How To Connect With Someone
Use body language that is open to them. Smile, look them in the eye, uncross your arms and legs, make sure your chest is facing them and that you aren’t turned to the side. Your body needs to say, “I’m open to you and I’d like to connect and receive and be received. This body language is open and inviting, not aggressive.
Become interested in them. You will get more friends by becoming interested in other people than you ever will by trying to get people to be interested in you. Set out to learn about them. You can even pretend that you are mentally designing a manual for them. The energy you want to give off is that you really want to know them and relate to them, not that you want to get something from them. If you don’t have a genuine interest in the person you’re trying to connect with, stop trying. Everyone can pick up on the truth of how you really feel it’s just that most people aren’t brave enough to call it like it is.
Seek out your common ground. This builds instant rapport. It is also a great skill when you are trying to socially connect with someone who has very different viewpoints and feelings about life than you do. For example, let’s say one of you is getting a degree in accounting and one of you is getting a degree in archaeology but you both like climbing. Climbing is your common ground. Talk about climbing. Pay very close attention to what someone says and does in order to recognize the common ground between you.
Aim for intimacy. This is not surface stuff. This is knowing and being know n for who you really are. If you want a surface relationship, you don’t really want to connect with someone, you just want someone to share your space.
What is intimacy? It’s not sex. Sex can be intimate sex. But intimacy is a whole other thing. You can break the word intimacy down into into-me-see. Quite literally, to develop intimacy, we practice seeing into the other person, feeling into them, understanding them. With intimacy, you have a shared experience of emotional and mental and if the situation calls for it, physical closeness.
Ask them questions. A person, who does not want to answer questions, is either apprehensive about connection or does not want it and is therefore not receptive to connection. This does not work very well. You can learn to connect with someone who fears connection but whom wants to connect, but you will find it nearly impossible to connect with someone who literally doesn’t want to connect. So make sure the person you are trying to connect with actually wants to connect. And if connection is what you want, do not spend your time trying to convince someone to want to connect with you. Find someone who does. Ask deep questions that reveal the inner world of the person and their values and likes and dislikes, beliefs, opinions, dreams and struggles. A relationship is based on sharing, so be prepared to answer the very same questions you ask. Asking someone questions only feels like an interrogation if you are asking questions but are avoiding answering them yourself. Also, some people have the tendency to ask questions only so they can talk about themselves. Make sure this is not your intention. This is also a barrier to connection.
When they tell you about themselves, receive them without trying to fix them or change their minds. Listen to them with your eyes, ears, mind and heart. A huge part of connecting is providing a safe space to connect. This is the responsibility of both people. People are afraid to share the truth of themselves with you because they are afraid of the consequence and so, let there be no consequence. Even if you disagree with their opinion, treat their opinion as important for them and remind yourself that there is a valid reason they feel that way. Antagonism kills connection. Remember that people need their emotions received more so than anything else. For more information about how to approach emotions in relationships watch my video on YouTube titled “Emotional Wake Up Call.”
Initiate. This is especially true for men because masculinity is a forward moving energy and you’ve reversed your polarity if you have fallen into the purely passive, receptive role. Most of us spend our time waiting for someone to connect with us. We must get over this tendency and be willing to go to the places where people we want to connect with reside and initiate contact with people. Here’s a secret, nearly everyone on this earth is insecure and afraid to be the one to speak first so might as well be you.
Be honest, genuine and authentic. Transparency rules the day when it comes to connection. One of the best things to do when you’re trying to make a connection with someone is to pay them a compliment. But the compliment must be sincere and genuine for it to have any effect at all. You’re not going to be able to keep up a façade so don’t even think about putting your best foot forward, just put your usual foot forward. Also, if you try to play a role instead of be yourself exactly as you are here and now, people who connect with you are the ones who love the role and not you.
It’s better to go through lots of rejections upfront to get to the one person who loves exactly what they see in you, than to waste months connecting with someone only to have them leave or become disinterested the minute you settle back into being who you really are and saying how you really feel and what you really want. People are all sensitive to energy, whether they know it or not. The scariest thing in the world is pretense. They can feel it if you are acting and looking and saying one thing when the feeling of the you that is underneath is contrary to that.
Be open. Let yourself be an open book. Openness is emotional generosity. If you want connection, you’ve got to let someone into you and you’ve got to be willing to go into them. Vulnerability is a big part of connection. Vulnerability is scary but if you’re unwilling to be brave enough to be vulnerable, you will never truly connect with others. If you’re resistant to being open, figure out what you are trying to hide and why? What are you ashamed of or afraid of? The only reason you would hide something from anyone is because you are afraid of some kind of consequence. Should you really be ashamed of any aspect of yourself that is true?
You can’t hide things from people forever. I’d say it’s better to tell people upfront than to disillusion them later. Besides, you’re looking for someone who wants to connect with all of you. The real point of connection is to find someone who can be fully with you with the positive and with the negative, not someone who needs all of your life to be positive to love you. This is conditional love. Include them in your life. Sometimes, offering information about yourself even if they don’t ask for it, helps other people feel included by you and wanted by you. Share your passion with the person. Demonstrating passion opens people up to you and often makes them feel inspired and energized.
Relate to them. Empathize, be compassionate and find ways to help them to feel valid and convey that you understand them and relate. If we really want to connect with someone, we have to be willing to feel what they feel. We must be willing to step into their shoes completely. It may help to literally imagine experiencing their perspective in first person perspective so as to relate to them completely. Pay special attention to the fact that sometimes, we think we’re relating when we’re really just using their story as an excuse to tell our similar story. We’re much more interested in them hearing our story than we are about having them feel heard and understood. This makes them feel insignificant and like you’ve just used them as a stage to stand upon and crow. If you want them to care about your experience, you’ve got to genuinely care about theirs. Steer completely clear of reinforcing the idea that you don’t understand their viewpoint. Some well meaning people do this and it completely kills connection and makes people feel like they are all alone. Here’s an example: Someone expresses that they never knew their family. You jump in and say oh how sad, I loved my family, they were awesome I just don’t know where I’d be without them, especially my mom. You’ve just created separation not connection. You’ve just made them feel alone in their opinion or feeling. If they ask you about your family, you can be honest, but you can be honest without rubbing salt in someone’s wounds or establishing a feeling of separation.
Be thoughtful and mindful of the other person. Be demonstrative with your care. In other words, demonstrate that you know and care about someone. Extending energy towards other people is essential when it comes to connection. Remember important dates; remember things about them that are important so that they can see that you have really taken them to heart. Refer back to things they have said at earlier dates to show that you remember. Make them a priority in your life. It’s difficult to connect with someone when the message you keep giving him or her is “you’re not important to me”. So make sure the people you want to connect with are actually important and are actually a priority to you. Be helpful where you can be helpful. Before you help someone simply ask yourself the question “By helping in this way am I sending the message that they need to be fixed or that something about them is not ok?” If not, go ahead and help. Or help while making it known that you don’t need them to be fixed in any way, you simply thought it would bring them some happiness. For more information on helping other people, watch my YouTube video titled “To Help or Not To Help”.
Practice exuding warmth and positive energy to people; this helps them to feel comfortable and welcomed by you. People are very energy sensitive. Here is a good technique for doing this… As you are walking down the street, and you pass complete strangers, you have to specifically look for something in the person that you like or appreciate or love about them. And mentally say “I love you for (fill in the blank)". And then mentally say why you love that about them. And finish it with “I love you for that”. As you say those words, imaging sending that energy out your heart chakra towards them as if sending the message as an invisible signal to their hearts. For example, if you pass a woman you might say “I love you for the way you are holding your child’s hands because I can see you are nurturing and loving and it is helping him to feel secure, I love you for that. You do this exercise, like a silent practice as you walk around the town with as many people as you can. But it’s better to do 5 people in a really focused way where you’re really feeling the love and appreciation for them rather than 20 where you’re not really focused and only mildly feel the appreciation for them. A bonus is that you are causing a ripple in the collective consciousness. You’ll be blown away at how different your interactions with people will be.
And now for those of you who want to go deeper, and have a genuine experience of someone’s soul, I have a technique for you. Lets call this “The Connection Technique” because this technique is the ultimate form of connection. It can also be extremely difficult to do because it is so utterly frightening when you are not used to really letting someone in or going into someone. This technique must be done with someone who wants to do this exercise with you. It is critical to do this process with someone who is not a stranger until you have no more fear of connecting with others. Make sure the person you’re doing this with is someone you already feel a high degree of trust in. The new age trend of eye gazing with strangers, is not one that I support because people are not actually connecting with one another, they are simply encountering each other’s walls. A person would literally need to be in an enlightened state to be able to successfully do this with a stranger.
Choose a place with no distractions and sit down in front of one another cross-legged and across from each other. Take off all your jewelry; especially crystals, protective stones and leather. You want to be as naked a possible with the other, with no barriers between you. If you are doing this with a partner, it is best to literally do this naked.
Loosely connect your hands or arms with each other in a comfortable and relaxed way.
Close your eyes and begin to imagine or sense or feel you opening up each of your chakras from the base chakra to the crown chakra. And after a time, imagine or sense or feel yourself breathing in the other person’s energy through your mouth, but also through each one of your chakras, so you are drawing their energy deliberately into your core.
Begin to imagine or sense or feel your separate sense of self, dissolving. In true connection, the ego (identity) ceases to exist. For some people, this and the steps to come will be a frightening experience. Because the ego often thinks that connection means that it will die. We have to quite literally decide that connection is more important than living and that connection is worth the risk of death. It takes immense bravery. We often have to decide that it is better to have connection and lose it than never to have it at all to be able to do this part of the exercise and the rest that is to follow.
Look at each other directly in the eyes, deep into the pupil of the eye. It’s ok if you choose to focus on one specific eye or you can relax your gaze to look at both.
We decide who is going first. Who will be the receiver and who will be the journeyer. The receiver is going to be the one who opens up for the other to spiritually enter them. The journeyer is going to spiritually venture into the receiver. The journeyer enters the receiver through the pupil of the eye as if sinking into a black hole. If you are really struggling letting each other in, lay or hold each other chest-to-chest so that the area just over each of your hearts is touching. Meditate for a time on the feeling of the energy between your hearts being exchanged as if they are beating energy into each other’s chests and then resume where you left off.
The receiver focuses on inviting the journeyer in, breathing the journeyer in and imagining or sensing or feeling themselves open up to take them in. The receiver simply focuses on allowing, surrender and on the feeling of the journeyer’s presence entering them.
The journeyer focuses on using their consciousness to penetrate deeper and deeper into the person, like a being that is exploring a foreign planet. Curiosity and non-judgment are crucial. The journeyer projects love and gratitude into the receiver as they move deeper and deeper. Conveying any messages mentally, emotionally or energetically that they feel would help the receiver to open up further or any message they feel the receiver needs to hear. These messages can be spoken in the mind or they can be spoken out loud. For example, if you run into a wall within a person that you feel is there because it doesn’t want to let something in that it may lose, you can say out loud to the receiver “I’m never going to leave you”.
If you (the journeyer) are struggling with your own fear, it is an option to let go of your own self interest for a time and focus entirely on performing the journey in the interest of what the other person needs and meeting those needs. When this is the case, your ego sees you as the helper, which boosts your self-esteem and so the ego supports the mission instead of resists it.
During this process, all of your walls or blockages (both the receiver’s and the journeyers) will come up. These walls are belief patterns and emotional patterns that have resulted from life trauma experienced by the receiver and yourself. Usually more walls come up for the receiver. These can be visual or mental or even just walls that you feel between you and the experience. You will both run into them. This is especially true because most people are multi layered, so as you enter into them you will experience layer after layer after layer. As you sink into deeper and deeper and deeper layers within them, some light, some dark, some positive feeling, some negative feeling you will find that in front of some of these layers, are energetic and emotional walls. When you encounter a wall within you or within the other person, your aim is to learn from it. The thing that breaks down walls the very best is awareness. You’ve got to know why the wall (which is a subconscious thing) is there. What is it trying to prevent? Why has it chosen this feel or appearance? Let your intuition speak to you and hand you insight about each wall that you encounter. Subconscious walls cannot withstand consciousness. They usually begin the dissolve once we are conscious of them and their purpose. You can then reassure the wall that it is ok to no longer exist and express your intentions for journeying deeper. Then imagine or sense or feel it dissolving in the way it needs to be dissolved. It’s a good idea if you are the journeyer to ask permission to go beyond the wall. Beware that some people will experience their walls being broken either by themselves or by the journeyer a trauma, and so these walls should be loved into non existence instead of broken. Some walls do not feel like walls at all, but more like funnels or plastic barriers or electric barriers. All of this is normal. If a wall absolutely does not want to come down, we need to honor that fact and allow it to be there instead of force our way in. But remember that if we cannot get past the wall, we can always ask the receiver to help us take it down and this will dissolve the wall.
As you move through these layers and walls, the best way to get through them deeper and deeper is to melt through them as the journeyer and for you to let the other melt through them if you’re the receiver. You melt and allow melting by completely being willing to experience whatever sensations of feelings or sights you see. For example, if you experience numbness, you surrender to the experience of numbness and you settle into the numbness without resisting it at all. If fear comes up, be present with the fear, like you are keeping it company and are open to feeling it completely, letting it consume you even. You keep breathing as you welcome the experience. If you feel resistance, you simply breathe while you remain completely unconditionally present with the feelings you are feeling. In the absence of resistance to the experience, staying with the experience no matter what for as long as it takes, it is as if your soul has nothing to come up against and so it melts through one layer to the next to the next to the next. A person who is afraid of feeling their own feelings will have a very hard time feeling other people’s feelings. Do not be alarmed if you experience severe visual distortions and feeling states during this exercise. It may at ties feel like you are hallucinating. This is all normal so remember to allow it completely.
You have a choice. Either you can match the frequency of the particular layer you are in, completely experiencing it in your being. So for example if you hit a layer of grief, you can let the grief become you. You can feel what the receiver feels at that layer and practice true empathy or, you can match the frequency of the person’s eternal soul (often called the higher self, which holds a frequency of pure appreciative love for the receiver) and you can descend through each layer lovingly embracing your way through each one. Trust your intuition to know which one is the most needed by the receiver. Either way you are matching their frequency (just a different aspect of their frequency) and thus making a genuine empathetic connection.
As the journeyer, we want to see and feel the receiver completely. We want to know them completely. As the receiver, we want to be seen, be felt and be understood completely. As fears come up, let them be there, let them occupy the space between you, as if you are both cradling each other’s fears between you, taking care of the fragile trust between you.
We are present with the exercise until we feel that we have reached a state of completion. Often this is when we have gone all the way through the person’s layers back to their source essence. Make sure that you do not stop or retreat until you have reached and explored the positive feeling layers that exist beneath the negative feeling layers. For example, say you are in a layer of anger or hatred. Remain fully and completely with that layer within the person and stay with it as you sink down into the layer innocence that is underneath it and spend time there, in that positive feeling layer before you bring the journeying to a close. Many people carry barriers and beliefs that people cannot truly connect with them or will abandon them because of their darker layers. And so, withdrawing from these layers will energetically re-traumatize the person.
When we have completed our journey, we switch roles and the journeyer becomes the receiver and the process is repeated. When we are done, we discuss what we each experienced. We begin to process what has occurred together. Believe me when I say that I could never describe this process in enough detail for you to fully understand it, it is something that must be experienced instead. And each experience is unique because each person is unique. If we are ever struggling to understand each other or connect with each other, we should do this process. So don’t think that you should journey into someone only once.
Be prepared for all of your shadows of loneliness or isolation or loss to come up in the wake of this process. Connection flushes to the surface, anything unlike itself so that it may be integrated into our conscious awareness. This is the path of healing, but the path of healing is not always a comfortable one. So it is important if you have shared this connection to really be there for each other in the wake of the experience.
This is a sacred experience. It is to be treated with the utmost care. We are now trusted with the authentic truth of another human being. They have entered a vulnerable space so as to give themselves to us, both their power and their frailty. We must honor that trust or else we are not in a space of integrity.
Separation is the real hell on earth. And the worst version of this hell is when we are physically surrounded by people, but we are emotionally or mentally isolated inside of ourselves. so many people on earth suffer in this way. The antidote to suffering is connection. It is the willingness to join people where they are, no matter whether where they are is in joy or in pain and be with them there unconditionally. To do this is to say, I don’t care whether you are in rain or shine as long as I am with you. This is what we have always wanted. Give this gift to someone today.