People in relationships know it isn't enough just to have a partner. The capacity exists in all of us to love without defenses or requirements, to know ourselves so deeply that real intimacy—direct, unmediated, heart-to-heart connection with ourselves and with our partner—becomes a lifelong expression of our deepest nature.
This is the power of "Undefended Love," a transformative path that guides us beyond close, companion-based partnerships toward "intimate" relationships, where each moment is a fresh, spontaneous expression of who we genuinely are. Intimate partnership—with a mate, sibling, co-worker, oneself, friend—is a profound vehicle for spiritual and self-realization. Our potential to be fully human, to be entirely ourselves in the presence of another, requires that we forge rather than find our soul connection, compose rather than control ourselves and each other, and dissolve rather than resolve the issues that emerge in our relationships.
The focus of this web conference is on shifting our center of gravity away from our conditioned personality (the places where we feel stuck, confused, hurt, and defensive) toward our essential self (the part of us that is free, whole, connected, peaceful, powerful, and joyful).
In short, participants will join the teleconference by calling into the teleconference center and entering an access code. The teleconference will include lecture, interaction, and question and answer periods.
No CE credits will be provided by GoodTherapy.org for accessing this program.
Premium and Pro Membership with GoodTherapy includes access to this web conference at no additional cost, as well as other member benefits such as a profile listing in GoodTherapy's Therapist Directory. Not yet a member? Sign up for a Premium or Pro Membership, here.
Just want CE credits? Sign up for a monthly or annual CE Subscription with GoodTherapy to get unlimited access to our CE Program, including this event, other live CE web conferences, and hundreds of hours of homestudy courses.
Mental health professionals can access the homestudy recording for $15.50. Sign up here to purchase this course.
Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons (co-founders of the Conscious Living Center, a counseling and workshop center in the San Francisco Bay Area) share a personal and professional relationship. They have been leading seminars and retreats that guide couples and individuals to cultivate the capacity for undefended love—with oneself as well as with others—since 1990. Marlena has been in private practice specializing in relationship issues since 1979. Jett came to the field of psychospiritual work in 1988, after a decade in business as an executive in several high-profile companies. Through their work together, they have gone beyond researching the reasons why people have failed to create exceptional relationships and have developed a unique approach to accelerate personal and relationship development to allow individuals to connect with themselves and each other in an undefended and open way.
Jett and Marlena have authored a wonderful book together, Undefended Love, and they offer many different workshops, including a Foundation Course on Undefended Love. In addition to their work in Undefended Love, Jett and Marlena are branching out into the realm of MidLife material and they have an upcoming book, Taking the Midlife Leap, One Step at a Time. Both are in private practice and offer sessions in person, over the phone, and by Skype. For more information about Jett and Malena, their books, their workshops, or their practices, you can visit their website.
Marlena Lyons, PhD, is of French-Egyptian descent and was born in Cairo, Egypt, living there until the age of eleven when the political climate no longer favored those with a European background. As her extended family scattered to Western Europe and Canada and her immediate family emigrated to the United States, she felt her community shatter. Arriving in America from another country, she was seen as exotic but "foreign." Her sense of being different produced a feeling of being special but not belonging. She was a girl with two countries but no home. Her early attraction to psychology came out of her desire to repair the splintered world of her childhood, to return to a sense of wholeness and union. Since she could not live with her people, she had to find the strength to be herself among strangers. Ultimately she learned that in discovering herself she felt at home everywhere. In the course of her self-exploration, she completed a master's degree (from San Jose State University) and a PhD (from Sierra University) in clinical psychology.
Since 1979, Marlena has helped individuals and couples see the difficulties of their lives as rites of passage, initiating them into ever-deeper layers of their being. Through groups, workshops, and writing, she has taken this message to a broader audience. The goal of her life's work has been to guide others to discover their inner resources and to recover the joy and innocence that has been covered up or overlooked: She helps them fulfill the promise of finally coming home.
Jett Psaris, PhD, was born in New Jersey and was encouraged from an early age to pursue a career in business. After completing her undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, she moved to the West coast to seek her fortune. She joined a startup company, Osborne Computer Corporation, leading its sales and marketing efforts from a negative cash flow to over one hundred million dollars in a little less than two years. During this time Jett was interviewed on 60 Minutes and by many of the major network stations. Six months after leaving Osborne, while starting her own company, Osborne filed Chapter 13: In one short month, Jett's net worth went from over twelve million dollars to a negative half million. She was 27 years old. While scrambling for several years to pay off her debts, Jett completed an MBA at Pepperdine University, helped start a number of successful companies, and worked for venture capitalists as a turnaround expert.
At the age of 32, exhausted, discouraged, but free of debt, she took a year off to examine what had led her to lose everything she had worked so hard to create. In the process of painstakingly questioning each and every belief she held to be true, Jett discovered an inner world, vast and unexplored, and set out to chart this unknown territory. As part of this process she completed a PhD in psychology from Summit University and joined forces with Marlena Lyons, offering workshops and seminars to other seekers on the path of self-knowledge. The maps contained within Undefended Love are those of a faithful cartographer struggling to understand the steps to living an emotionally liberated life within oneself and with another. They also reflect ten years working with individuals, couples and groups of people committed to living and loving in an unconditioned and undefended way.