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There’s no doubt that you’ve heard the story of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the technology of farming, and boss of the earth goddess, Gaia.

I recently went to one of Demeter’s outdoor stadium-like temples on the prehistoric (artifacts found from 12th century B.C.) island of Naxos, Greece.

In the 8th century B.C., Hesiod wrote of Persephone falling in love with Hades—the original Stockholm Syndrome. Persephone is usually seen as either a victim or as a queen.

It can be argued that the greatest plays, books, and love songs in history were written about how we all feel stuck—either in or outside of—relationships.

If you are a sensitive person, or empathically feel the feelings of others, you may have learned early in life to stay quiet and inert when you were hurt. You may have given up your voice and established boundaries because perhaps you didn’t want to be seen as someone who complains too much. I was such a child.

This week we are in the love hangover of Pluto (power, death, transformation) squaring Venus (goddess of love and attraction). Neptune, the ruler of dreams, will be opposing the Sun.

From a shamanic, lucid-dreaming perspective, this energetic signature is ripe for cultivating a lucid-dreaming practice where we descend into the subconscious underworlds of our dreams and offer the kind of love our underworlds need.

Queen indeed, the female ruler of life and death—the true power of shamanic healing, giving death to our mental/emotional/physical illnesses—is Coatlicue.

Coatlicue has 13 serpents on her skirt representing the 13 heavens of our universe. She’s also the mother of god.

I’ve found, allowing myself to project my energetic body, my Xayananahual (Xayaca meaning mask or face, nahual meaning energy body), a figure who grows in size with every bad dream or memory it eats or sets fire to, is made of the power of seven animals.

Spider or Tocatl for creating a web of influence, Snake for healing, Eagle for focus, Crocodile for abundance, Coyote for magic and sexual power of manifestation, Hummingbird for healing my emotions and relationships, and Jaguar to heal my subconscious.

Michel Foucault wrote, “Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.”

What are the ways that we give up our freedom in relationships, and do we still enjoy them?

There is a particular joy in giving up one’s freedom in singledom to become tied in partnership. The joy is love.

Are there other ways we give up our power in relationships that we once enjoyed, yet no longer?

For example, perhaps you wore certain clothes or your hair a certain way because your partner liked it. For a time it was nice to do this, and now it’s not. This is a small thing, but relationships are a culmination of many small acts of sacrifice, will, compromise, and finally love.

This is a great time to access the power differentials in our relationships and reconstruct a narrative that is more comfortable, flattering, and sexy. If you’ve ever seduced someone, you probably know you construct a narrative for them. You set a story, a stage, a trap. And it’s a perfectly healthy part of our sexual life to have a fantasy.

The moon crosses the Super Galactic Center on Thursday. It’s your galactic story on the spotlight. What is the story you want to tell?

If you felt completely whole, what kind of romantic partnership would you want?

I’m a traveler. I’ve lived in 11 countries. I want a partnership where there is enough love, trust, and support for me to continue my shamanic research, writing, and practices around the globe. Does it sound unreasonable?

My friend Lisa says, “You can’t leave a man alone that long. He’ll stray.” My boundaries tell me that I need to be with someone who won’t.

Esther Perel says, “Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity.”

What I’ve learned from years of daily practice healing my energy body is that we gain grounding, meaning, and personal power from strengthening our energy body. We gain access to the power of the subconscious. Any NLP coach will tell you this is how we achieve our goals.

Venus just moved out of a trine or flow with beneficial Jupiter. This is an energetic signature of Twin Flames and spiritual love stories.

Pluto in square to Venus, square meaning really seeing each other, can mean conflict and difficult conversations. It can also mean an avenue to create emotional intensity and desire in a conscious, healthy way. Releasing old karma and coming into new integrity and sovereignty.

Transformation can happen once we create a safe space where we communicate honestly. Using a fine balance of compromise and maintaining one’s personal power.

No easy lesson for Persephone. Her story goes, every year she leaves her queendom in the underworld to visit her mother Demeter, bringing the harvest with her. Persephone is free for half the year. She knows Hades loves her and will wait for her. She leaves and communes with the earth mother and brings life to humankind.

Are we as free as Persephone in relationships?

Creating any healing space for ourselves is revolutionary. This week, Venus will come into a square with Saturn. Saturn used to rule Earth before Jupiter and his mighty company overthrew the father of time. It’s a wonderful moment to reconnect with the earth.

We have an untapped power connected to the love the earth provides us. Daily energy practices, whether yoga or meditation or shamanic, all cultivate inner silence. Inner silence allows us to feel that quiet unconditional Earth love.

We don’t live in villages anymore. We have friends and family who are important. And we also have a quiet personal power connected to our energetic body.

Our energy body is connected to the planets, solar system, and most vitally to the earth. If our energetic body is healthy and strong, we generally feel more empowered to stand peacefully in ourselves. Below I give you an intuitive practice to help you connect to the earth.

Love is precious. The more we love ourselves, the more we feel we are able to be vulnerable, set boundaries, and allow others to see our sovereign selves.

I find when I open up and allow others to see me, in my entirety, I feel more accepted, more loved, and more willing to compromise.

Here are 10 Coaching Tips for Chakra Strengthening and Shamanism and in Our Relationships:

1. Write down an instance where you stayed in your integrity. Then write down how it made you feel afterward.

2. See yourself as a valuable individual being whose life and experiences are necessary for the growth of the common good.

3. Know what you want and take responsibility for it. Remember you are a free sovereign being.

4. Communicate your needs. Give people the honor to really know you. What hurts you? What feels good? Use inner silence to hear your intuition. How does communicating your boundaries create self-love? How does listening to yourself and your partner’s needs create self-respect?

5. Create a narrative where both parties in the relationship are valuable and powerful.

6. Consider how your loving relationship with the earth affects your heart chakra.

7. Consider your relationship with the earth. What actions do you take that affect the earth positively? This can be meditating or breathing deeply outside or with the intention of your practice as an offering. Write down everything material you receive from the earth.

8. Slow down. Take pauses between each act, and items on your to-do list. Surrender and allow yourself the space and energetic balance that comes in when you slow down.

9. Work with a shamanic turquoise clear light practice to heal the throat chakra. The throat chakra in the Toltec system is represented by the color turquoise, voice, and personal power. The exercise is coming into a meditative state by counting the breath. Twenty-eight breaths, counting to seven for both inhalation and exhalation. Twenty-eight representing the moon’s cycle and seven representing the chakras. Imagine a clear turquoise light emanating from the throat and moving all around us as we breathe. Stay in this clear blue light for as long as your mind will let you.

10. For added power, raise your arms and breathe. Allow the clear blue light into the fascia between your ribs, the fascia between your ribcage and hips, and the fascia between your thighs and lower abdomen. In my daily practice of shamanism from Central and Southern Mexico, I’ve discovered that the fascia is directly connected to the health and power of the energetic body.