 1. How We Found the Conscious Heart of Our Own Relationship
  • Chapter 2. The Master Commitment That Opens the Conscious Heart
  • Chapter 3. Seven Soul-Commitments That Allow the Conscious Heart to Thrive
  • Chapter 4. How to Keep from Sabotaging Your Commitments
  • Chapter 5. Moving Through Seven Waves of Intimacy, Navigating with Seven Soul-Choices
  • Part 2. Sex, Money, and the Conscious Heart
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 6. Breakup or Breakthrough - Sex and Money Are Springboards to Essence
  • Chapter 7. Consciously Creating Abundance - Dealing with Money Issues
  • Part 3. The Conscious Heart in Action
  • Introduction. Twenty-One Lessons on the Path
  • Lesson 1. Finding Balance
  • Lesson 2. Cultivating Curiosity
  • Lesson 3. When a Troublesome Pattern Repeats
  • Lesson 4. When You Don't Feel Loved
  • Lesson 5. Creating Space for Essence
  • Lesson 6. The Essence of Play
  • Lesson 7. Expressing Gratitude
  • Lesson 8. Blending a Family
  • Lesson 9. Deepening Your Connection with Essence and Creativity
  • Lesson 10. Respect
  • Lesson 11. When Roles and Rhythms Change
  • Lesson 12. Dealing with a Life Transition - Menopause
  • Lesson 13. Sexual Energy as an Evolutionary Force
  • Lesson 14. Stretching Your Relationship
  • Lesson 15. Dealing with a Betrayal
  • Lesson 16. Finding Stillness in the Midst of Busy-ness
  • Lesson 17. Dealing with Illness and Aging
  • Lesson 18. Removing Projections
  • Lesson 19. Synchronicity - Making Friends with the Universe
  • Lesson 20. Healing Old Traumas
  • Lesson 21. Moving from Persona-Sex to Essence-Sex
  • Part 4. The Essential Practices
  • Introduction. Six Exercises in Transformation
  • Practice 1. Conscious Listening
  • Practice 2. Making Soul-Commitments
  • Practice 3. The Essence-Meditations
  • Practice 4. Balancing Power
  • Practice 5. Ending Control Struggles
  • Practice 6. Developing Appreciation
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Published
  • December 30, 2009
Publisher
  • Bantam
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