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By Kathy McGuire, October 13, 2007 5:23 pm

1) Intuitive Eating: Paying attention to your inner “felt sensing” while shopping, cooking, eating.

This is the season for fresh basil and tomatoes…try this low-fat meal: Pumpernickel or other dense bread (toasted?), topped with chopped basil , then sliced tomato,  a  drizzle of olive oil, a slice of fresh (or part-skim) mozzarella…

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, October 12, 2007 4:34 pm

Collaborative Edge Sexuality = Finding Win/Win Solutions Through Negotiating as Equals 

 Unequal desire for sexual intimacy? Try massage…

• First, set the stage for greater closeness with Instant “Ahah!” #8 (p.27) –Sharing Your Day: Instant Intimacy practiced every day (download the free Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual at www.cefocusing.com by subscribing to e-newsletter in sidebar or looking under Free Resources Long Articles — ten simple exercises to bring Listening/Focusing skills into your everyday life)
• Make a date three times a week for sexual intimacy (e.g., Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30PM, Saturday around 9AM) –carry out at least two dates/week. You can set aside 1 1/2 hours, but 45 minutes to 1 hour can be plenty of time.
• At your local natural foods store, stock up on massage oils and lotion…Jason brand is a good one, Lavendar always calming
• If you can, buy a massage table for home; Earthlite portable at www.earthlite.com  is sturdy but inexpensive(well, certainly cheaper than marital therapy or a weekend away, and much easier on the back muscles)
• At least on some “dates, the person with greater desire and energy enjoys massaging the front side of the other person…start with a foot/leg massage, erasing exhaustion,move on to the rest of body and, finally, erotic areas….at some point, make sure the “initiator” also gets a massage…Lover’s Massage and Ultimate Sexual Massage from www.lovingsex.com are explicit DVD’s showing you how…be warned…the rest of that website can be overwhelming….

More to come in future editions!

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Comments (3)

By Kathy McGuire, October 11, 2007 10:56 pm

I’m Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director of Creative Edge Focusing (TM) at www.cefocusing.com . I have thirty years experience as a psychotherapist, peer counseling teacher, and decision making consultant. But, here in this blog, I will talk about whatever comes to mind, be it food (Intuitive Cooking), sex (Collaborative Edge Sexuality), Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening (Core Skills taught at www.cefocusing.com ), shopping, relationships, conflict resolution, personality tests, spirituality, creativity, Creative Edge Organizations — everything I’ve learned and want to share.

I think of this blog as Ultimate Self-Help — sharing what we learn that can help others save time, money, their relationships, their spirituality, their world, their work situations, etc.

The story below points to dynamics that happen in all relationships, be they for love, friendship, or business. I don’t believe that we can understand other people unless we come to grips with the idea that people can be really, really different from us, like from another planet, but that there are categories for these differences, as simple as fire, water, air, and earth, but also way more complex “personality tests.”

You can read a more theoretical presentation about The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), my favorite test of individual differences,  in the article “Jung, MBTI, and Experiential Theory” at http://www.cefocusing.com/pdf/2f1n_Jung_MBTI_Exp_Theory.pdf and actually find links to take a version of this personality test and others at http://www.cefocusing.com/freeresources/2e.php, but here is a funny illustrative story:

Yesterday, I went to my doll club (yes, this is how I “lighten up”) It was a Halloween party, the theme was Wizard of Oz, I was in charge, and we had contests: Best homemade costumed doll, Best bought homemade doll, Best diorama (this is a scene in miniature).

My story is about my diorama and how it was totally misunderstood because of a personality difference between me (an iNtuitive on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, 25% of people) and the majority (Sensors on the MBTI, 75% of people).

There were two entries under Dioramas. Both of us had gotten our 5 1/2 ” dolls from a McDonald’s promotion, so the 8 “character” dolls we used were identical. We both used a cookie sheet size “ground.”

In mine, I had the Wicked Witch of the East (was that the first sister, with the striped stockings and ruby slippers? We iNtuitives are really bad at details, but long on imagination and creativity!) lying down with a miniature house lying on top of her, legs sticking out (you know, Dorothy’s house blew away from Kansas in a tornado and landed on the witch!).

I had the other Witch (of the West? In black) standing over Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Lion, who were all lying down in a drugged sleep in a field of “poppies” (red fake flowers) next to the “yellow brick road” (yellow construction paper). The Tin Man was still standing (of course! He didn’t fall asleep because he didn’t have a heart!) in the midst of them all, trying to help. There were small pumpkins, munchkins, and Glenda also in the scene. I thought it was an extremely imaginative way of telling part of the story.

 The other diorama, made by an accomplished seamstress, artist, county-fair winner, had yellow construction paper all over the “ground,” and she had painstakingly drawn in “bricks” (a kind of detail work I would never consider). The eight characters were simply lined up in two rows and “glued” to the base. Now, granted, she had supplemented with a tiny basket and tiny dog for her Dorothy (a detail I would never think of). But, there was no “story-telling” there.

Well, I was busy tallying votes from all the contests, so not watching over the dioramas. But, when I did go over to look, I saw that someone had picked up the house off of the witch and stood the witch up and stood the lion up — obviously, she or they thought all the dolls had “accidentally” fallen over!!!! They didn’t get the story at all!!!

The vote was 8 for Sensing her, 6 for Intuitive me (not bad, considering!!). It seemed like such a great illustration of the difference between imaginative, iNtuitive thinking and concrete, reality-oriented Sensing it made me laugh.

In most work situations, there are only a few iNtuitives, in the “creativity” departments, but they drive a lot of the innovation which the Sensing people so carefully bring to realistic expression.

Kathy