We have been counseling couples for 25 years. This is a work that we dearly love. Over the years we have noticed certain patterns that emerge in relationships that either destroy the love or enhance it. What we have discovered in our own 35 year relationship as well as our working as counselors, is that relationships thrive when two people know how to connect from the heart. When people try to relate mostly from the head or mental state, the relationship has difficulty surviving.

Our culture glorifies the mind. Yet real wisdom can only be found in the heart, in a much deeper place within us. The heart holds the feeling of expansive openness and love and, therefore, the feeling of real power. The mind can be a great tool, but it can also seek control in the guise of power. The heart is already powerful and intuitively knowing, so it has no need to control anything.

In writing our book, The Heart's Wisdom, we have tried to show people step by step how to have a relationship from the heart. It is from this space that two people can bloom, deepen in love and ride together through the challenges of relationship. The following is one of the practices from The Heart's Wisdom:

Entering The Heart

Close your eyes and imagine you are in a cluttered office: papers everywhere, piles of things to do. Now turn around and notice a door in the back of the office. Go ahead, approach it and open it. There is a staircase behind the door leading downward. Walk down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs there is another door. Open it. Walk into a vast, light-filled room that is neither indoors nor outdoors. This is an expansive, sacred space like a beautiful temple or cathedral. It is filled with light and warmth, balance of color, uncluttered simplicity, and great beauty. You have just traveled from your mind to your heart. Feast your senses upon all that is here...

May your relationships feast upon the wisdom, strength and inspiration found in your heart.

The Vissell's latest book, The Heart's Wisdom: A Practical Guide to Growing Through Love, is now available in bookstores. 35 years of wisdom from their own relationship and 25 years of wisdom from helping others is distilled into 252 inspiring pages that will deepen your relationship to yourself and others.

Spend SEVEN DAYS IN PARADISE this winter with Barry and Joyce, along with talented musician, Charley Thweatt, for a time of celebration, healing, and spiritual renewal for individuals and couples on the Big Island of Hawaii. This week can transform your whole life. January 30-February 6, 2000-Hawaii Living From the Heart Millenium Retreat. Call Jim Lipson at 520-721-1710 (Tucson, AZ) for more info.

Joyce and Barry Vissell, a nurse and medical doctor couple since 1964, are the authors of The Shared Heart, Models of Love, Risk To Be Healed, and The Heart's Wisdom. They are the founders and directors of the Shared Heart Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the connection between relationship and the spiritual path.