Epic Love: 5 Week Course

Do you find your relationships keep repeating the same patterns?

Are you mystified as to why, and you don't know what to do about it?

I'm here to tell you that there are keys to creating nourishing, passionate, intimate and safe relationships. 

There's a way to EPIC LOVE.

EPIC LOVE, means crafting a relationship where you are both committed to showing up and doing the work.

What is the work? 

The work is learning how to take responsibility for your part, finding the courage to be truly honest, and working as a team instead of fighting your own corner.

It means appreciating each other regularly, and having the grit to stay in when your wounded part is telling you to run.

This five-week course is based on the life-changing lessons from my 8 year relationship, 4 years of relational coaching, and working directly with couples over the last 2 years.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️“I 100% recommend this course for anyone who would like to enhance their relationship skills - both romantic and non-romantic. The content was clearly presented and Gaia is a masterful facilitator - sharing key insights, and reflections and humbly sharing her own stories.” - Krista Hagman

Inspiration for this course: Relational Life Therapy (Terry Real), Esther Perel (Sex and Relationship Therapist and Author), Love Languages (Garry Chapman), Neuroscience of Trauma (Dan Seigel) Non-Violent Communication

Gaia brings her experience working with diverse relationships, including non-monogamous structures, LGBTQ+ partnerships, and interracial couples. Epic Love is a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone seeking to build deeper, more fulfilling connections.

What to Expect

• Zoom sessions every 2 weeks (Wednesdays 7 - 9:30pm)
• Recordings of sessions + written notes of theories and exercises presented
• Listening buddy to connect with once a week (10 minutes of sharing per person)
• 1 x private coaching session with Gaia

This course will help if:

• You tend to lose yourself in relationships and want to learn to identify and communicate your boundaries
• You easily become angry, inflamed, or passive-aggressive, and want to express yourself without hurting your partner
• You often avoid conflict and want to learn how to communicate your needs better
• You struggle to feel or communicate your emotions to your partner
• You find yourself overthinking and processing endlessly without resolving issues
• You desire more intimacy, connection, and cherishing within your relationship

Course Outline

Session 1: Self-Responsibility

In relationships, we often blame our partners for our challenges, seeing the problem as 'out there' rather than within. This module turns that pointing finger back on ourselves, diving into our triggers and unhealthy patterns. Most of our triggers form in childhood, and when activated, they hijack our ability to be relational, kind, or compassionate. Instead, we get stuck fighting to be right, running away, or avoiding conflict at all costs - it's like an inner 5-year-old takes the wheel, and it’s a disaster for our relationships.

Taking responsibility means understanding our coping strategies, what activates them, and learning to self-regulate. We'll practice 'inner child work', learning to reparent our reactive parts so we can stay in our adult selves. By releasing our partners from being the cause of our suffering and owning our feelings and reactions, relationships become far more enjoyable. 

Key outcomes: 

1. Identifying personal triggers and their origins
2. recognising unhealthy coping mechanisms
3. developing self-regulation techniques
4. shifting from partner blame to personal responsibility for our emotions and actions
    

Session 2: Team Spirit

Too often in conflict, we act as if we're on opposing teams, forgetting the love that binds us. This module is dedicated to transitioning from individualistic needs to a collaborative approach. We'll explore how we co-create our relational dynamic, a concept known as 'The Dance'. Using Pia Mellody's relationship grid, we'll dissect our reactions when we're triggered by our partners and how they, in turn, trigger our partners. This is how we get caught in a cycle of mutual triggering. Understanding this is the gateway to breaking free and creating a sense of unity and support in our relationships.

You will learn the art of Active Listening. A brilliant communication tool for coming together as a team. The goal is to move away from arguing about whose perspective is more accurate and towards truly understanding our partner's point of view. By helping our partner feel seen and heard, we break the cycle of fighting to be right and work as a team to understand how each person feels.

Key outcomes:

1. Recognising how we co-create relationship dynamics
2. Identifying personal stress reactions and learning to return to a centered state
3. Developing active listening skills to understand our partner's perspective
4. Shifting from an adversarial mindset to a collaborative team approach in conflicts

Session 3: Honesty

To have a healthy (and epic) relationship, we must be willing to rock the boat. Avoiding truth for fear of our partner's reaction leads to co-dependency, resentment, and disconnection. When we're not honest, we hide aspects of ourselves, creating distance. Though it can be terrifying, honesty brings freedom. We need to be truthful about our needs, desires, upsets, and mistakes - anything creating emotional or psychological distance. When done well, we feel safe to be ourselves, learn it's okay to make mistakes, and discover that our needs and desires matter to our partners.

In this session, we'll learn to skillfully bring challenging topics to our partner using the Feedback Wheel from Relational Life Therapy. This tool helps to keep the conversation relational by breaking situations into facts, feelings, meaning, and requests. 

Key outcomes: 

1. Recognising honesty's role in maintaining connection
2. Identifying areas where we avoid truth-telling
3. Learning to use The Feedback Wheel for effective communication
4. Developing skills to clear the field and negotiate - core components of an epic relationship.

Session 4: Cherishing

The Gottmans, leading relationship experts, propose that a healthy relationship requires a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative experiences. This means for every challenging moment, couples need five positive interactions to maintain a sense of relationship satisfaction. We need to consistently show love and create playful, affectionate experiences together to buffer against inevitable difficulties. Epic relationships, like anything valuable in life, require diligence, attentiveness, and consistent effort to thrive.

To achieve this balance, we'll explore the concept of the 5 love languages. This practice involves understanding both your own and your partner's preferred ways of giving and receiving love, which often differ. By identifying these love languages, couples can create a plan to meet each other's needs effectively without compromising personal boundaries. This approach helps maintain the positive experiences necessary for a healthy relationship dynamic.

Key outcomes:

1. Mastering the art of creating regular positive experiences in your relationship
2. Learning to express love in ways that resonate most with your partner
3. Developing skills to prevent complacency and maintain relationship vitality
4. Balancing meeting your partner's needs with respecting your own boundaries

Session 5: Staying Power

Staying power is all about commitment - sticking with your relationship even when it gets tough. But this isn't about enduring an unhealthy situation; it's about working together to define your relationship's values and holding each other (and yourselves) accountable. When you do this, the staying part becomes easy. 

Longevity comes down to the practices and structures you put in place for relationship hygiene. Regular dates or heart-to-heart sharing give you chances to touch base, voice anything that needs saying, and create quality time for fun or meaningful connection.

During this session we’ll explore your shared vision for your relationship. What you are committing to, and explore ways to mark that commitment, as well as an overall review of the course and what it is you want to take forward.

Key Outcomes

1. Crafting a personalised set of values that honours your relationship
2. Creating a plan for regular, meaningful check-ins with your partner
3. Exploring creative ways to reinforce your commitment and celebrate your love, like personal ceremonies
4. Integrating the course and next steps

Note

While this work may have therapeutic benefits, this is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. This is a space for group process work, and the amount of 1-1 support available is limited. 

If you are seeking 1-1 support you can reach out to Gaia to enquire about private coaching, or she may be able to refer you on to someone more specialised. 

If you have a history of significant trauma, please contact Gaia to see if this course is appropriate for you at this time.

Dates

25th Sep: Self - Responsibility

9th Oct: Team Spirit

23rd Oct: Honesty

6th Nov: Cherishing

20th Nov: Staying Power

All sessions are on Wednesday's 7:00 - 9:30pm on zoom. Link will be shared on booking

About Your Facilitator

Gaia is a facilitator and coach specialising in women's empowerment and couples coaching.

Gaia has experience working with non-monogomous relationships, trans, non-binary and queer relationships, and couples with inter-racial backgrounds.

She has been holding playful and deep spaces for transformation since 2016. She is the Co-founder of True Nature, and a co-director of Symbiota Collective. Gaia works closely with The Psychedelic Society, and has been instrumental in its growth and development over the last 5 years.​​

Gaia has worked with many leading organisations in the field of wellbeing and personal development including; Medicine Festival, Morning Gloryville, Togetherness, Alter Ego Network, Ecstatic Dance UK, Noisily, Futurecraft, Ecosystem Restoration Camps and Pinky Promise.

Experience

• Trauma informed practitioner
• In relational therapy for 4 years
• Certified coach with the MOE Foundation
• In training to be a certified couples coach with the Relational Life Institute
• Regular supervision to support practice
• Worked with thousands of people over 8 years delivering group work
• 2 years with clients working 1:1

https://www.gaiaharveyjackson.com/coaching